The Sun.
London, England, 1849-12-21 00:00:00

DECE Al 3Elt 21, 1049

THE FOUNDERS OF RAGGED
SCHOOLS.
(From Eliza Cook's Journal)
Every man has his own special work set for him to
do in the world,- if he will but do it. No one can
jugify himself in sitting down with his hands folded
and doing nothing, because of his fancied insigni-
ficance. Each is in possession of his own distinct
int'Aviduality; aad he has the power within himself,
to a large extent, of developing his own nature, and
of acting upon the beings around him, beneficially or
otherwise He is a part, and a necessary part of
society ; and fills
,a place in it, which would be in-
complete without tarn. As are his capabilities of do-
ing, so are his obligations to do. He has his work
appointed, whi.l he must perform, if he would
fulfil the end of his being, and glorify the creation
of which he is a part. In God's works nothing is
superfluous; each individual atom is necessary, is
dispensable, to the integrity of the whole. Let a
man, therefore, be true to himself, cultivate his best
instinct., rely upon his own efforts, and labour with
a will and a purpose, and the humblest is certain to
find a place ready for him in the world, in which he
will be a useful, honoured, and worthy labourer, in-
fluencing beneficially, not only his own time but all
time coining. -

Who wou-ld have expected to discover the founder
of English ltsgged Schools in the person of a poor
cripple cobbler of Portsmouth ? one, apparently, the
meanest of human beings, labouring in the most
humble vocation, in a dingy little weather boarded
workshop, in one of the poorest streets of his native
town, poor and uneducated, yet with true and noble
impulses; for such was John Pounds—his life afford-
ing only another illustration of the fact, that it is
not wealth, nor honour, nor birth, nor even high in-
telleet, which determines a man's beneficial influence
in the world, so much as his moral purpose, the true-
ness of his aims, and the diligence with w hick he
labours at the work he has undertaken to do.
The life of John Pounds contains no striking in-
cidents ; spent as it was at his cobbler's stool, at work
amongst his little ragged children. He was the son
of poor parents, his father being a workman in the
Portsmouth Dockyard. At fifteen, he met with an
accident which crippled him for life, and he was
put to the trade of a cobbler. When he carried on
business upon - his own account, he lived for the
most part in a small boarded tenement in St. Mary-
street, Portsmouth, his workshop measuring about six
feet by eighteen ; and here he might be seen, day
after day, seated on his stool, mending shoes, and
administering his humble instructions to the crowd of
ragged children clustered around bins, filling his little
stall to the very door. Indeed the candidates for
admission to John Pounds shop were always very
numerous, more than could be admitted ; and conse-
quently he had to make a selection, generally choos-
ing the poorest and worst among them—" the little
blackguards," as he called them. 'When, in the
course of his strolls about the streets, he chanced to
meet with some one more destitute or profligate
than ordinary, he would use all his efforts with
such a one to induce him to come to his school.
He would follow him to the quay, and hold out the
bribe of a " nice roasted potato" to tempt him ; and
if he succeeded, was not John Ponnds then a more
than usually happy man !

This huniane and generous-hearted individual was
first induced to set up his " Free School" by a happy
kind of accident of Providence. In early life he
adopted a young nephew of his own, whom be
thought he could educate better with a companion,
so he enlisted in his service the son of a neighbour-
poor woman. Another and another poor child was
added, until John found himself engaged in a great
work, though perhaps he knew it not. It was the
duty and the work nearest to him, and he did it.
Here was the true life of the man. Doubtless there
are free schools, so called, in Portsmouth, as there
are in nearly all our great towns—schools
formed by the pious benevolence of good
men and women of past times, intended
by them to teach poor children; but, perverted from
the will of their founders, and grown rich, they are
now little better than so many useless institutions, to
furnish fat livings for idle " learned" men, while the
children of the poor may go untaught and untrained,
but for the active and truly Christian heroism of
such men as John Pounds. We know of many such
rich and useless "Free Schools,"—useless so far as
the children of the poor are concerned, in many large
towns that we could name; and we are not aware of
any more urgent duty at the present time on the part
of our public men, than that of restoring the magni-
cent funis of the Free Grammar Schools of England
to the purposes fur which they were originally de-
signed by their benevolent donors, namely, the free
education of the children of the English people. .

To return to John Pounds :—He established his
nephew comfortably in the world, out of his slender
means, and went on adding to his school until it
became famous Many a poor child did he rescue
from vice, and educate into usefulness. He watched
with anxious interest the progress of his pupils in
life, and helped them when he could. Many useful
and industrious citiztris, who otherwise might have
been outcasts and beggars, does. England. owe to this
humble man.. Ile was a parent to the estitute ; he
was the father who bound them to society. His
labours at his stool earned him bread enough for his
wants; but his labours on the minds and hearts of
his little pupils—that was the great work of his life,
the value of which can scarcely be overestimated.
Besides " book learning" and industrial habits,
John Pounds taught his pour little children humanity,
and implanted in them a love of natural objects. He
was fond of all kinds of birds and domestic animals,
singing-birds, jays, parrots, cats, and guinea pigs;
and he might sometimes be seen at work in the midst
of his pupils, with a canary perched on one shoulder
and a cat on the other. His was a happy family on a
large scale, and to him might not inappropriately be
applied the beautiful lines of Coleridge—
" He prayeth well, who loveth well
All things both great and small;
Be prayeth best, who loveth best
Eoth man, and bird, and b:,ast;
Fur the dear God, who loveth

lie made and loveth all."

