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Page 22
As for the compulsory element in education and the justification for
levying rates and taxes for what objectors called "educating other
people's children," his answer was: "Every ignorant person tends to
become a burden upon, and, so far, an infringer of the liberty of, his
fellows, and an obstacle to their success. Under such circumstances
an education rate is, in fact, a war tax, levied for purposes of
defence."
In all this it was his attitude towards the child which deeply
impressed his colleagues in whom child-sympathy was strongest. As the
Rev. Benjamin Waugh put it, he was on the Board to establish schools
for the children. He wanted to turn them into sound men and women, and
resented the idea that schools were to train either congregations for
churches or hands for factories. "What he sought to do for the child
was for the child's sake, that it might live a fuller, truer, worthier
life."
After fifteen months of service on the School Board superadded to the
heavy strain of his ordinary work, his health broke down utterly, and
he resigned. But after his retirement his successors found that their
duty was "to put into practice the scheme of instruction which Huxley
was mainly instrumental in settling. We were thus able indirectly to
improve both the means and methods of teaching.... The most important
developments and additions have been in the direction of educating the
hand and eye.... Thus the impulse given by Huxley in the first months
of the Board's existence has been carried forward by others." So wrote
Dr. J. H. Gladstone in 1896. The tide of education has swelled since
then and is still swelling, but its main direction is the same.
NOTE
As these pages are passing through the press, I note an appeal for
money by the Religious Tract Society, which is running short of funds
to keep up the number and quality of the 6-7,000 Bibles annually
awarded as prizes to elementary school children. This advertisement
fills more than half a column of the _Times_ of March 25, 1920. It is
headed in bold type, PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON THE BIBLE, and, opening
with the words "All who value the teaching of the Holy Bible will
appreciate this wonderful description of the Bible by Professor
Huxley," proceeds to quote the eloquent passage, referred to above on
p. 54, from "The School Boards, etc." (_Coll. Ess_., iii, 396).
This testimony to the interest of the Bible outside its theological
applications is detached from its context as a spur to "all those who
value the Word of God... to send the Society help in [its] work of
extending Bible teaching in our Elementary Schools."
But these words were written with grave qualifications, especially
as to the need of excluding doctrinal teaching. By suppressing these
qualifications the Secretaries of the Religious Tract Society
approve themselves denizens of the world of half-truths, along with
puff-writers and similar experts.
X
EDUCATION: ESPECIALLY OF TEACHERS AND OF WOMEN
The third of his excursions into the field of education, in his
burning desire to give the people that right knowledge for want of
which they perish, was the training of the teachers who prepared
pupils for the examinations of the Science and Art Department. The
future of scientific teaching depended upon the proper supply of
trained teachers. Now, the School of Mines in Jermyn Street was
without a laboratory in which to make even his own students work out
with their own hands the structure of the biological "types" expounded
in the lectures. An opportunity to train these new "scientific
missionaries" came in 1871, when he was deep in the great schemes of
elementary education. More than a hundred of them flocked to South
Kensington, where some large rooms on the ground floor of the museum
had been secured and rigged up for the purpose by the Professor and
his three demonstrators. For six weeks in the summer there was a
daily lecture, followed by four hours' laboratory work under the
demonstrators, in which the students verified for themselves facts
which they had hitherto heard about and taught to their unfortunate
pupils from books alone. The naive astonishment and delight of
the more intelligent among them was sometimes almost pathetic. One
clergyman, who had for years conducted classes in physiology under the
Science and Art Department, was shown a drop of his own blood under
the microscope. "Dear me!" he exclaimed, "it's just like the picture
in Huxley's _Physiology_."
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