Arnold, Matthew, 1822-1888; Critics -- Great Britain -- Biography; Poets, English -- 19th century -- Biography
number, but all such anomalous institutions as King's College and
University College were to be co-ordinated to the existing Universities;
and the Universities were to establish "faculties" in great centres of
population, supply professors and lecturers, and then examine and confer
degrees. Then the country should be mapped out into eight or ten
districts, and each of these districts should have a Provincial
School-Board, which should "represent the State in the country," keep
the Minister informed of local requirements, and be the organ of
communication between him and the schools in its jurisdiction. The exact
amount of interference, inspection, and control which the Minister, the
Council, and the Boards should exercise should vary in accordance with
the grade of the schools: it should be greater in the elementary
schools, less in the higher. But, in their degree, all, from Eton
downwards, were to be subject to it. Then came the most revolutionary
part of the whole scheme. Mr. Creakle and his congeners were to be
abolished. They were not to be put to a violent death, but they were to
be starved out. The whole face of the country is studded with small
grammar-schools or foundation-schools, like knots in a network; and
these schools, enlarged and reformed, were to be the ordinary
training-places of the Middle Class. Where they did not exist, similar
schools were to be created by the State--"Royal or Public Schools"--and
these, like all the rest, were to be subject to the Minister and to the
Provincial Boards. Arnold contended that ancient schools so revived, and
modern schools so constituted, would have a dignity and a status such as
no private school could attain, and would be free from the
pretentiousness and charlatanism which he regarded as the bane of
private education. The inspection and control of these Public Schools
would be in the hands of competent officers of the State, whereas the
private school is appraised only by the vulgar and uneducated class that
feeds it.
And so, descending from the Universities through Public Schools of two
grades, we touch the foundation of the whole edifice--the Elementary
Schools. On this all-important topic, he wrote in 1868: "About popular
education I have here but a very few words to say. People are at last
beginning to see in what condition this really is amongst us. Obligatory
instruction is talked of. But what is the capital difficulty in the way
of obligatory instruction, or indeed any national system of instruction,
in this country? It is this: that the moment the working class of this
country have this question of instruction brought home to them, their
self-respect will make them demand, like the working classes of the
Continent, _Public_ Schools, and not schools which the clergyman, or the
squire, or the mill-owner calls "my school." And again: "The object
should be to draw the existing Elementary Schools from their present
private management, and to reconstitute them on a municipal basis."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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