It may be imagined what sorrow of young hearts,
what weeping and shedding of tears, there was at the
death of this truly good man, on New Year's Day,
1839, at the age of 72. England had lost one of its
best and most useful citizens; but as for them, they
had losta father, friend, and playfellow, all in one.
" Were we," says Mr. Guthrie, in his Second Plea
for Ragged Schools, "to make a pilgrimage any-
where, 32 soon as to the lowly heath where the mar-
tyr reposes, we would direct our pilgrim steps to the
busy streets of Portsmouth, and, turning aside from
the proud array of England's floating bulwarks, we
would seek out the humble shop where John Pounds
achieved his works of mercy, and earned an im•
perishable fame. There is no poetry in his name, and
none in his profession ; but there was more than
poetry—the highest, noblest piety—in his life. Every
day within his shop he might be seen cobbling shoes,
and surrounded by some score or two of ragged ur-
chins, whom he was converting into useful members
of the State. Honour to the memory of the patriot
cobbler, beneath whose leathern apron there beat the
kindest heart—there glowed' a boom fired with the
noblest ambition, and who, without fee from scholar,
or reward from man, while he toiled for his hard-
earned bread with the sweat of his brow, educated
not fewer than five hundred outcasts before they
laid him in the lowly grave Honour, we
say again, to the memory of this illustrious
patriot Nor is there in all the world 'any
sight we would have travelled so far or so soon to,
see, as that self-same man, when he followed some
ragged boy along the quays of Portsmouth, keeping
his kind keen eye upon him, and tempting the young
savage to his school with the bribe of a smoking
potato. Princes and peers, judges and divines,
might have stood uncovered in bis presence, and now
marble monuments might be removed from the
venerable t walls of Westminster—poets, warriors,
and statesmen, might give place to make room for
him."

Another founder of ragged schools, who lived
- - -

before John Pounds, and in. another country—of
whom, perhaps, John Pounds never heard—was
the benevolent Pestalezzi. _ He began his labours

towards _ the _ close of last century, devoting

his whole time and means to fhe instruc-
don and elevation of the poor. The idea which took
possession of his mind, and strongly influenced his
conduct throughout life, was that of the brotherhood
of man ; and that the great obstacle to the elevation
of the poor was their ignorance. He therefore sought
to elevate.their independence by increasing their
knowledge; and by placing them on a level, as re•
garded their intelligence, with the more affluent
classes, he thus looked to education as the best means
of realizing the great Christian maxim of human
brotherhood. Assisted by his devoted wife, he invited
poor, and even beggar•children, to his home, for the
purposes of instruction. His efforts were treated by
hie neighbours, and by the world, as utterly absurd,
and even insane. Yet he persevered, through misfor-
tune, loss of means, ridicule, and opposition of all
kinds. In the midst of the turmoils of revolution and
War, this true hero held to his purpose, and went on
educating. He was in advance of his age, and the
world was yet to come up with him, and acknowledge
the wisdom and benevolence of his plans. '.l he
local Government of the Canton of Unterwalden at
length recognized his efforts, and placed him at the
head of a school at Stantz. Here be laboured
with immense success, almost compelling the pupils
to love arid admire him, so devoted was he to their
happiness and their interests. No materials could
have been less favourable than those committed to his
care—children whose minds had been corrupted by
the habits of begging and stealing, to which the
miserable necessities of the times had driven them.
But how could children, no matter, how vitiated by
habit, resist such methods as those which Pestalozzi
employed ?
" 11y ,first task," says he, ‘` was to gain the cora.

dence of my pupils, and to attach them to me; this
main point once attaiLed, all the rest appeared to me
easy. The deserted state in which I found myself,
all painful as it was, and the absolute want of assist-
ance, sere precisely what contributed the most to the
success of my enterprise. Cut off from. the rest of
mankind, I turned all my cares and all my affections
to the children ; to me they were indebted for all
the rel of they received. I partook alike of their
pains and their pleasures ; I was everywhere with
them when they Were well, and when they were
sick, I was constantly at their. bedside. We had the
same nourishment, and I slept in the midst of them;
and from my bad either prayed with them, or taught
them something."
Extraordinary success attended the labours of
Pestaloazi at Stantz; but these were rudely interrupted
by the troubles of the times, and he then removed to
Burgdorf, in the Canton of Berne, where he founded
another school, which was equally successful N 1 ith the
former: But thii too was broken up by the revolu-
tion of the period ; and still persevering, he founded
again a poor school in the country, some five miles
from Berne, where he was joined by Fellenberg, and
again he succeeded in attracting around him a large
number of pupils, and bringing them to an extraordinary
pitch of improvement. Shortly after he removed to a
place called the Castle of Yverdon, where he founded
en academy for the education of all classes. His
plans by this time attracted great notice from the
leading minds of all countries; numerous schools
were founded throughout Germany and England on
his plan; and the leading features of his system are
now adopted in all the best schools in this and other
countries.

Sup Is were the first founders of Ragged Schools—
among the most valuable and beneficent institutions
of modern times. To found a Ragged School is a
greater work than to found a College ; for the rich
are never without the means of an adequate educa-
tion; but the poor—how are they to be educated,
unless by some such instrumentality as that above
described ? and, without education, what can the poor
ever continue, but miserable and degraded ? To pro
perly and efficiently educate the poor—such is the
greatest problem for the solution of our age; and to
accomplish this work, to some extent, is the glorious
mission of the Teacher in Ragged Schools.