lad had not even the bodily strength and hardihood for hedging and ditching, leading the plough, and tending horses and cattle on a farm: and he saw little fellows some five years younger as clever as little men about their field-work, because they could not be spared to go to school. All the week there was this mortification every day,—of disappointing father, and looking small in the eyes of younger lads; and on Sundays there was too often something worse. The parents had been dutiful and self-denying about these many years of schooling, cheering themselves with the thought of the time when their boy or girl would read to them on Sundays, besides giving them the news on Saturdays, and keeping the accounts in the evenings. Few things could be more painful than the disappointment and mortification all round when it too clearly appeared what the reading, writing, and ciphering amounted to, after all. Where the girl could sew, the waste of time was less shocking, though her mother might still have been glad to exchange the reading and writing, such as it was, for the skill of many a younger child in managing the cows, and the hens, and the baby, and the family dinner.
The case began to mend when the methods of instruction in school began to improve; and the great turning-point, perhaps, was when boys were put to industrial work for those afternoon hours when the brain is least fit for attention to book-learning. The reform was much helped by the operation of the Factory Acts, which require that children shall have three hours’ school instruction daily. When it became evident that the factory children learned as much in half-time as others in full school-hours, the struggle on behalf of the overworked brain was sure of success. It was then seen that the children of a manufacturing town learned as much in the book way without neglecting profitable industry as if they never earned a penny; the same fact must hold good in the country: and some sensible people put it to the proof. Mr. Paget, the member for Nottingham, was one. He found the parents of eight boys willing to let them work on Mr. Paget’s farm half-time for half-wages, and attend school for the other half. The plan has answered perfectly, though farm-labour requires, in Mr. Paget’s opinion, that the field-work and the schooling should be on alternate days, instead of dividing each day. If it is true, as he believes, that the wet and soil of the morning’s work must preclude the afternoon’s schooling, this is an essential drawback, as changing the whole character of the experiment. Notwithstanding this disadvantage, however, great benefits have accrued. The boys take a livelier interest in their learning than of old; the parents are not in such a hurry to take them from school; and there is a good style of reading, writing, and figures attained in a reasonable time. The lads are in request as labourers afterwards, as they combine the advantages of a habit of labour with those of a cultivated intelligence. The power and skill in work being equal, the farmer or bailiff will always prefer a labourer who can measure and reckon, and keep accounts, and make memoranda, and read instructions. An employer likes a youth who makes a note of the weight of the largest turnip or mangold of the crop, or of the produce of the milking, or dates of the calving of the cows; and who can estimate the available bulk of wood in a standing tree. We are told that, if the infant-school training has been good up to seven years old, from two to three years more of half-time schooling will fit boy or girl for simple reading, writing, and arithmetic of a good quality. This leaves a considerable margin for further attainments within the period of school life. In the case of the lower set of attainments, the lads may reckon on higher wages by at least a fifth than can be had by boys who have spent their days at school only. Five of the latter class turn out less work than four of the half-time lads. The half-time lads are not only familiar with field-work, but have better health and a stronger frame. Nowhere among the rising generation is the mortality lower than in half-time schools, where active bodily exercise and training occupy the place of afternoon school; and when the lads are not to be rural labourers, they are in great request for the Navy, and other occupations where strength and aptitude of limb and faculty are required, and disciplined activity is inestimable.
Where the balance between mind and body, brain and muscle, is established by education, the chances of life, health, and prosperity are improved beyond all computation. Mr. Chadwick tells us that in half-time industrial schools the mortality is reduced to one-third of what it is at the same time of life in the general population of England and Wales. With this weightiest of facts I conclude our contemplation of the lot of the fortunate children who have come in for the first share of the benefits of half-time schooling. They have the advantage of the sons and daughters of nobles, and gentry, and tradesmen; for the old-established school-hours are still the rule in upper and middle-class education; and the physical education of children,—of girls especially,—has still to be introduced into practice, while it is having a fair trial among not only young peasants and operatives, but paupers, foundlings, and City Arabs. We have read in the newspapers of the recent visit of the Comte de Paris to the Limehouse pauper-school, where six hundred orphans and destitute children are trained on the half-time system. In that school, the cost of the training is actually less than 1l. per head a year; and for this small amount the lads are rendered so fit for various employments as to be in constant request, while the mortality (among an unfavourable class of children to begin with) is only one-fifth of that of the surrounding population. The contrast between these lads and lasses and those of some other parishes and schools, where one large proportion is doomed to early death, and another to moral ruin, may well strike others than the French Prince and his party, who went away so deeply impressed by what they had seen.
Now we must turn to the children whose cases are exhibited in the above-mentioned Report.
There is a district of England, measuring eight miles by an average of two, in which there are eleven thousand children and young people under the age of eighteen employed in the Earthenware