The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1868-04-11 00:00:00

EDUCATION TO BE GOOD MUST BE
POPULAR.

Mr. Fearon, in his report on secondary education in
Scotland, just issued, states that the mites important
conebilion he derived from his brief inspection of
Seotch burgh schools, and the educational principle
which his tour most strongly impressed on his mind,
was that education, to be good, must be popular. To
have a really good education, a real desire for iC and
as real interest in it must be evinced. There were other
leecotot of minor importance which he learnt at the
same time, such as the uses and abuses of endowments,
and the direction in which they should be reformed;
the importance of not placing masters beyond the in.
Hummel of the public favour, and of making them
neither too dependent nor too independent; the value
of cheap means of education and psychological train-
ing for the teachers of secondary schools; the advau-
tages of day-school education for the middle classes,
kc. But all these seemed to be the less vital troths
than the great maxim that no good education will be
produeed until there is a demand for it. Subordinate
to all considerations prompted by his inquiry WRA the
one grand question suggested by this maxim—How is
this demand for a good education to be excited among
the middle classes? The reason why nine Scotch
burgh schools were so well attended and why such good
work was done in most of them, was owing to their I
briny constantly stimnlated from without. Public de- :
mend for the things which they produced made them
work, and public interest in the result of their work ,
th-• reselt successful. The schools were
iii eympathy with the I eiolic, and supplied the wants of
the public, and thus there was co-operation. With re.
E gard ti nglish grammar schcols being so third),
attended, and, proportionably_to their wealth, having
so little done ill them, Mr. Fearon reports that it is
because they are not stimulated from without. They are
out of sympathy with the public, and the public dis-
trusts them. Tne English grammar schools may be
right in their theory of what is the best system of
education, and what is the best for the children to
learn, but the parent does not think they are. They.
have mode much of what he considers unsuitable to
him, and have ignored that which seems to him
necessary, so he has, after a long time, come to regard
them as hopelessly perverse, lesec all interest in them,
and either forsakes them altogether or considers them
as an unsatisfactory makeshift. Educational enthu-
siasm is therefore nipped and blighted, and whatever
vigour remains flows into private schools. Let
I grammar school, like Scotch burgh schools, assimilate
themselves to public requirements ; and to effect this
the strong hand of authority, guided by men of real
educational experience, and of that courage which
proceeds from a plenitude of knowledge and keen in.

aiight, must int-e-rfere oa a *Tide ne-iwr before-atteMpOod
in this country. As soon as the public wants begin to
be supplied in a manner which appeals to the un-
tut.,red instincts of plain men, the public will be
aroused and stimulated, and the np,venient be pro-
cressively inerearied in breadth and intensity.