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where dispossessed teachers had to be provided with employment and children had to be brought up in the true faith, proved of immense national benefit. We have reason to bless its zeal and generosity which gave us schools which would not otherwise easily have been provided, and equipped them in a manner worthy of its high aims. The sites of the schools were not, of course, always chosen to the best advantage. Sometimes the site desired was not available; at other times there was more anxiety, it is said, to oppose an existing school than to provide educational facilities. The reasons concern us less in this connection than the facts. The fact is that the Free Church added largely to the school supply of the country, though, at the same time, the efficiency of Education was not to an equal degree promoted by the distribution of schools where they were most required.

It only remains to mention that various other agencies, some of a semi-public character, others wholly private, had been at work in the educational field during the latter part of the period under review. Of these the most important was the Society for the Propagation of Christian

Knowledge, established as far back as 1709, and by law connected with the Established Church. Its schools, however, formed a separate item from the Church schools, and numbered some 200.

Then, between 1830 and 1840, Government had stepped in by means of the Privy Council, making grants to schools under certain conditions, and introducing therewith a system of inspection, which, so far as one can gather, in the first instance came considerably short of what it was designed to ensure.

With so many agencies at work, each pursuing its own object irrespective of the rest, and with no controlling and unifying influence to harmonise their efforts, it is not to be wondered at that waste, overlapping and all the other evils of an anarchic condition were prevalent. The culmination was reached in the years 1860-70. This, which may be called the decade of confusion, would seem to have been somewhat analogous to the past twelve or fifteen years in the realm of Secondary Education. The chaos in Elementary Education of 1861-72 led to a great reform. The parallel condition in respect to the agencies at work in the field of

Secondary work will appear more fully by-andby. We can well bear up through it if we are assured that it is to issue in comparative order, such as was established by the Act of 1872 among the Elementary Schools of the land.

The sum of our remarks on the origin of the Elementary School amounts to this:

The parent and type was the old rural Parish School, dating from the Reformation or earlier. Of these schools there was usually one in each parish, and there were sometimes more, the additional ones being now designated Side Schools, but having their origin in several different ways. On the old model were founded Schools of the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge and Free Church Schools, while there were also numerous private schools. The Elementary School in the Burgh is usually of more recent origin. Its prototype seems to have been the "Lecture" School, usually, it would appear, a private concern; while the Public or Burgh School was more of a Secondary than an Elementary School. But it may be further noted that by the middle of the nineteenth century the Churches had entered the urban field with Sessional or Mission

Schools, and there were various other classes of schools, denominational and undenominational, which, as not concerning the evolution of the school, need not be particularised.

A Royal Commission, presided over by the Duke of Argyll, was appointed in 1864 to endeavour to disentangle the confusion into which things had drifted, and thence to evolve a national system. It reported in 1867, and soon after the Education Act for Scotland of 1872 embodied in statute law the chief results of its labours. The following is the Commission's statement of the numbers and classes of schools furnishing Elementary Education in those portions of the country from which returns were procured :

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The total number of children on the roll was 312,795, being 1 in 6:5 of a population of 2,050,024, which represented, generally speaking, the rural area. No return was obtained by the Commission from most of the burghs, except in the case of Glasgow, where separate provision was made for a complete investigation of the facts. Thus 1,012,270 of the burghal population are not included in the above. Of this number Glasgow contained 395,503 with 233 schools, having on the roll 41,248 scholars, being 1 to 9'6 of the total population. The children of school age (here taken as 3 to 15) were 98,767, so that, in Glasgow at any rate, the existing state of matters left much to be desired.

For 616,767,1 fully one-fifth of the urban

1 Although in general the Burgh Registrars would not undertake the duty of making the return required by the Argyll Commission, it must be borne in mind that the numbers given above do not at all accurately represent the respective proportion of rural and urban population. The groups are roughly rural and urban, but the 2,050,024 contains such Burghs as Airdrie, Arbroath, Dunfermline, Falkirk, Kirkcaldy, Stirling, etc. On the other hand, in the 616,767 there appear Kingussie and Insh, 2,033, Wigtown, 2,637, and several others considerably under 10,000. The figures are those of the census of 1861, when the total population of Scotland was 3,062,294.

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