The Sun.
London, England, 1858-09-06 00:00:00

classes." Lord JOHN• RUSSELI, and Sir JOHN PA-
KINGTON are hardly heard of now; their weary

business has been to get the different and hostile
sects to tolerate anything that coul I be called

national education for those who could afford but

twopence a week or nothing a week, and to per-
suade the twopenny-class teachers, committees, and

patrons to submit the results of their work to

Government Inspectors. To a large extent they

have succeeded, and the National and British Schools
have, for the more part, teachers possessing more
or less of capacity verified by normal school train-
ing and by Inspectors' supervision ; some of them
have obtained what might be almost called a
diploma in their own line—such testimonials from
the authorities as would gain them a good National

School appointment at any time if they wanted one,
The examinations of the children, we know, also
to have been attended with good results, in aiding
competent masters, and in encouraging them and the
children under their care, by stimulating emula-
tion, and also iii exposing the incompetent, both
schools and masters, to the notice of their employ-
ers, and the subscribers to the school.
It is now the turn of the middle classes. The
boys of the National Schools had been of late far
better cared for than those of the classes next above
them. The sharp lad at the National School was
superseding the alumnus of the private school, at
least in what a London Alderman once toasted as
" the three Rs". The chances were that he could
equal or surpass in them tb,e boy whose parents
were above sending him to a British and Foreign
or a National School. He would read and write as
well, and in arithmetic beat him hollow. Some-
thing was now needed to make sure that the sons
of him of "the three Rs". should at least surpass
their father in the lessons taught by VYSE and
MAYOR. Very natural, therefore, was it that the
st thought should be to find efficient and trust-
rarthy inspectors for the • schools above the class
which could ask or receive national support, and
most creditable was it to Pxford that she should
be the first to offer public examinations by men
Whose competency and superiority to improper in-
fluences it was impossible to doubt. From the
beginning we hailed the movement as one for
'which every parent with two or three hundred a-
year and upwards, to live on; ought to be thankful.
The University Examinations cannot, we imagine,
fail to raise the standard of education. The
schoolmasters will be compelled to meet the re-
quirements of the examiners. Public opinion
will require it, and we shall witness a growing
demand for competent teachers, since both parents
will prefer the schools where they are proved to
(mist already, and the masters who are deficient
will be obliged to obtain them. at any cost to keep
up a respectable school at all.

.As to the result of the late examination, they
are, we confess, very much what we should have
anticipated. We should haVe supposed, indeed,
that a greater number of masters would have been
too well aware of the .general requirements of
examiners to have sent such a large number who
could be rejected on such humble matters as spell-

ing and arithmtic, yet any educated man, the
editor of a respectable newspaper, for instance,
who has been accustomed to receive letters from
many correspondents who have had the kind of
education now exposed to -the test, is well aware
how many of them do make orthographical mis-
takes which often surprise him. Perhaps an editor
sees more of this kind of error than most persons,
his middle-class correspondents having generally
to travel out of their accustomed business topics
when they address him. The orthography for prac-
if iii." ,3wriimnecura_ ta At 0 tYllrfill CAPTI il I, f1.13111,3a. ..i.t. the
defectively known before.

The number altogether rejected—:upwards of seven
hundred out of eleven hundred and fifty—is indeed

a very large proportion, and may seem, as some
think, to show that it arose in part from the differ-
ence of University and common school systems ; yet,
this would hardly explain the fact that of the
juniors, three hundred and seventy-one, of the
seniors two hundred and five, Tailed to pass the
preliminary examinations—failed, that is, in "ortho-
graphy, writing, analysis and parsing. arithmetic,
geography, English history-, and English composi-
tion"—and chiefly " in the orthography and arith-
metic." It seems idle to allege that any difference
between University systems and the system of the
humblest commercial schoolmaster, or of the most
retired private teacher, fifty miles from any railway,
can account for this. As we have said, we were
not altogether surprised at the result. We too
well know that " thorough" is not the word of the
majority of schools for the majority of their pupils,
nor even for those who pass for their best lads -and
who are sent home with high characters ; we had
long suspected that a great part of our middle-class
education was of the most superficial kind. That
the idea, so essential in all education, of pelfect
mastery of the subjects professedly taught, as
far at least as the children go, is almost entirely
wanting. It is essential to the reputation of the
school that the child should have read certain
bOks in Latin, or have done certain sums in arith-
metic, or be able to talk of his achievements with

the globes, and show, perhaps, fair-looking copy-
books. MURRAY'S grammar he must, of mune,
also have repeated and be able to repeat, whether
he can write off-hand a grammatical and
correctly spelled sentence or not. But the five
hundred and seventy-six failures, in the elemen-
tary subjects just mentioned, show but too plainly
that our apprehensions were not groundless, and
that the great mass of middle-class education did
need just the probing and testing which is now
to be applied to it. •

Private schools and private lunatic asylums have
one point in common ;, it' is: the interest of those
who manage them to deceive those who place the
children or the lunatics: in, their respective institu-
tions ; they have, indeed, another point in common,
that it is often difficult for those who trust them to
judge of the state of those placed by them beneath
their care. The schoolmasters' bread depends not
on the actual, but on the supposed attainments of his
pupils, of which the parents, even setting aside the
tendency of parental pride to think the best of our
sons, are, too frequently, but incompetent judges ;
just as in the other case, the keeper of the private
asylum lives by the presumed madness of his wards,
while those who place them under his care, are, at
least they are told they are, incompetent to tell
whether a man be mad or not. The boy must have
succeeded, and the alleged lunatic must be a real
one, or the source of gain is dried up.
We are not indicting all schoolmasters of direct
fraud, but in both cases the danger is great ; in the
former, which now concerns us, it is plain that
there are numerous teachers up to the mark them-
selves and able to bring their scholars up to it.
Their number will increase by hundreds, when a
few examinations have taught what is really
wanted. It will become a necessity for masters
who would have first-class pupils, to be able to get
his pupils through the public examinations. The
schools which succeed there will swallow up the
others, unless they rise at once to the required
standard. We shall soon not see the prizes brought
home from school by the boy who must in this way
adyertise it to au father's and mother's friends,