A letter to N.W. Senior, Esq., one of Her Majesty's Commissioners for inquiring into the state of public education, explanatory of communications and of evidence on half school time teaching; on the military drill, and physical training; and on the administration of funds applicable to popular education / by Edwin Chadwick.

  • Chadwick, Edwin, 1800-1890.
Date:
1861?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A letter to N.W. Senior, Esq., one of Her Majesty's Commissioners for inquiring into the state of public education, explanatory of communications and of evidence on half school time teaching; on the military drill, and physical training; and on the administration of funds applicable to popular education / by Edwin Chadwick. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    134/140
    to which I have already referred, I might add that of Generals Sir John Burgoyne and Sir De Lacy Evans. With your advice, I helped Lord Elcho and Lord Strath- eden in the formation of an association for the promotion of elementary drill in public schools, in connexion ^Yith the volunteer movement. That association has the support of his Grace the Duke of Newcastle, of Lord Palmerston, Earls Granville, Aberdeen, Ellenborough, Shaftesbury, De Grey and Ripon, Lords Lyndhurst, Brougham, John Russell, and Robert Cecil, as also the head masters of Eton, Westminster, Winchester, and St. Paul's schools. The v/hole of the pupils who are now under the military drill (with the best effects in the discipline of schools, as their head masters uniformly testify,) would, I believe, if they could be assembled for review in Hyde Park, present as numerous an array almost as that at the great volunteer review. But still the great body of the children who require the training for civil purposes, as described in the appended testimony of Mr. Whitworth, Mr. Rawlinson, Mr. Fairbairn, and the larger employers of labour, are apparently beyond the influence of that move- ment, lliere is also a large gap to be supplied for the introduction of the naval drill in the chief seaport towns and the schools along the coast, in the first instance; and the only means of supplying those omissions with economy will be the application of the principle of administrative consolidation of educational means. As sustaining the educational conclusions, I herewith append the chief testimony I was led to collect under the circumstances as to its form which I have explained. The greater proportion of it may be submitted as the testi- mony of representative witnesses, which admits of large extension; such as that of Mr. Allen and Mr. Crampton, expository of the principle of a division of educational labour, and teaching on a large scale;—that of Mr. Moseley, on the expense of the several elementary branches of educa- tion ;—that of Mr. Charles Paget, the member for Notting- ham, on the applicability of the half-time system to the children of agricultural labourers;—that of Mr. Stuckey and Mr. Pugh, which is exceeded by testimony I have received from teachers of great experience in Scotland, as to the excess of the duration of the common school hours bej^ond the natural limits of the capacity of children for voluntary attention ; that of Mr. Whitworth and Mr. Raw- linson, on the increased efficiency of drilled as compared