The Training System of Education

master said, Now, Sir, didn't I tell you them fellows could not understand a word ?" !!! This I term scriptural readingthose who choose may term it scriptural education. We admit the principle that no school or system ought to be judged of by a single exhibition, or after a transient inspection; but here there can be no mistake; for if the highest class of a school, consisting of a dozen boys of ten to twelve years of age, who had read the Scriptures daily for years, could make such an appearance, what are we to conclude, but that, in so far as their intellectual or moral culture was concerned, it mattered not whether the Scriptures they read had been printed in Hebrew, or in their mother tongue? I thought this at the time an extreme case, but afterwards met with one or two similar results in other schools.

I still proceeded, however, piercing the tough unpulverised clod of their understanding, till, at the expiration of several minutes, they were made to perceive that Eli was a man-that this man had two sons-and that the names of these two sons were Hophni and Phinehas.

That the fault was not in the children, but in the system, was rendered apparent from the fact, that I visited another school in the immediate neighbourhood, having the same class of children, but taught on the training system, in which was exhibited by 160 pupils (boys and girls), a minute acquaintance with Scripture history and doctrine, and an enlarged and minute knowledge of elementary science; moreover, their style of reading and writing, &c., was quite equal to that of the other school I had visited. The whole was conducted by a first and second trained master, with a slight infusion of the monitorial system.

CHAP. III.

FACTORY STATISTICS.

QUANTITY not quality is the prevailing desire in the public mind. All is set down in tables, from which we know no proper results can be drawn, and simply because the proper means are not taken to ascertain the facts. A parish officer goes round and inquires how many in each family can read and write, how many are at school, &c. &c., and he notes down conscientiously enough the facts, no doubt, just as he receives them. We have followed not unfrequently, and put the power of reading to the proof, and have generally reduced the number one half, and the power of understanding to a mere fraction. In fact, in general, they neither had knowledge nor had their education been such as to enable them to acquire it for themselves.

We read in public documents of 10,000 children being taught to read the Scriptures in a given district, and 1700 in another, and 153,542 in scriptural schools in a third. We hear of Bible schools and scriptural education as the glory of our country. But let a minute examination be made, and, excepting in the case of those who have been blessed with enlightened pious teaching in a Sabbath school, what does all this stir amount to? Comparatively nothing

-a mere deception on the public, and a hushing to sleep of the energies of philanthropists and Christian

men, who, but for this cry for quantity instead of quality, might have brought their energies and sacrifices and charities long ere this to bear most favourably on the reduction of crime, and the Christian and moral and physical elevation of the whole community. We might furnish our readers with a hundred proofs, but we select one survey, which was conducted on what we consider the proper principle, and which presents a picture, deep and melancholy, it is true, yet a fair specimen, of the intellectual and Christian attainments of the working classes between the ages of 13 and 21 years.

During the last thirty years it has oftentimes fallen to our lot to make surveys of the poor and working classes of this city, sometimes of large, and at other times of small contiguous districts, which presented, in many instances, pictures of the deepest ignorance, and in some cases depravity. We have also been furnished with facts of a similar kind, from friends in other towns in England and Scotland, of even a more painful description. One or two from our own observation we may present to our readers. It is only lately, however, viz., in 1839 and 1845, that we were enabled to make a survey not of contiguous families, but of the general population, such as are employed in public factories, none of whom are criminals or supposed to be sunk in vice.

We give the latter survey of four factories, viz., in 1845, which was conducted upon what we consider to be the most certain mode of arriving at the real state of education and intellectual culture, and on the truth of which the utmost reliance may be placed:

REPORT OF THE EXAMINATION OF 67 WORK-PEOPLE (BOYS AND GIRLS) AT A COTTONSPINNING FACTORY, GLASGOW.