The Sun.
London, England, 1861-09-26 00:00:00

2HE NEW MINUTES ON EDUCATION

The extraordinary concord and harmony that
prevail among all classes in the country do not
afford a prospect of very lively or exciting discus-
sions during the recess of Parliament. Austria
and Hungary are at a deadlock. The Emperor of
the French is weaving Penelope's web ; his even-
ings undo his mornings, and one half of his policy
contradicts the other. He gives France Free Trade,
but deprives her of confidence. He delivers Italy
from Austria, but debars her from union and self-
government. Of rifled ordnance and armour-plated
ships there is little more to be said, and the public
seems inclined to leave the struggle between the
Northern and Southern States to work itself out
without a word ofesympathy for either party. The
void thus created seems likely to be filled by a new
educational controversy. The Minute of the Privy
Council, recently noticed in our columns, has created
a sensation perhaps not wholly unlooked for by
those who propounded it. To us, looking at the
subject from the point of view of the general public,
and regarding with some degree of dismay the enor-
mous progress of this item of our expenditure, the
minute appeared by no means unreasonable. That
Government should interfere less with the manage-
ment of schools, that it should make its assistance
conditional rather on results actually obtained than
on the means employed to obtain those results,
seemed to us an obvious improvement. We were
glad to find that assistance was henceforward to be
given to schools of a poorer and humbler class than
those which had hitherto received it, and we were
not unwilling that something should be lopped: off
from the excrescences and superfluities in order to
provide for this most useful and charitable work.
Alas we little knew the red-hot ashes on which
we had placed our unconscious feet. We did not
sufficiently consider that, though to us these things
were matters of calm and abstract speculation,
there were others, and those counted by thousands,
whom they touched in the very tenderest point—
in respect to their pecuniary interest. The sum of
£lOO,OOO a year annually voted by Parliament is
distributed among a vast number of persons, and
any change in the rules under which that distribu-
tion is effected must affect, and not always benefi-
cially affect, the condition of the recipients. In the
instance of the new. Minute the change seems to
have been peculiarly unpalatable. An outcry has
arisen from every quarter of the country, attesting
at once the manner in which it is pervaded by the
expenditure of the Government, and the difficulty
of effecting the slightest alteration in subsidies dis-
pensed from a central source. '
The best service that we can render to the pub-
lic under such circumstances is to place them in
possession of the history of the present system of
Education, of its defects and merits, and of the rea-
sons which have driven a department, ,'which has
hitherto shown itself peculiarly anxious to conciliate
public favour, to brave the storm of unpopularity
which is now arising against it The Education
Department of the Privy Council dates from 1839,
but can hardly be said to have come into full play
till 1846, when the system of pupil teachers and of
annual grants was first thoroughly digested and
brought into working order. In expenditure its
progress has been rapid indeed ; for, beginning in
1839 with £30,000, it has reached in 1861 to the
sum of £803,000, having increased for several years
at the rate of £lOO,OOO per annum. The principle
of this system has been that the State should origi-
nate nothing, but assist the exertions of private
benevolence, requiring in exchange such conditions
as it thinks proper in order to secure the requisite
efficiency. This assistance, however, has never been
given to any schools except those in which religion
is taught, and in this respect the Privy Council
system may with propriety be termed religious.
But, though limiting its aid to schools where
religion is taught, and refusing absolutely to
assist secular schools, the Privy Council has
never made its grants to support religious in-
struction. The duty which it has undertaken has
been to take care that those religious bodies to whom
it extended the assistance of the State should not
neglect the secular instructiou of their schools ;
and a system of inspection was organized, with a
view of ascertaining that this secular teaching was
not neglected. Agreements have been entered into
with each of the religious bodies whose schools
receive aid from the Privy Council, for the purpose
of regulating their relations to the central body.
These agreements remain in full force, and are in
no degree affected by the Minute which is the
subject •of the present controversy. The principle
of the Privy Council, we have said, was to assist
voluntary effort, but from this principle it has
deviated in three instances. The first of these is

the Capitation Grant, which is given for every child
attending school a certain number of times, with-
out any corresponding payment on the part of
the managers of the school. The second devia-
tion from this rule is the support of Training
Colleges, thirty-six in number, which are supported
almost wholly at the expense of the State, and
cost the country the sum of £122,000 a year. The
third deviation is in the case of the pupil teachers,
or apprentices, the whole of whose salary is de,
frayed by the State, without any assistance from
private funds. Every certificated schoolmaster
receives, in addition to his salary from the managers
of the school, a grant in augmentation of that salary
from the public purse. It has been repeatedly an-
nounced that this system is to be regarded as merely
tentative, and that it does not commit the Govern-
ment or the country to its ultimate adoption in case
it shall not be found to work satisfactorily. This
is the Eden into which the evil principle has found
its way, embodied, if we are to believe the complaints
that we hear, in the form of the recent Minute of
the Privy Council.
An impression was created—probably•by the form
in which the Minute is drawn—that it would come
into immediate effect, that no opportunity would
he given for addressing the Legislature, and that
before the next Session of Parliament the system
would be finally and irrevocably changed. This,
however, appears to us to be a mistake. The Minute
does, indeed, contain the rules under which it
_is
intended that Government aid shall ultimately be
granted to schools, and has in that respect a brief
and peremptory appearance, which vanishes upon
closer impection. The grant to every school is paid
annually, and the Minute provides that each school
shall be paid once under the existing rules after the
date
of the Minute. Long before the second pay-
menti
an
t canarrive which must in the earliest case be
more
a year from the date of the Minute—
that is, from the 29th of Jul in 1861—Parliament
would have had the fullest opportunity of consider-
ing the subject, and
same time, it is cleartliitoaellefteli9dnm.the Minute be disap-
proved, of preventing
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no effect till after the month of March, 1862. Thereve
I need therefore be no apprehension that the fullest
opportunity will not be given for the discussion by
Parliament of this Minute. There is no doubt an
inconvenience in any state of transition', which it is
impossible to obviate. There is the uncertainty
whether the proposal will or will not meet with the
approbation of Parliament, and there is the difficulty
arising from a long notice of an intended change.
Those interested in schools may reasonably com-
plain that their exertions are paralysed during this