Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 63, No. 391, May, 1848Various
General
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 63, No. 391, May, 1848
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
To support, however, a school in a proper state of efficiency--that is
to say, to furnish it with properly trained teachers, male and female,
and with the requisite books and other instruments of teaching--we do
not think that we are overstraining the point if we assign the annual
sum of one hundred pounds as necessary. This sum might either be
divided in the proportion of sixty pounds per annum for a male
teacher, and forty pounds per annum for a female,--or it might most
advantageously, in some cases, be bestowed on a teacher and his wife,
supposing them both capable of undertaking such duties. Of course, in
all cases suitable buildings, including school-rooms for both sexes,
residences and gardens for the teachers, should be provided at the
public expense, and maintained in repair from a distinct fund. We
shall then perceive that the sum mentioned above, amounting in round
numbers to one hundred thousand pounds per annum, would be sufficient
for the purpose; and we think that it would not only be so, but that,
it would be made to furnish a sufficient sum for retiring and
superannuated pensions, on the principle adopted in several of the
Continental states, of an annual percentage being deducted from the
salaries of all civil servants to form a fund of this nature,
specially devoted to their own benefit. We do not throw out any
specific hints for the collection and management of this fund; but it
might be raised along with other local rates, and by the same local
officers, so that the smallest possible addition might be thereby made
to the cost of collecting it.
One part of this plan, however, without which the whole would be
inefficient, would be the forming of a body of inspectors, and the
establishing of training-schools or colleges for teachers. The latter
are already beginning to exist, and machinery for the former is now at
work under the direction of the Committee of Council. But we should
hope to see training-schools established on a much larger and more
efficient scale than at present; and we should desire to see the
appointment of inspectors, and the management of the education funds,
taken out of the hands of such a body as the Privy Council, and given
to the local and provincial authorities, civil and ecclesiastical, of
Wales. If such appointments remained in the hands of government,
political jobbing would act upon them with greater intensity than
through the medium of local interests and county influence; and, what
would be far worse than this, another impulse would be given to the
principle of centralisation, one of the most fatal for national spirit
and national freedom that can be devised, and which we are called upon
to resist at all times, but especially when a party of Whig
politico-economists, as wild and destructive in the ultimate
tendencies of their theories as the Girondists of France, are in
possession of the reins of power.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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