they failed to do so. If the former, why this silence, and-still more unaccountable-why this outcry? It is not after a school is found deficient in material things, that a complaint is usually raised because it was not examined in something that is immaterial. If, however, the scholars were really deficient, as we suspect, in substantial knowledge, and real comprehension of what was professed to be taught-if, in a word, the school proved to be deficient-what terms are sufficiently strong to characterise and denounce the gross and heinous unfairness of this attack on the inspector, because he refused to accept the shells for the kernel? The complainant affords some ground for this alternative. He admits that the school had "not been used to dictation." Such lessons are nevertheless among the most useful modes of testing spelling, teaching style, and preparing for composition. The omission, as far as it goes, is condemnatory.

The writer next complains that Mr. Norris did not sufficiently examine, in religious knowledge, a school at Lincoln, and another at Walsall. What has the Archdeacon of Salop to do with that? Have the clergymen who control those schools specially deputed him to complain to the Times on the subject; or does it result from the fact that he was once an inspector himself, that therefore he is to act the part of vicarious censor over all other inspectors in all parts of the country? We observe that there is no complaint that Mr. Norris did not sufficiently examine the Archdeacon's scholars in religious knowledge. We apprehend that they were examined in it, more than was agreeable; and that the results were not among the healthy ends, whatever might be the aims. The Archdeacon says,

"The question is not, whether or not the inspector be not likely to know better what ought to be taught in a parish school than the clergyman, but whether the inspector (in compliance with the instructions of August 10, 1840) ought not, except where he thinks that the current of teaching runs altogether in a wrong direction, to abstain from examining the scholars in such a way as must directly interfere with the instruction and management of the school. He should, in my judgment, rather elicit what is done according to the views of the managers, than needlessly direct and control according to his particular opinions and sympathies.

He should unquestionably elicit what is done according to the views of the managers, but it is equally clear that his duty is to discourage what he finds wrong in them, and (not needlessly but needfully) to suggest better teaching, according to the best of his skill and judgment, which the Archdeacon may, if he likes, term "his particular opinions and sympathies;" for doubtless of such elements is his judgment composed.

It is much too broadly laid down that an inspector should not interfere with the instruction given in a school, unless he thinks it "runs altogether in a wrong direction." It is exactly what the inspector ought to do, for it is what he does think when he finds great defects, and thereby offends testy managers. He must not, however, scruple to offend them in nine cases out of ten, when he has to deal with a bad school, no matter how many Archdeacon Allens may fire off fulminations in the Times.

In brief, to deprecate whatever may oppose the "views of the managers" or interfere with the aims of the teacher, is setting up a false method and very mischievous standard of inspection. If we are not much mistaken, Archdeacon Allen has himself frequently held that regard should be paid far less to the interests of the teacher by the

inspector, than to those of the children, who are the primary objects of his concern. There is, moreover, another fallacy in the case put by the complaining vicar. Suppose that though "the current of teaching does not run altogether in a wrong direction," but only as regards two subjects out of five or six, is the inspector to examine so as to cloke the defective teaching in these two subjects, lest to disclose them may "interfere with the instruction given?" Yet this is the logical sequence from the doctrine held by the Archdeacon: than which, we take leave to say, nothing can be more pernicious to schools, or fatal to the utility of an inspector, whose chief duty, we hold it, is to ascertain and point out defects. But how is it possible to do this if he moulds his examination so as not to interfere with the bad instruction he is nevertheless to check? The canon of the Archdeacon is fallacious on the very face of it, and seems expressly coined for his own case.

Nothing is more needful and proper than the free criticism of public officers who are charged with duties so responsible as those of inspectors of schools, unless it be the independence of inspection. Once adopt a system of servility, or even of deference, to the managers (often the mis-managers) of schools, and farewell to the benefit inspection confers on education !

Mr. Norris has gained golden opinions from all classes of school teachers and managers for skill, fairness, and urbanity. We must say that a brother-inspector, who can best appreciate the exceeding difficulties which beset the faithful discharge of the paramount and most irksome duty of inspectoral criticism, is the very last person in the kingdom who should aggravate those difficulties. Nevertheless, Archdeacon Allen publishes complaints which, with the weight attaching to his name, cannot but operate most injuriously against the public confidence in, and utility of, school inspection. We wonder at, as much as we lament, such a course : the more so because the obvious alternative of complaining, at any rate in the first instance, to Mr. Norris's superiors in office, and remonstrating, if need be, with the Privy Council Committee, appears not to have been resorted to.

