Surely whisky-drinkers need not grudge the extra sixpence which has done all this!
While private effort in the form of companies, endowments, and individual enterprises was building up a complete, though unorganised, system of girls’ education, another system totally unconnected was being gradually developed by aid of the State. For a long time the two were regarded as parallel, with no possible point of contact, except such as might be artificially established by means of scholarships. Now we are beginning to think that we may have mistaken the direction of the lines, and that there are some points of connection between the Board School and the High School pupil.
This change is due to the growing conviction that the education of its citizens is a matter of which a State should take cognisance. Far behind Germany in its adoption of this principle, England did at last wake up to the necessity of educating all her citizens. Whether out of self-defence, to ‘educate our masters,’ as Mr. Lowe bade us do, or, as Plato would have counselled, to make the men and women of the State as good as possible, the idea of universal education has at last gained a hold in this country. Very slowly, and with immense opposition on the part of the classes who regarded learning as their own peculiar privilege, and were jealous of any intrusion in what they considered their private domain. But they were powerless to hinder; when once the little flame was kindled, no force could avail to extinguish it. From the moment that one generation educated in the new schools took their place as voters, the system was secured. The democracy soon realised that education was a levelling agency, and that it was their interest both to maintain and improve it.
It is difficult for those who are familiar with our elementary education to realise how recent is its establishment in England, and how still more a matter of yesterday the full use of the opportunities offered. England was the last of the great European countries to accept the doctrine of the responsibility of the State for education. Schools for the poorer classes were for a long time either non-existent or a matter of local, largely denominational, effort. The first grant of public money to schools was made in 1832, when, without any previous legislation on the subject, the sum of £20,000 for this purpose appeared in the Estimates. Seven years later this was increased to £30,000, and by an order in Council a special committee of the Privy Council was established, with its own staff of officers to supervise the work. This was the first beginning of the Education Department. Thus gradually, almost imperceptibly, the State was beginning to intervene in education. When in 1858 the Duke of Newcastle’s Commission was appointed to inquire into the whole state of popular education, it found that much had already been done, but the great need was for some systematic control. The result of its findings was the celebrated Revised Code of 1861, whose main provisions were:—
