Another teacher, after ten years' large experience,
says, not only that the half-time scholars
get on as fast as the others, but adds his belief
"that it is the impression of parents that their
children get on as well in their book instruction
in half as in full time;" and when he has had
to select pupil teachers he has found that nearly
all, or full three-fourths, have been taken from
half-timers. Mr. Turner, at Forden, teaching a
hundred and sixty children, of whom seventy
come only for half the day, says that he finds the
half-time scholars "fully equal in attainments
to the full-time scholars. I am not," he adds,
"prepared to account for it, but the fact is
decidedly so."

We might go on accumulating evidence like
this, and add the experience of Mr. Hammersley,
head-master of the Manchester School of Arts,
a gentleman who has been for twenty years an
Art teacher. Before visiting Rochdale, he says:
"I had examined many schools in Manchester
and its neighbourhood, and I had, in every case,
with one exception, that the short-time
schools gave me the most satisfactory results. I
was able in these schools to eliminate a large
number of successful works out of which to
select the prize students, and the general
character of the drawing was better, and in every case
the drawing was executed with greater promptitude.
When I examined the Rochdale school,
these peculiarities were startlingly evident, and
I could not resist making a marked public
statement to this effect. The discipline of each
school was excellent, the regularity of action
and the quickness of perception such as I was in
no wise prepared for; and at the time I could
not have resisted (even if I had wished to resist)
the conviction that this mainly arose from the
feeling possessing the whole of the children
that time was valuable and opportunity passing.
Every one worked for him or her self, and thus
was generated, as it appeared to me, a strong
feeling of self-reliance, and, unconsciously to
the learner, a respect for labour and a belief in
the value of individual effort."

To this, we shall all come some of these days.
We shall have schools for pupils of all classes in
which no more than the natural power of
attention will be occupied, and where that will be
strengthened instead of sickened and debilitated
by excessive strain. The headwork will be
balanced with the gymnastic discipline and the
drill, that give ease and precision to the
movements of the body, with a wholesome vigour to
the mind. But already the time is come when
the truth now established should be applied to
the education of the children of the poor. One
great difficulty is removed when the boy's help
in the home is left to the parent, and it is only
for half the day that he is claimed by the school-
master, to be brightened even for home service
while he is trained for an active, thoughtful,
everywhere earnest, manhood.

But there is more to be considered. Every
schoolhouse in which children are now overtaxed
becomes doubled in size, when the day is found
long enough for the teaching of two sets of
pupils. Every schoolhouse, too, in which
teachers are now underpaid may yield better
temptation to the bright wit that is necessary
for the right presentment of instruction to the
child brightly attentive.

And here we have touched upon the other
half of a great question. Quite as important as
the getting of a right and full attention from
the child, is the securing of the best possible
teachers. It has been said that mechanics' sons
become teachers in national schools, that their
occupation "wants rather good sense and quiet
intelligence than a very inquisitive mind, or
very brilliant talents, and the prospects which
it affords appear well calculated for the class of
persons best fitted for it." The truth is, that
no genius can be too brilliant, no wisdom too
deep or too practical, for the use of the elementary
teacher, who should be also of purest mind,
and to whose calling there should be high social
honour paid. The younger the child, the more
is it desirable that there should be the divine
image in man as far as possible presented by
his teacher.

We have always upheld in this journal, and
its predecessor, the absolute duty of the state
to aid vigorously in support of education for the
masses of the people. To us, it certainly has
never seemed a terrible thing that the education
department of the Privy Council, which started
in 1839 with an expenditure of thirty thousand
a year towards the education of the people, now
spends eight hundred thousand on that
necessary work. The cost of peace defences is a
long way below that of war defences even
yet, although we do raise many warriors by
help of the voluntary principle. The grants of
the Privy Council have been made in aid of
voluntary effort, with a few exceptions. One of
these exceptions is a "capitation fee" for every
child attending school a certain number of times;
another, the establishment of three dozen training
colleges for teachers; another, the bestowal
of a grant in augmentation of salary to school
teachers who have obtained certificates.

But because it has appeared that in many
schools there was bad teaching—children being
crammed with showy knowledge and imperfectly
grounded in the rudiments of education—a
sudden backward rush has been made by the
Committee of Privy Council, in a minute dated
the twenty-ninth of last July. It sets forth a
Revised Educational Code, which is now
suspended, because of the public outcry raised
against it, until the last day of March next year,
and which stands over, of course, for full debate
in the next session of parliament. The gist of
it, is, that there is a rush back upon Reading,
Writing, and Arithmetic, and an abandonment
through panic of all the advanced posts lately
occupied. The grants for books, maps, diagrams,
and scientific apparatus, and upon drawing
certificates—the grant also of a hundred a year to
lecturers in training institutions—will, if this new
code prevail, be swept away; capitation grant
is not only denied most properly to every child
in a national school unable to satisfy the