Excerpt from The Education of the People, Our Weak Points and Our Strength, Occasional Essays

The following chapters contain the substance of papers written from time to time for special purposes on subjects connected with Education. They pretend to no completeness. Their only merit, if any, is, that they convey the fresh impressions of one who was daily occupied in the examination of schoolchildren.

I was appointed to an inspectorship of schools in 1849, and resigned it in 1864. Five years of comparative leisure have since given me the opportunity, not only of "taking stock," as it were, of my fifteen years' experience as an inspector, but also of testing some of my conclusions in the care of a country parish. A brief summary of these conclusions will form, perhaps, the best preface to this volume.

Let me first speak of the education of the children of "the independent poor" - to adopt the phrase of the Royal. Commissioners of 1861 - as distinguished from the "pauper and vagrant" children on the one side, and from the children of the "middle class" on the other side - both of these latter classes requiring separate treatment. As regards these children, then, living in fixed homes, my conclusions are mainly the following: -

1. If our purpose be, not merely to teach certain arts of reading, writing, and ciphering, but also to civilise children by wholesome training, the success of our school system, whatever that system be, will depend on the character of the teachers.

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