Culture & Anarchy. Arnold Matthew

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      The House of the Rev. John Buckland, at Laleham

       Where Matthew Arnold went to school from 1830-1836.

       The Rev. John Buckland was his maternal Uncle

      Here was a scheme of National Education, clear enough in its general outlines, and sufficiently far-reaching in its scope. But its author, promulging it thirty-five years ago, saw one "capital difficulty" in the way of realizing it, and he stated the difficulty thus: "The Public School for the people must rest upon the municipal organization of the country. In France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, the public elementary school has, and exists by having, the Commune, and the Municipal Government of the Commune, as its foundations, and it could not exist without them. But we in England have our municipal organization state to get; the country districts, with us, have at present only the feudal and ecclesiastical organization of the Middle Ages, or of France before the Revolution.... The real preliminary to an effective system of popular education is, in fact, to provide the country with an effective municipal organization."

      It would be impossible, unless one could trace the mental processes of the Bishop of Rochester, Mr. Arthur Balfour, Sir John Gorst, and other eminent persons who had a hand in constructing the Education Acts of 1892 and 1893, to say how far the system now in existence owes any of its features to the influence of Matthew Arnold. It is the lot of great thoughts to fall upon very different kinds of soil; to be trodden under foot by one set of enemies, and carried away by another; and yet sometimes to find a congenial lodgment, and after long years to spring into life and manifest themselves in very unexpected quarters. So it may well have been with Arnold's educational theories. Certainly during the last five-and-thirty years people have come to regard Education in all its branches as far more a matter of public concern, far less a matter of private venture, than formerly. More and more we have come to see that the State and the Municipality, in their respective areas, have something to say on the matter. The idea of the Golden Ladder, having its base in the Elementary Schools and its top rung in the highest honours of the University, has taken hold of the public mind, and has passed out of the region of abstractions into practical life. Institutions of Local Government have developed themselves on the lines desiderated by Arnold in 1868. The subordination of education to municipal authority is a new and a risky experiment, but it is exactly the experiment which he wished to see. The resuscitation of the Edwardian and Elizabethan Grammar Schools all over the country has brought the notion of the Public School to the very door of the Middle Class, and has shaken, if it has not yet destroyed, Mr. Creakle's stronghold. Even in the matter of Denominational Education in the Elementary Schools, where many deem that a retrograde step has been taken, the State has acted on a hint which Arnold gave to the extreme reformers of his time.

      "Most English Liberals," he said, "seem persuaded that our Elementary Schools should be undenominational, and their teaching secular; and that with a public elementary school it cannot well be otherwise. Let them clearly understand, however, that on the Continent generally—everywhere except in Holland—the public elementary school is denominational (of course with what we should call a 'conscience clause') and its teaching religious as well as secular."

      In one important respect the State, which has so often adopted his views, at once outstripped and fell short of his ideal. He was not a strong or undiscriminating advocate for Compulsory Education. He believed that, in the foreign countries where compulsion obtained, it was not the cause, but the effect, of a national feeling for education. When a people set a high value on knowledge, they would insist that every child should have a chance of acquiring it. But you could not create that high value by compelling people to send their children to school. As late as the end of the year 1869, he seems to have feared that any legislation which hindered a child from working for its own or its parents' support would be highly unpopular and would be evaded. "A law of direct compulsion on the parent and child would probably be violated every day in practice; and, so long as this is the case, a law levelled at the employer is preferable."

      But when those words were written, compulsion was near at hand. The Parliament of 1868-1874—the first elected by a democratic suffrage—was intent on Reform, and the right of a father to starve his child's mind was strenuously denied. Forster, then Vice-President of the Council, was charged with the duty of preparing a Bill to establish Compulsory Education. Arnold was Forster's brother-in-law, and "heard the contents" of the Bill in November, 1869. When in the following February it was brought in, he wrote: "I think William's Bill will do very well. I am glad it is so little altered"; and, after the Second Reading, he wrote: "The majority on the Education Bill is a great relief; it will now, if William has tolerable luck, get through safely this session." By this time, therefore, he must have become a convert to the system of compulsion. Perhaps he regarded the demand for the Bill as a proof that the English people were at length waking up to a sense of the value of Education. But, while the State thus outstripped his ideal by establishing compulsion, it fell short of his ideal by severely limiting the area of the population to which compulsion was to apply. Again and again he warned his countrymen, then unaccustomed to the practical working of Compulsory Education, that it would be intolerable, unjust, and absurd if it were applied only to the children of the poor. He contended that the Upper and Middle Classes were every bit as much in need of a compulsory system, if their children were to be properly educated, as the working classes for whom it was proposed to legislate. This theme he illustrated, with the most exuberant fun and fancy, in a letter addressed to the Pall Mall Gazette in 1867, and afterwards republished in Friendship's Garland. Arminius, the cultivated Prussian, accompanies his English friend to Petty Sessions in a country town, and is horrified by the degraded plight of an old peasant who is tried for poaching. The English friend (the imaginary Arnold) says that for his own part he is not so much concerned about the poacher as about his children. They are being allowed to grow up anyhow. Really he thinks the time has come when compulsion must be applied to the education of children of this class. "The gap between them and our educated and intelligent classes is really too frightful."

      "Your educated and intelligent classes," sneered Arminius, in his most offensive manner—"where are they? I should like to see them." The English friend, thus rudely challenged, leads the Prussian into the justice-room, where they find on the Bench three excellent specimens of education and intelligence—Lord Lumpington, the Rev. Esau Hittall, and Mr. Bottles. Arminius insists on knowing their qualifications for the post of magistrate. СКАЧАТЬ