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Untitled Article
perhaps , advises the committee to send the teacher to London , or some other place , for three months , and have him regularly trained under a good infant school master . In vain ! they cannot wait so long , it will protract the business , and the zeal of the good people in the town might get cool in the mean time . The infant school must be opened in a
fortnight or three weeks at the latest , and this is consequently all the time that can be permitted to the newly chosen master for his preparation . The question of time being settled , another arises : to what place is he to be sent ? The expense of sending him up to Londop , or to some other place of note , is found too great , particularly for so short a time , and it seems , therefore , better that he should be sent the least
distance possible , to the nearest infant school , to " catch" the system . But suppose even he come to London , or to Exeter , or Bristol , to one of the best schools that are , what can he learn in so short a time ? What strikes him chiefly , is the singing of the tables , the distribution in classes , the marching round the room , the clapping of hands , and all the other machinery . This he catches , as well as he can , and back he goes , and opens his school , and his chief endeavour is to follow the system which he has caught , as closely as he can . And what can be expected after this 1 What else , but that the infant school should
become a treadmill for the minds of the poor children ! Such has been the history of the infant system ; it has been misapprehended by prejudice and narrow-mindedness , and perverted by bigotry and false zeal , so much so , that those who were its warmest advocates , are tempted to wish that never so much as one infant school had been established in the country . '
We can add nothing to this . Surely every member of the committee of the House of Commons who reads it , will be eager to make the labours of that committee instrumental to the reform of such abominations . We conclude in the words of the same author , with the following general summary , every word of which accords with all our own information .
1 have had a sad picture to lay before you , when speaking of the neglect of education , and of the numbers of children who are left without any instruction at all ; but no less sad is the picture of the present state ot our charity schools . All the evils under which society at large labours are , as it were , concentrated upon this point , as if to destroy the very vital 8 of the nation . The universal motive is money-getting ; the means are all devised upon the analogy of large manufactures , carried on by * mechanical power ; and , to make the measure of evil full , the cloak of it all is a dead profession of the gospel . The principle of mammon is recognized as the life of education , the existence of mental and moral powers is set aside , and the spirit of religion is supplanted by the letter . Such is the general character of the education which is imparted to the poorer classes of this country , whatever may be the name of the system under which it is done , I leave you to judge , what must become of the nation ! *
Untitled Article
Reform id Education . 513
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1834, page 513, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2635/page/53/
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