We heartily trust that no inspector will be for a moment deterred from interfering to the fullest extent with any and all kinds of misinstruction, and especially of discarding fallacious tests of school teaching, such as the meagre practice of learning by heart, substituted for HEAD KNOWLEDGE and HEART TRAINING; which are the only things upon which an inspector ought to bestow a single minute of his overtaxed time. And if he finds these deficient, he should fearlessly expose so flagrant a fault in the system, nor can he do a greater kindness than in staying and discouraging the further development of so mis-directed an aim.

Archdeacon Allen is a good, kind-hearted man, esteemed by everyone who really knows his sterling worth; but his wayward chivalry in redressing wrongs, leads him into some very Quixotic blunders, of which his onslaught on Mr. Norris is by no means a single instance.

The importance of the question opened by the Archdeacon's letter is much broader and deeper than at first sight appears. The history of that laborious transition which has occurred, first, from contented ignorance to discontent with ignorance, and then to strivings after intelligence, and attempts at education, fructifying in a very general effort to make schools efficient, discloses to the practical observer, one gangrenous

obstacle attaching to the whole progress of the movement, viz., a morbid desire to screen and palliate defects. We believe far less hinderance to education has arisen from the badness of schools, than from the folly of cloking their badness. This jealousy of criticism has been exhibited greatly in proportion to the reputation of the school. It has always been found that an inspector may, with much less chance of evoking the wrath of the managers, denounce a bad school in wholesale terms, than he can insinuate a blemish, or hint a blot, in one which has a name.' It may be said that this is very natural, as no one likes the criticism of that which has obtained him credit, and ministered to his amour propre : but natural as this may be, it is not the less injurious to the progress of education. The very best school is capable of improvement; and as the real value of a school is generally overrated, and its defects are more easily veiled than those of any other object of equal importance, it is greatly to be lamented that this intolerance of criticism should pit itself against the obvious means of improvement which skilled inspection affords. We repeat, that if it stops short of a full and faithful exposure of every fault and defect in the matter and methods of instruction, it betrays its trust, and falls short of its imperative duty. So far from there being ground for complaint of the censoriousness of inspectors of schools, whether diocesan or governmental, proofs abound that they far oftener sin in being too mealy-mouthed, and in winking at defects they deem it ungracious or impolitic to expose. Education is by no means in need of such delicate handling. It is far from being a flame easily extinguished by the breath of censorship. On the contrary, nothing tends more directly to feed and nourish it; and inspectors, who, like Mr. Norris, have the manliness to set their faces against shams and rote systems, and to 'develop' errors, as well as 'aims,' in their right light, are deserving of the hearty thanks and support of every man who wishes education to be a reality, and a thorough mind-training in the duties and subjects essential for practical life. There are two ways of inspecting schools one is to praise the teachers and please the managers; the other is to benefit the scholars and improve the school. It will but seldom happen that these two courses can coincide. The inspector must usually take his choice between them, and according to it is he worthy or unworthy of his office. We are no advocates of undue harshness, or a spirit of fault-finding. He who takes pleasure in blaming, or who fails to apply just censure in kindly and Christian terms, is just as wrong as he who, from false lenience or truckling servility, praises where he ought to blame, or 66 winks at faults he trembles to chastise."

We firmly believe that the progress of sound teaching is just now more entirely in the hands, and contingent on the faithfulness and courage of inspectors of schools, than any other human agency. None, so well as professional and experienced examiners, can detect glosses, extinguish effete systems, substitute right ones, or invert the pyramid now tottering on its apex. The Archdeacon Allens and others, who, chafing under the wholesome correction of their own schools, absorbed by the sense of personalg rievance, and forgetting what is due to the great behests and eternal aims of education, rail at the remedy, and attack the physician instead of the disease, are the real obstructives to the cause of sound secular and availing religious instruction.

TO COMMON SCHOOL-TEACHERS.

N the first page of the first number ever published of this JOURNAL

"It (the JOURNAL) is designed for those who, in the strictest sense, may be called English labourers; for English men and women, who are teaching English boys and girls in English villages; in the close alleys of English manufacturing towns; in the heart of the English capital; for those who speak the English tongue, and perhaps no other; for those who read English books, are English in their habits, prejudices, temptations; for those who can scarcely be understood, except by Englishmen nursed under the same influences with themselves. For these, and with these, be they masters or dames, experienced or inexperienced, wise or ignorant, we desire to work; to learn from them, to impart to them what information is within our reach; to remonstrate with them, encourage them, bring them to an understanding with each other; yet all rather as friends than as critics; rather as those who are conscious of the same difficulties, than as those who have a right to condemn them for their failures; rather as those who would bring out the strength which they have in them already, than as those who would tell them of some better possible system which they might adopt, if their character, position, and objects were altogether changed.”

