668
EDUCATION
culture to bear on the practice, e.g., of engineering, of commercial and economical science, and of education considered both as an art and as a science, and to aid by means of post-graduate courses the practitioners of these and other callings in their efforts to find a scientific basis for their several professions, is part of the task which awaits the Senate of the reorganized University, and on which they entered under the most hopeful auspices. But, on the whole, it cannot yet be said that the part played by the English Universities in the higher professions, or in the general culture of the nation, is so important as could be desired. In 1871 Professor Bryce computed that whereas in Germany, with a population of 45 millions, there were 24,187 University students, England, with a population of 26 millions, had fewer than 5500 such students. Notwithstanding all the recent additions to her academic resources, England is still far behind other countries in the provision it makes for University education. Successive Acts of Parliament have recognized the age of 14 as the limit of primary education; and the Codes t ie Conti a ua^ Education Department have from time tion schools to time prescribed that after passing the and poly- “standard” of instruction appropriate to that technics. age; the grants on behalf of a scholar in a dayschool should cease to be paid. Evening schools have, however, long been encouraged by special grants to give supplementary instruction to young people who had left the day-school. For a time these grants were made conditional, as in the day-schools, on the passing of the scholars in the examination in elementary subjects. Mr Acland, however, in 1893 framed new regulations for evening continuation schools. The Code of that year gave greater variety of choice to managers in relation to the subjects of instruction, and substituted grants, calculated on the number of hours of regular teaching, for payments on the results of examination. These regulations gave a considerable impetus to the establishment of evening continuation schools, and the report of the Committee of Council (1900) records a total of 6154 such schools or departments, and of 206,335 scholars in average attendance. Of these, the number of boys and men nearly doubles that of girls and women, and the total number of evening scholars in Board schools as distinguished from Voluntary schools is in the ratio of three to two. In the article on Technical Education will be found particulars respecting the provision which has been made for the encouragement of scientific and manual training in its special relation to skilled industry. A strong feeling had, however, become manifest, that both in the primary schools and in the supplementary evening courses the instruction was too literary in its character, and that the practical side of life—that which is concerned with the training of hand and eye, the use of tools and measurement, and the study of those branches of science which are most nearly related to the arts of life—had been unduly neglected. How far the defects thus apparent could be remedied by an altered curriculum in either the primary or the secondary school, or by the establishment of new and separate agencies, is a question not without difficulty, and one on which neither the public nor the higher educational authorities are yet clearly in accord. The young men and women who have acquired at the elementary school the habit of application and an interest in their own mental improvement, and especially those who desire to devote part of their leisure to the attainment of such scientific, technical, artistic, or literary knowledge as is most closely akin to their own business or profession, form a class for which the provision has
hitherto been inadequate, and which sorely needed, and still needs, further help and guidance. In London part of the help thus needed came from an unexpected quarter. In 1878 a Royal Commission was appointed, with the late Duke of Northumberland as the chairman, for investigating the condition of the City parochial charities. It was proved that many of them had become, under the altered conditions—social and residential—of the present day, obsolete and useless. Doles and Christmas gifts, pensions and apprentice funds, and other like forms of benevolence which had once been of service when the citizens of London lived at their places of business, were no longer needed when the residents had flocked to the suburbs and lost all association with the London parishes. Moreover, the revenues of the charities had in many cases, owing to the greatly increased value of City property, grown out of all proportion to any wants of the few remaining City residents. The Commissioners, e.g., refer to one parish, with a population of only 150 consisting chiefly of bank clerks, in which there was a pension fund of ,£1800 a year. Accordingly, Parliament in 1883, mainly at the instance of Mr Bryce, passed the City Parochial Charities Act, which empowered a small body of Commissioners, after making due reservation of ecclesiastical and other prior claims, to apply the revenues to other objects of utility more suited to the present needs and circumstances of the London population. The sum of £155,000 was appropriated to the purchase of open spaces and recreation grounds in London and its suburbs, and a like sum to the establishing of Free Libraries and of Polytechnics. Besides the capital sum thus expended, an annual revenue of about £50,000 was retained in the hands of the Commissioners, and has been employed in the maintenance and extension of similar institutions. The People’s Palace in Mile End and the Borough Road and Battersea Polytechnics are among the best-known examples of the institutions which have thus been aided. In them provision has been made for evening classes and lectures of a varied and attractive kind; for manual and industrial training in workshops and in class-rooms; for gymnastics, and for field-naturalist, musical, debating, and similar clubs, as well as for drawing and design and other forms of art. There can be little doubt that these institutions, all of which are crowded with students, are exercising an important and increasing influence on the intellectual culture of London, and especially on the career of the more thoughtful and more aspiring of young people engaged in commerce or in manufactures in the City and its environs. Other grants from the fund have been made, and will probably continue to be made, at the discretion of the trustees, in aid of smaller classes and institutes, the colleges for working men and women, and the like useful objects. Another windfall became available in the year 1890, which had a large influence in extending the opportunities for the literary and the industrial improvement of young men and women after quitting the elementary school. In the previous year the Technical Instruction Act had empowered local authorities to supply, by means of rates, technical or manual instruction, and had defined such instruction as “ instruction in the principles of science and art applicable to industries, and in the application of special branches of science and art to specific industries or employments.” But in 1890 certain local taxation (customs and excise) duties having been directed to be paid to the same local account as the local taxation probate duty, it became necessary to make legal provision for the distribution and application of the duties so paid. At first it was proposed by the Government to employ a substantial part of this sum in compensating publicans for the loss of their business. But Parliament showed great unwillingness to assent to
