included in the calculation which you have put in of the instruction given between 3 and 15, should they not? Ans.--I think not. I do not admit that the evening schools should be substituted for the day schools in any form. 2315. As the operative classes are engaged in the day-time, would it not be of great importance that good evening schools should be established ? Ans.-If good evening schools were established for the adult population, as I have said before, and in connexion with a higher class of study for the adult population, or for young persons after they had benefited by the day schools, I should be delighted to see them in that position; but I do not think their present form is such as to entitle us to estimate them very highly in an educational inquiry like this. 2320. In your estimate you have taken, have you not, what you consider the whole of the population between 3 and 15, and you have shown the number of scholars there are in the different denominational schools and others; of course you have included those who are under good education, indifferent education, and bad education; and, if so, what reason had you to leave out those scholars that attend evening schools between the ages of 13 (3) and 15 ? Ans. Because, first of all, I had not a return of the precise number of those children who attend evening schools only. 2321. If you had had such a return they should have been included, should they not? Ans. I am not prepared to say that I should have included them; because it appears to me that if, in the present inquiry, evening schools are to be taken into the account for children between 13 and 15, they must also be taken into account in respect to children of all such ages as now attend them ; but if this be allowed, I must adopt a much lower estimate of school attendance than I have yet done. When we read these questions and answers, we were struck, and for the moment confused, by the reference made in them to those who attend evening schools“ between the ages of 13 and 15." Unable to discover how the “ ages of 13 and 15 "could bave come into this question, we set it down at last that this was a typographical error, the ages really mentioned being 3 and 15. The fact that Mr. Richson's answer (2321) is founded ages 13 and 15 being scarcely consistent with this view, however, we turned to some notes of the examination taken at the time, and we found that the answer which Mr. Richson really gave was as follows : I am not prepared to say that I should have included them, unless I had thought more of that subject. I was concerned more with the day schools than wilk any others in this inquiry. Had Mr. Richson sanctioned the publication of this language, we should have respectfully suggested to him, that he was concerned, not with any class of schools in particular, but with the subject of education in Manchester generally; and that his statement that he had not thought sufficiently about the evening schools to ask for returns of them, or even to know whether, if these returns had laid upon his desk, he would have included them in his Tables, amounted to a confession of extreme inconsideration and culpable neglect : as it is, we have only to congratulate him on his having found an opportunity of deleting it. It is not often, we presume, that a typographical error in the question serves so felicitously for the basis of an answer which was never delivered. The fabrication was effected, no doubt, in the correction of the proof. Evening schools find no favour with Mr. Richson. He will not only not allow them to be substituted for day schools, he will not allow them to be added to the day schools. The hour is so vital an element in his upon the educational philosophy, that if there were in Manchester 50,000 children between 3 and 15 attending evening schools ever so assiduously and profitably, we should hear nothing of them from him. It would seem, however, that no addition to the number of “ scholars" can be made on this ground to the larger return from the Census office (Appendix No. 4, Table 11), as Mr. Mann intimates (2287) that this ** will include also children attending evening schools." 46 CHAPTER VI. SUNDAY SCHOOLS. As an important auxiliary to popular education, the Sunday School system was, as a matter of course, noticed by all parties. Manchester, said Mr. Baines, has been celebrated for its Sunday schools since the year 1785, the year after they were originated by Robert Raikes, at Gloucester ; and its Sunday schools are not only extraordinary for their number of scholars, but for the excellence of their teaching (of which I speak from some personal observation), and for the great respectability of their superintendants and teachers, (1486). This topic was most prominently brought forward by Mr. Adshead, who commenced his evidence with a full statistical display, (1973, et seq.) Mr. Richson and Mr. Baines differed as to the number of children in the Manchester and Salford Sunday Schools, Mr. Baines reckoning them at 68,603, and Mr. Richson at 51,452 *; but we do not think it necessary to go into this question. The number in either case is very large. We turn rather to the testimony borne to the educational value of the system. 1989. Mr. Brotherton (to Mr Adshead).- Are you of opinion that the education given at the Sunday shools to the working classes is sufficient for the general population of Manchester ? Ans.--With the education that they receive at the evening schools, I think they may obtain a good amount of education. 1993. Mr. W. Miles.—The Committee are not to understand that you think the Sunday school instruction which is given is sufficient for the population of Manchester, but as an adjunct to the other ? Ans.—Yes ; as an adjunct, and an important adjunct. 