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THE VOLUNTARY SCHOOLS OF MONTGOMERYSHIRE,

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THE VOLUNTARY SCHOOLS OF MONTGOMERYSHIRE, LETTERS FROM ARCHDEACON THOMAS. The following letters from the pen of the Ven. Archdeacon Thomas are reproduced by request, and will no doubt prove interesting to our readers I.—THE FINANCIAL ASPECT. Sir,-From the Abstract of School Accounts in 1902," just issued by the County Council, we learn that the Voluntary Schools numbered 69 (classified as Church 20, National 38, Parish four, and British seven, and the Board Schools 29. The attendance is not given but taking bhe returns for 1899, and allowing the proportionate average for the four Voluntary and one Board since added, it would give for 1902 5,178 scholars in the Voluntary Schools and 2,562 scholars in the Board Schools. We will lookjuatat the question from the point of finance, and begin with the annual maintenance. On the 69 Voluntary Schools, with 5,178 scholars, the total expenditure was £ 12,398; and on the 29 Board, with half the number of scholars, it was £6,948, a little more than half. Towards this ex- penditure the Education grants were much the same, in proportion to the attendance, and the balance had to be provided from other sources. What were they respectively ? In the Voluntary Schools they were derived from endowments, voluntary contributions, including collections in churches or chapels, proceeds of concerts, &c., and amounted to £ 2,630. The corresponding income for the Board Schools was £ 63; and from school pence, books, Science and Art Department, and from other sources; under this head the voluntary income totalled £223, and the Board £2,489, of which, of course, the great bulk was the rates, not a penny from which went to the Voluntary Schools. In them more than 5,000 scholars were taught by voluntary efforts, while the others re- ceived more than £2,000 from rates. Next, the permanent building. There are in the county 20 School Board districts and 29 Board Schools, not all of which were new. We are not told how much the original expenditure upon them was, but now, after some thirty years of repayments, the debt still remains at over £ 20 000. The 69 Voluntary schools, with their sites, have been provided by. voluntary means (aided only for a few years by a Government building gra:)t, equally open to all denominations), and they have been from time to time enlarged, rebuilt and adapted to the changing requirements of the Education Department, and now the Managers are called upon by the County Council to spend six or seven thousand pounds to bring them up to the standard of the Newtown Board Sceool. Now, if the provison of schools for 2,562. scholars still involves a debt of £ 20,000, the provison for more than double the number must count for at least £ 50,000. Is this, then, not to be reckoned to the credit of the Voluntary Schools ? And, in addition to this, is the use of the buildings and their main- tenance free of charge worthy of no consideration ? Is.it to be wondered at that Voluntary Managers refuse to band over their schools on which they have spent so much. And because they do refuse, the County Council will grant,them no portion of the rate. Yet, at the same time, they do not hesitate to levy a rate, and that an illegal one. The Act empowers the levying a rate in maintenance of all schools; they will only levy it for a portion of them; but they take care to impose it on those who shall have no benefit at all from it; and as if this were not enough they transfer, one-half of the £ 20,000, School Board debt to those parishes which have maintained their own schools all along How will the parishes in the Forden Union, in which there is not a single School Board or board school, and many other parishes similarly placed, relish a procedure which on one hand, imposes on them a burthen for the annual maintenance and the transferred debts of schools which they do not approve of; and on the other refuses to give them any payment from the imposition to improve their own schools ? la this justice ? Is it equity ? Is it fair plaj ? Is it education ? Or is it only poor maligned conscience." ? The religious and the educational aspects will follow.—I am, &c., D. R. THOMAS. II.—THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT. Sir,The speaking of the opponents of the Voluntary. Schools covered a wide range, but its animus was centred in the religious aspect. The Act was an immoral Act"—one of its two objects was the concealed motive of crippling the Non- conformists and strengthing the priesthood of the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches," and "Nonconformists were not taken into consideration." I thought, and still think, that the Wesleyan, the British, the Jewish, and any other Nonconformist Schools were treated exactly the same as the Anglican and the Roman Catholic, and that the only difference was one of degree, not kiud, and proportioned only by the practical efforts made by them respectiveiy in the cause of education. It is those who did least when they had to put their hands into their own pockets, that now make the loudest outcry and profession of interest. It saema to me a curious way of strengthening the priest- hood" of aay Church to deprive their school managers of three-fourths of their former power — to lower the position they had earned by genera- tions of educational service, and to impose upon them outside managers—and a no less curious way of ignoring Nonconformists to throw open to them the assistant and pupil teacherahips in the non. provided, in addition to all the teachership3 in the provided, schools The head teacherships in the Voluntary schools are 16,000. Those in the Board, including the prizes of the profession, are 13,000. ..i t The assistant and pupil teacherships 80,000. Again, while one member complained that Non- conformists were not taken into