11
trivial sum like 4d. or 6d. a week. It seems to me, that well-to-do farmers have no moral right to avail themselves of the National School, without contributing much more largely than they at present do towards its support. I see nothing unreasonable, or impracticable after a time, in charging a farmer from 1s. to 1s. 6d. a week for each of his children. They would not probably pay less at a good private day school, and their children would cost them still more, if sent to a boarding school. In the parish of Shipbourne we have raised the school payments in proportion as the school becomes more valued, making those parents pay the higher charges who can afford to do so; while for children of actual labourers we have not raised the payment above 2d. a week.
But in order to make the farmers and tradesmen willing to pay 1s. or 1s. 6d. a week, I conceive that we must be prepared to give their children an education suitable for their social position. For farmers' and tradesmen's daughters music, drawing, and dressmaking are subjects, which might, without much difficulty, be added to the usual routine; while the farmers' sons ought certainly to be instructed in land measuring, the keeping of farm-accounts, the theory of deep draining, the elements of agricultural chemistry, and in mechanical drawing. I am no advocate of any "high-pressure" system of education. It seems to me to be of the utmost importance to keep each class of society in its proper place; and with this view, to give to each child such a measure of instruction as its station in life is likely to require, and no more. For is it not right that the farmer should be better educated than the labourer, and the gentleman than the farmer? Are we not in danger of doing much mischief, if we educate highly the class of labourers, while we neglect the classes immediately above them?[1] It does seem to me to be wrong, that the whole country should be straining its energies, and the Parliamentary grants entirely applied to instruct the children of the poor, without any corresponding effort being made to enable the farmers and tradesmen to keep pace, with regard to the education of their children.
The result is, that the poor do not value, and commonly reject for their children the overdose of book learning, which we vainly endeavour to administer; while the farmers have no sympathy with our National Schools, which (they not unreasonably
- ↑ I would earnestly plead for the children of the middle classes, and would urge my clerical brethren in all towns and large villages to superintend and foster schools of a higher class with the same assiduity and watchful care, which they now usually bestow on schools for the poor; such middle-class schools, would, I am convinced, be most efficient hand-maids to the Church of England, whereas at present, they are but too often conducted by those who are either ignorant of her doctrines or opposed to her system.