We record this passage afresh, for it exactly presents a view and a duty which we wish to put before ourselves and our readers again, and especially before that host of useful and worthy men-country schoolmasters, who are labouring in the honourable vocation of teachers of the poor. We design to make this journal more useful to them than it has hitherto been, as well as to the clergy and others who superintend that noble labour. To this end we earnestly invite their own co-operation. A great thing is this co-operation. Recently, when visiting a harvest school in a western county, we were struck with the passiveness and All was done by the two silence of the assembled teachers themselves. "organising masters," who toiled vigorously in teaching, lecturing, and instructing, to the top of their bent, but seemed quite beaten in their attempt to get the teachers themselves to talk: neither would they teach. The result was, that they learned very much less than they otherwise would have done. Their deficiencies, ignorances and negligences, could We got them, after some not be corrected, because they were not seen.

effort, to develop their difficulties, each, who would open his or her mouth (a small minority), stating what were the adversities they had This was useful. felt the most formidable in their professional work.

It enabled the training master to show how best to overcome these difficulties. Now that is just what we want to be enabled to do. But if we were to go on devising aid, concocting hints, and volunteering lectures, without being told what was the aid wanted, we should be firing a great many shots at random, though some might hit. knows where the shoe pinches but the wearer.

No one

These are the reasons why we beg especially to invite practical questions and short statements from school teachers; and from those who cannot, even more than those who can tell how to remedy shortcomings and surmount difficulties. In a word, we again invite the friendly confidence of all among the teaching craft who are not too perfect, or too proud to avail themselves of our aid, and of that cordial sympathy and hearty interest in their improvement, which none more sincerely feel than we do.

That there is still vast deficiency in the modes of instructing poor If education means mindchildren there cannot be the slightest doubt.

teaching, there is as yet very little of it in England. Schools which can show good copybooks, and boast of fair reading, and even moderate ciphering, are not rare; but the number which make children think, and impart useful knowledge and great principles to their heads and hearts, as well as mechanical powers to their lips and fingers, are very rare. We do not speak of the higher branches of learning; but quite of the primary and lower ones, which are much more neglected. It is, for instance, most properly demanded that religion should be taught: but how is it usually taught? Do one-tenth of the children, in the majority of our day-schools, understand either great doctrines or Scriptural facts, and the practical inferences to be drawn from them, which are so essential to the due performance of the duties of life? It is astonishing how a few probing questions develop barrenness in all this, and show that the children have been learning shibboleths instead of principles,— words instead of truths,―rejecting the grains, and retaining the husks. So in arithmetic, how few can explain the principles of the ordinary rules, even among those who can work sums; and of those who can work them, many are often unable to state them.

We might go thus through the whole category of elementary subjects, and discriminating the sham teaching from the real learning, show, by the aid of a little searching examination into the truth of these statements, how very small, after this sifting process, would be the real value of the residue.

That most blundering state document-the Census of Education—in spite of all its statistical errors, wild guesses, and vast exaggerations, and in spite moreover of having ingenuously left it to every schoolmaster, and dame schoolmistress, to report their own scholars and schooling,— gives this barren result as the amount of instruction, in three out of four of the most necessary and elementary branches of education.

Although every well-educated and efficient private school is included in the estimate, it appears that of all the scholars who figure in the Census in round numbers, 84 boys and 87 girls per cent. only, learn reading; one-half the boys, and less than half the girls, learn to write ; while 45 boys and 36 girls out of every hundred alone are taught to cipher! Of the kind of instruction imparted in the science of common things, and in the host of practical subjects of every-day use to the working classes, which necessarily involve a knowledge of places, and the elements of geography, a tolerably correct notion may be gathered by the fact that the latter are taught to less than 30 boys and only to 29 girls per cent. In the public schools the average in all these respects is a mere fraction better.

Now geography is one of the very best modes of making a fund of useful knowledge about the natural and artificial products, and the commercial industry of the country, palatable as well as complete. How can we rightly teach the connexion between coal and iron, ex. gr., and the industry which flows therefrom, unless we can localize them in the child's mind, and mark them by maps, which are quite as good as the pictures which illustrate lessons and enliven stories. And yet what a dry thing geography is when taught in the usual way, and made to consist of a string of names: usually beginning with the Zones and ending with the child's short period of instruction, long before he has got to his own country, where, according to common sense, he should have begun.