consideration, another on the same side apologised for the intro- duction of a Nonconformist minister into the local education authority, and protested that it was as an educationist, not as a Nonconformist minister, that he came; but a third member re- funded them that in the appointment of managers for the provided schools, whenever they came to the name of a clergyman of the Church of England bis name was struck out." The Chairman treated the Council to an historical rewolJpeci; of the misdoings of the Church daring the last 250 years or a little less why did he not go back for a little more, and preface it with the splendid and inspiring example set by his own friends, when in power ? How within the brief space of only ten years, they put to death the King and the Archbishop; disestablished and disen- dowed the Church, and imposed their own Presby- terian, Independent and Baptist ministers and lay- men prohibited the use of the Prayer Book under severe fines, and under similar fines enforced their own directory; how they persecuted the poor Quakers, who complained that they were beaten, stoned, stocked, hauled out of their synagogues, cast into dungeons and noisome vaults, denied food for days together, not allowed pen, ink and paper, and a legal trial refused or postponed for months or years." (Calendar of State Papers," 1658-9,146-8) "Search the records," they said, for you will hardly find so many in prison for conscience sake since the days of Queen Mary as now is in your day." Surely, he missed a great opportunity. But, perhaps, he was satisfied with the evidence that the spirit was still there. He was indignant with the clergy (has any one ever known him otherwise ?) for rejecting the con- cordat, which another member described as "a lasting testimony to the broadmindedness of the Council. But when carefully looked into and legally examined, what did it prove to be ? It in- volved the transfer of the voluntary schools to become non-provided, and as such would have ren- dered illegal the "broad-minded" offers of the Council. Our trust deeds would have been broken, and our schools gone and whea we came to give the denominational teaching on the stipulated'days, we should have been met by the Cowper-Temple clause of the 1870 Act, which forbids any religious catechism or distinctive formula" being taught in the schools. The County Council would have ob- tained all they wished for, and we should have loat everything. An honest conscientious objection we understand and respect; our "conscientious clause" is evidence of this, and the use made of it by parents in the past is a truer testimony than any extension to which it may in the future be pushed under outside pressure and a suspicious coincidence with electioneering movements. But what are we to think of a conscience which rebels against contributing to the education of children in the religion of the Church, but forces the Church- man to pay towards the education of the Noncon- formist formula of undenominationalism ? And what are we to think of a leading magistrate and something more, who may be called upon to carry out the law, but emphasises his im. partiality by saying they were keeping within the law." Still, as one speaker said, they never got reforms without a certain amount of pressure. The Irish got no reforms except by outside pres- sure, and the masses got no reforms until they bioke down the Hyde Park railings-and this was an action of that kind." His brother magistrates must have rubbed their eyes on hearing such methods so quoted. The voice of the majority (28) was a double voice, one part favouring secularism, the other undenominationalism, but both agreed in opposi- tion to definite religious teaching. This week the papers have been announcing that the Admir- alty are about to appoint Baptist and Independent chaplains to minister to the members of those bodies, as they had already done for the Wesleyans and Presbyterians. Will their conscience" refuse such an unholy alliance with the State? And if not, where is the difference in principle ? A jelly-fish Christianity has never permanently satisfied any body of Christians, and it certainly does not approve itself to Churchmen. They, too, have a conscience, and they believe in a definite and historical Christian:ty, in which they have proved their faith by great and long continued sacrifices. They claim their rights in this matter, and I shall be much mistaken if the nation does not respond to their claim. And I will add my firm belief, that in the days of calm reflection, the Christian conscience of the nation will not only confirm the Church's standpoint, but will look back with something of distress on the language and the methods adopted by her oppon- ents on the great question now at isjue. The manifesto of the Free Churches just made known has been described by the Daily Neivs as "a declaration of war upon the Church," and its policy involves death to religious education. Are the Nonconformists of Montgomeryshire resolved upon this, or will they pause ?-I am, &c., D. R. THOMAS. III.