The Birkenhead News and Wirral General Advertiser. — 1894-11-21 (Birkenhead, Merseyside, England)

EDUCATION MEETING.  CHESHIRE DISTRICT UNION OF TEACHERS.  SPEECH BY MR. ELLIOTT LEES.  tin Saturday afternoon, • meeting of the Chenhire Blistrict Union of Teachers, which is in affiliation with the National Union of Teacher., was held in the Town Hall, under the presidency of his worship the Mayor (Aldernoin Shaw). ...Amongst them, p,saent were Mennen Elliott J. 31.P., William C. T. Goetenholer, J. P. Eglen, George Atkin, ! H. Tatteraall, H. A. Johnstone (preaident),_ F. B. Gill, George Lockett, (general secretary), W. Starford (local recretary), Dr. Beach (Macclesfield), Revs. Dr. Knox, Charles Fenton, and A. .1. Tomlin ; Mrs. Burgwin (innpeetoos under the London School Board, and member of tlei executive of the National ! Union), Messrs. W. Williams, Robinson, Peel, ! Parrott, Wright, Wood, Butt.waorth, (Reaves, A.W. ! Lobb, Beckett, Buyers, Sto. The Mayor said he was glad to make his first , appearance on a public platform, ninon his election I as Mayor of the borough, in the great cause of education He had watched the development of public education with Tont intereist, from the first Acts dealing with primary education designed to I grapple with ignorance and level it to the ground to I the present efforts on behalf of higher grade education and the teaching of science and art. There were mine who thought that higher education had • tendency to induce discontent and dissatisfaction and to produce disastrous result.. With these gentlemen he had no sympathy. Ile believed that the higher ' they educated the children the better °Raison* would ! they make. If they were induced to aspire after some! thing higher and better than they had hitherto enjoyed that was something for which they should be commended. When they looked at the condition of England to-day, and marked the good order which everywhere prevailed, and the evident desire there was to uphold law and authority on the part of all classes of the community, they would be able to see the good which education had brought about. In presiding that afternoon he simply sought to assist a good cause. The work of a teacher necessarily ! involved a large amount of self-denial, untiring energy, and unflinehing,perveverance. It must be so if they would cope With the codes sent up year by year from the Education Department. He had heard it said that uhlese people received a classical training as against a good sound English education they were ,not well trained, and a former mayor of this town had once said that English grammar was of very little value. This might be so. All he could asy was that he had not had the advantages of a classical training, and that if he had not been well grounded in English Grammar he would have had no grammar at all. (Laughter.) He sometimes thought he should have liked to have lived in these days and received what so many of the working-classes enjoyed—higher grade education, including science and art. In concluding, he should like to say, and he hoped they would take it in the friendly spirit in which it was said, that under a recent order free places were provided for all who required them throughout the land, and unfortunately this had not been availed of as it might have been. Speaking as a guardian of the poor, of more than 20 years experience, he must deplore the fact that in the Birkenhead Union poor people were compelled even now to apply for school fees. That was not as it should be. (Applause.) He hoped the school managers and teachers would see ! their way to enlarge the number of free places as far as possible, and 80 prevent poor people suffering the indignity of appearing before the guardians. 1 Mrs Burgwin then delivered an address upon the ! true aims of education, in the course of which she contended that the minimum age for the admission ! of children to school should be raised from 3 to 5, ' and that more attention should be paid to the improving bf the eyes, ears, and fingele of the children than that of their memory. True education meant conduct, and the teacher*? object should be rather to produce the highest moral character and to make the children happy than to enable them to earn money. She attributed much of the despair and suicide amongst the young to a bad system of education. The teacher should be free from the annual show or examination day, more time should be given to children for thinking and asking questions, and she looked forward to the day when there would be a certificated teacher for every forty children. (Applause.) It depended upon the teachers as to whether the country was to go forward or backward, and in her opinion teachers, who were experts in the work, should be consulted more than they were.. She hoped that the Cheshire teachers would take the new cede in hand, and bring pressure upon the Executive of the National Union to go to the department with a united front and suggest to them that if occupations were to occupy any of their I school time they must have • revision of other I subjects. (Applause.) In conclusion, the speaker made an appeal on behalf of the charities of the National Union.  Mr.