Year: 1876

Prof Jack, of Owens College. Man
chester, has done a very Limely ser
vice to the working of our educatfona
system by pointing out how very de
sirable it is to put compulsory power


in force with very gentle and even
reluctant hand, and to supplement
them by all sorts of persuasiOn-frOm


mere exhOrtation down TO q clear and
popular exposition of the unpleas AM
results of not complying with tht
laW-If you WOul0 make compulsory
powers as effective as they certainly


may be made. We may assume that
education is not very popular with
those who most need it that 1t Inter
feres graVely with all their habits,
and, specifically at least, with theil
gains and that, without an ultimate
appeal to q compulsory law, nothing
etfectual could be done. But it is
quite one thing to have physical
forces in reserve, and TO obtain your
end by the moral force which the
knowledge that physical force is in
reserve gives, ana another ana very
different thing to display your phvsi-
cal force, and, as il were, brandish 1t
over a reluctant people. For really
effective compulsiOn is always more
or less disguised, and not displayed.
Whenever you have to threaten it
directly, there IL is clearly on the very
edge at least of being Intellectual.
The compulsion under which even 3
horse draws q carriage is most COM
plete when there Is no occasion for
the whip. Whenever you are COM
PEELED actually to apply the whip, you
are approaching the possibility OF
failing to find il effectuai. And so in
human life, the social cOmpulsiOn
under which ordinary people observe
the decencies of civilized life is COM
plete where no threat ar open compUl-
sion has to be used, incomplete and
on the verge Of failure where resort
must be had to these compulsory
powers. 1t is, therefore, no derOga-
tion from the utility Of ultimate COM
pulsion-quite the contrary-that
Prof. Jack shows us that the COmpul-
sorry Education law works best where
it is least often bTandished in the face
of the people because these are just
the cases in which the knowledge that
it must and will be applied, il all
other means fail, has filtered most
thoroughly into the home-like, and
made itself one of the recognized con-
ditiOns Of that life, SO that the resort
to force becomes but very seldom
necessary. In Glasgow, as Prof. Jack
shows, the resort to legal compulsion
Is so rare that the number OF cases in
three years time had not been above
81, or not more than II a year, but
yet it is precisely in Glasgow that
compulsion, either moral or physical,
has had almost the best effect in i'm
proving the number of pupils and in
making their attendance regular.
''The Glasgow secret" says Prof.
Jack, sis very simple. The Board
goes down among the defauiting
parents, holding frequent meetings in
their own localities, 10 hear the stories
OF the poor, and to persuade than for
their own and their children's good.
They try everything before they pros
ecute. They distribute fly.leaYes
copiously, narrating the facts so as to
make every actual prosecution go as
far rs possible in persuading other
people," Now, there can be no sort
of doubt of the wisdom of this policy.
Not only is it far less invidious than
making 8 great number of what are
called "exampIes" Of parental neglect,
but It is much more potent, too; it
affects the Imagination of the people
more 1t makes every example" do
duty hundred times as often as pun
ishments the story Of which is not
thus circulated among the people,
could do, and with much less chance
of exciting resistance. For, OF
course, q man who has been induced
to conform to the law by hearing all
about the trouble his neighbOr got in
to by resisting 1t, is much less disposed
to complain and rebel than q man
who has been induced to conform to
1t by suffering in his own person.
Every punishment actually inflicted
by the prosecution of guilty parents
in Glasgow is thus made to answer q
great many more purposes than the
particular purpose for which it was
inflicted, and to answer thoss ether
purposes far better probably than it
answers the particular purpose for
which it was inflicted.