1994. You would not yourself consider it sufficient instruction for the population ? Ans.—I think it is sufficient instruction for the operative classes, with the opportunities that they might have of improving themselves in writing or arithmetic on week day evenings, [and other schools which are open to them.]+ 1995. But the evening schools, as I understand them, are not so much attended by children, as by operatives employed in the mills ? Ans.-I should say so. 1996. Then, setting that aside, do you think that, for children between the ages of 5 and 13, the Sunday school instruction would be sufficient, without any other elementary schools ? Ans.- I should say it would not be sufficient. This part of Mr. Adshead's evidence did not pass unnoticed in Mr. Richson's second examination. • Mr. Adshead confines his estimate to Manchester only. 2323. I must emphatically dissent, said the rev. gentleman, from Mr. Adshead's notion, (1994) that Sunday school instruction is sufficient for the operative classes, with the opportunities that they might have of improving themselves in writing or arithmetic on week day evenings.' Indeed, so far am I from sympathising with such a view of the relation between the operative classes and the Sunday school, that, beneficial as Sunday schools have evidently been, particularly in the manufacturing districts, and necessary, and even important, as their present sustentation must be allowed to be, I should be exceedingly sorry to see any general system of education receive the sanction of the legislature which rendered indispensable the continuance of Sunday schools on their present system. I could most earnestly wish the Sunday to be beneficially employed by all classes of the community, and especially I could wish to see on every Sunday the old rule carried out, of 'fathers, mothers, masters, and dames bringing their children, servants, and apprentices,' to be instructed by the minister of the church or congregation, and prepared, perhaps, for an hour or two previously, in different classes, by educated pions people; but, as I am most unwilling to recognize any system as satisfactory, which necesarily separates children from their parents during five or seven hours on the only day in every week which affords an opportunity for developing that sympathy and affection which ought to subsist between children and their parents, I cannot attach to Sunday schools all that importance, as educational agencies, which Mr. Adshead appears to do. Our two witnesses are thus at variance, and nothing is left to us but to judge between them. Fortunately, as is not seldom the case, the divergent parties have taken the extreme points of the ground, and have left a palpable via media, which is, in our judgment, much to be preferred to either extreme. We certainly (and we must say it frankly) cannot concur with Mr. Adshead, who, from the confused and tangled character of his answers, evidently spoke without a clear conception of what he intended to say. Quite as little, however, can we concur with Mr. Richson. On the one hand, he does undeniable injustice to Mr. Adshead by taking his answer 1994, and not giving him the benefit of the subsequent answer (1996), by which it is largely qualified ; and on the other hand, his main objection to the Suuday school is drawn from an antiquated ecclesiasticism with which the age has no sympathy. As to children enjoying the company of their parents on Sundays, Mr. Richson knows very well, and in his answer (2333) to the Marquis of Blandford, expressly admitted, that "in the present state of things, if children did not attend Sunday schools, instead of being in the company of parents, they would be idling their time away;" to which it may be added, that there are a countless number of parents whose " company" on the Sunday would be found very little adapted to benefit their children. We hold the Sunday school to be an invaluable institution; and although, like Mr. Richson, we should not wish to see it enforced by law, we hope to see its growing development as an effort of christian zeal and love. We do not think its moral benefits are at all too strongly described in the following passage of Mr. Adshead's evidence: 1978. Chairman (to Mr. Adshead).-What is your opinion as to the moral influence of Sunday schools upon the community? Ans.—I am of opinion that Sunday schools have had in this country, for the last thirty years, a vast moral influence, in producing that quiet and good order which so extensively prevail among our operative classes, and has been promotive of that principle of conservatism, which, in times of public agitation and excitement, has mainly tended to save the country from such outbreaks as have convulsed other countries. And notwithstanding that, in Manchester and its neighbourhood, there are all the elements of combustion, it may be decidedly affirmed, that the moral influence to which reference has been made has greatly proved our security and safeguard....I consider that is impossible to estimate too highly the powerful religious influence diffused among the community by these institutions. There are thousands now in association with those institutions who have received in them the first rudiments of their education ; in them their moral and religious characters have been moulded and formed, and they are now teachers, conductors, or superintendants, thus exercising a beneficial influence upon a succeeding generation. The Sunday school is peculiarly an institution which brings together the middle and the lower classes, and forms that bond of union between these two important sections of the community, which no other existing combination affords. The religious and social value of the Sunday school system, however, stands distinctly apart from its educational or scholastic