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CHAPTER IX.

EXCLUSIVENESS.

I MUST at once say that the subject of this chapter is divided by a clear line from most of what precedes. It is concerned mainly with the social side of education. The difference is one not of degree but of kind. Moreover, the chapter is specially defective, inasmuch as it is mainly critical, and only to a very limited extent constructive. Notwithstanding this, I feel so strongly the mischievous effects upon the nation of that which I criticise, that, though I see the great difficulties involved in overthrowing things as they are, and replacing something different, I cannot end without calling attention to the subject. The subject to which I refer is the increasing tendency of Public School education towards exclusiveness of various kinds.

For much of this exclusiveness, public opinion, as represented by the Government, is directly responsible, and not the schoolmasters. About twenty years ago, previous to the passing of the Endowed Schools Edu

cation Acts, there were scattered all over England a number of endowed schools which gave a free education to the sons of the inhabitants of the district.

There is no doubt that the inquiries of the Royal Commissions were much needed. It was necessary to inquire whether the old system which had been going on for centuries was adapted to the wants of the people. But I believe that the actual changes introduced have, on the whole, been unfavourable to national education, if the word education is used in any but a very narrow sense.

For what has been one main result of those changes? It has been to introduce into education the element most prejudicial to national progress and national greatness— the element of class distinction in schools. This will be made apparent in the best way by an illustration or two.

Speaking generally, the endowed schools throughout the country have been divided into two classes,-firstgrade and second-grade schools. I will first take, as an example of the former, one of the old endowed schools of England.

Under the old regulations, the inhabitants of the place in which the school is situated and of the immediate neighbourhood were, under certain conditions, entitled to send their sons to the school, free of charge. Under the present regulations that privilege has been done away with.1 But an attempt was made to give

1 I believe that one of the chief reasons for discontinuing the free education at this school was, that a number of parents who

some compensation for the withdrawal of the privilege. A lower school was erected in the place, from capital belonging to the endowment of the old school, intended to give the boys of the place and neighbourhood what is usually called a "commercial education," and to enable them to pass on to the old school. That is, it is a "middle-class" school. Provision is made for receiving into it a few boys free of charge from the elementary schools in the place and neighbourhood, and further provision for admitting into the old school a few boys who have attended the lower school for a certain period, and whose parents reside in the place or the neighbourhood.

The consequences of these changes are quite clear. The fees for day-boys at the old school are so high as to exclude the sons of all those who are not well off. Those at the lower school are so high as to exclude the sons of the poorest classes.

We have then under these circumstances a great school, open, with a few exceptions, only to the richer classes. We have another school open, with a few exceptions, only to those who are at least above the poorwere perfectly able to pay for their sons' education settled in the place, and thus qualified themselves technically as recipients of a charity to which morally they had no real right. But surely, if this were the case, some other remedy might have been adopted of a less sweeping nature than that actually adopted. There seems a very simple and efficacious remedy available-the institution of a poverty test. In this way the abuse that I have mentioned would have been removed, and yet worthy recipients of a free education would have continued to receive it.

est classes. And in addition to these two schools there are, of course, the ordinary so-called "National" schools, practically limited to a third class. Is this public or national education? Is this educational reform or progress? Is it not rather an instance of most melancholy retrogression? Can the enforced separation of classes be anything but mischievous and retrogressive? Can there be any progress without their fusion? And can this fusion be ever produced so surely, so naturally, and so easily, as by the mixing of the members of the different classes when they are young? But I shall return to this again, merely pointing out now that the consequences of this legislation have been undoubtedly such as I have mentioned in this particular instance of this first-grade school. And similar consequences have followed in the case of all first-grade schools, excepting that in most cases no attempt has been made to pro

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1 I am well aware it is often stated that, even under the old system, there was no real fusion of classes, that it was, in the words of a man who speaks from experience, a fallacious mixture of classes that did not mix." But because such was the case at one time, are we right in assuming that it would always have been so? Whose was the fault that there was no real mixture, when the opportunity for mixing existed? Mainly, I think, that of the upper and not the lower sections of society. For the masters seem usually to have little encouraged such mixture, and the boys of the upper classes to have very decidedly discouraged it. But even now there is a better spirit abroad than there seems to have usually been then. Under the old arrangements, the door was at least left open. My complaint is that, under present arrangements, the door has been closed.

vide any other kind of education, such as the one mentioned above.

I will now take an example of a grammar-school in a country town, which has been turned into a secondgrade school. I select it on account of my intimate knowledge of it, for it was the school at which I was myself educated.

It was a free school, and was limited to eighty boys. Its doors stood open to all sorts and conditions of boys, with absolutely no social test; and assuredly by all sorts and conditions of boys its doors were entered. The sons of the leading professional men of the place and the sons of the poorest labourer were there. Of the consequences of this completely indifferent mixing of classes I shall speak later on. At present I only notice the

fact.

The school is now under the new scheme. It is one of the second-grade schools. That is, the free education has been done away with, and a fee is charged sufficient, and I presume intended, to exclude the poorest classes. The school exists for the middle classes. It is a class school. But its struggle for existence is a very hard one. For, although provided with excellent new buildings, and having a most active and devoted headmaster, filled with the energy and enterprise of youth, its numbers are very small. Nor is this to be wondered at. The line has been sharply drawn, and the school has been defined as a middle-class school. It is very difficult for any boy to