value. No improvement in it has, in our opinion, been greater than the gradual extrusion from it of all that can properly be called school learning, and the consecration of sabbath hours to uses exclusively sacred. Instead of saying that the Sunday school is “not sufficient " for the education of the children of the operative classes, without the day school, we should say rather that, in respect of education, the Sunday school onght not to be taken into account at all. Let everything be done in the day school as though no Sunday schools were in existence. Give there the best and completest education you can; and if anything can be added to it on the Sunday, let it be religious information and culture, of which there never can be too much. We must enter our caveat, however, against the use which some of the secular educationists in the Committee attempted to make of the religious character of Sunday school instruction, when they would have made it a plea for the exclusion of religion from the day school. Thus the Chairman, Mr. Milner Gibson (who, to say the truth, was always on the watch for opportunities of this kind,) plied Mr. Adshead with interrogatories after this manner. 2008. Chairman (to Mr. Adshead). It may be said, may it not, that it is the religious zeal of the community that keeps the Sunday school system upon its present footing? Ans.—Yes. 2009. Supposing, for instance, that the day school system were to be secular, would the religious zeal which now keeps those Sunday schools upon their present footing become depressed? Ans. I do not think it would. 2010. You think that religious zeal would still keep a continual fountain of religious instruction flowing through the community, through the medium of the Sunday schools, even if the day schools were secular ? Ans.—Yes. Observing the artful bearing of these questions, a member of the Committee who generally had both his eyes open, came to the rescue. 2017, Mr. W. Miles.—May I ask you whether you think, if secular instruction only were given on week days, the religious and moral instruction given on Sunday would be sufficient to lay the foundation of a good moral and religious education ? Ans.—You cannot ensure that every child that goes to a day school will go to a Sunday school. 2019. If you could be sure that a boy would go to both, it would satisfy you that the instruction in the day school should be secular, and in the Sunday school religious ? Ars.—But many might not go to the Sunday school at all. We recollect very well how Mr. Gibson and Mr. Miles smiled at one another, on seeing Mr. Adshead thus run into a corner; but we beg here to give for him the answer which it did not occur to him at the moment to give for himself-namely, that, if a child did go to both the Sunday and the day school, the religious instruction given at the one could form no justification for its omission at the other. Religion is, in our judgment, far too important an element in education to be abandoned to the Sunday school. It appeared that some members of the Committee could scarcely believe that the vast body of Sunday school teachers were decently adapted for their office, 1659. Mr. K. Seymer (to Mr. Baines).—What qualifications for teaching have those voluntary instructors in those Sunday schools ? Ans. They are for the most part religious persons of intelligence, selected by the superintendants of those schools. In some cases their qualifications are high, and in others they are not high; they comprise persons in all classes, persons of the highest, of the middle, and of the lower classes. A considerable number of the lower classes, who themselves have passed through the Sunday schools, have become members and communicants of the churches, and are teachers now, and of them it may be said that their educational and literary qualifications are not high; but perhaps their moral and religious qualifications may be as high as those of any of the other classes. 1662. Mr. Fox (to Mr. Baines).-It appeared in a petition that I presented not long ago to the House, signed by several Sunday school teachers, consisting of only four sentences, not one sentence of which was grammatically constructed, and not one sentence of which had not one or two words incorrectly spelt : would you think that such teachers were proper persons to be entrusted with the work of education, even if it were confined to religious instruction ? Ans.- I have no hesitation at all in saying, that I am quite convinced that many such persons might be as well qualified as the best scholars in the land to give moral and religious instruction. That is all that is attempted in Sunday schools. There may be the most deeply pious and earnest persons in the world amongst those of the lower classes who are led to become teachers, but who do not possess any high literary qualifications. The friends of Sunday schools will thank Mr. Baines for this answer. CHAPTER VII. PROVING TOO MUCH. Our readers are now in a condition to judge of an assertion, which has been so often and so loudly made that its truth has almost come to be admitted without examination; namely, that at Manchester and Salford children are to a deplorable degree uneducated. Even in the minds of many members of the Committee this seemed to have the place of a foregone conclusion, and to operate with a force which nothing could resist. The evidence was more than once interrupted by questions which assumed the evil, and almost rudely demanded the admission of it. 1456. Mr. Brotherton (to Mr. Baines.)—How do you mean to apply these facts in relation to education ? Is it to prove that the population of Manchester is as well or better educated than the population of other counties, or is it to show that there can be no increased education in these towns ? |