—THE EDUCATIONAL ASPECT. Sir,-I have reserved this aspect of the question to the last, because it must be remembered, in spite of the agitation and clamour against the Act, that the promotion of education is its primary aim and object. When Mr Forster was pioneering the Act of 1870, he paid a high compliment to the work of the Voluntary schools, which had done two-thirds of the educational work of the country, and declared that its purpose was not to supplant, but to supplement them and supply the remaining deficiencies. So the Act of last year, recognising the facts that the sohool managers, at great sacrifices, and in addition to paying their share of the rate for the Board schools during the last thil ty years, had—(1) responded to the growing require- ments of the education Department; (2) largely increased the number of their schools (3) added many thousands to the number of their solars, and so (4) proved that the schools were acceptable to the large mass of the people of the country, refused to penalise them any longer for their re- ligious convictions, and, in its great purpose of co- ordinating, and improving the educational system all round, placed in the hands of the L.E.A.'s means and resources for carrying cut this object with efficiency and fairness. They who have forced religious and financial difficulties into the question have simply run red herrings across the educational path. Indeed, the loudness and the bitterness of their outcry is the strongest witness to their own negligence, or mistaken devotion, in the past. No child can eat his cake and keep it. Education is not merely the educing of the mental faculties; it is the training of all the faculties, moral; spiritual, natural and intellectual and the strongest and most permanent motive power has ever been the religious motive to ignore this would be like trying to make a watch without a mainspring; to crash it out would be to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. The duty of the State is not merely to turn out tools for extending trade and commerce; but to train up good and useful citizens, men of principle and character. How has the Council responded to this trust ? It levies the rate, indeed but resolves to appropriate it partially to one class of schools only, its own. It will only transfer to the Voluntary or non-provided schools what it dare not withheld, the Imperial grants, about two pounds; a head. But that will not cover the maintenance, much less promote the efficiency. What, then, is to happen with regard to the balance, for from the appointed day they and not the managers are responsible ? Will they penalise the teachers-some of the best and most conscientious men in the profession ? Will they encourage their efficiency by creating worry and anxiety? Or, will thiy punish the scholars, by keeping them at a lo- er standard than those in their own schools ? And for firs end, is the portion of the rate which they pay to be applied only to the multiplication of officers and strengthening the staff of the provided schools P And the parents of the children, what of them ? Why, the very people who are so keen on abolishing tests for the teachers are setting up tests for the parents, and curtailing the educational advantages of their children, because they conscientiously prefer the Old Faith to the new religion of a State established undenominationalism. Happily the question of the efficiency of the schools will be decided, not by the prejudices of the local education authority, but by the public and impartial inspection of tle Board of Education and we may be quite sure that tbat authority will not tamely submit to being overridden or defied by the inferior power. It is a strange commentary on the profe3sion of those who are so given to saying, in the matter of religion, that diversity of sects tends to competition zeal, life and progress-that in the field of educa- tion they are so enchanted with one monotonous hard and fast system. One result, and perhaps at no great distance of time, for things mcve quickly, in these days, will be, I think, the growing conviction that the best and fairest solution of the problem will be the adoption of the Canadian system, and allow every ratepayer to earmark his rate for the type of school he likes best.-I am, <&u., D. R. THOMAS. IV.—SOME OF THE ISSUES. Sir,- When I clo3ed my second letter with the question, Are the Nonconformists of Montgom- eryshire resolved upon this, or will they pause ?" the alternative may have seemed to some uncalled for or illogical; that although there may have been a declaration of war upon the church," there were other alternatives than death to religious instruc- tion." But the majority of the Council have re- solved to fall into line with the other Local Educa. tion Authorities in Wales, and the politico-religious force by which they are animated is clearly that of the Liberation Society and its handmaid the Fre3 Church Council; and the most prominent champion of the cause is Dr Clifford. Now Dr Clifford insists upon what hecalls"moral, non credal, ethical" teach- ing, ai d he has stated that" Free Churchmen are not anxious that the elements of the Christian Faith should form part of the regular instruction in elementary schools." But apart from the elements of the Christian Faith there can be no true religious teaching, and mere Bible reading" 1 9 would be but the teaching of a kind of Deism and the inculcation of a new Deuominationalism. Of course, for snch instruction it matters little what the faith of the teacher may be, or whether he be a Unitarian, an Agnostic, or a Free Thinker. But that the country in general will certainly not have, and it is a crucial point with Churchmen, that in their" non-provided schools," at all events, the religious instruction shall be definitely Christian and the teachers believe themselves what they are to teach to their scholars. Undenominationalism is as truly an ism as any of the other isms," but it differs from them in being essentially an "ism of negations," ex- cluding from its curriculum all the distinctive features of the Christian faith, and presenting ohiy a nebulous and spiritless form. I know not whether the leaders are simply out- running their constituents in this matter, or whether their constituents are pushing them on in their blindnésB-the next election of Councillors will settle this—but I am sure that the religious character of Nonconformists will be very seriously affected by the course they are following. The Sunday Schools, on which they profess to rely for special teaching, are not growing in proportion to the growth of the population—according to some authorities they are not growing at all-and with- out the week-day teaching they get, at all events in the Church Schools, the efficiency of even their Sunday Schools will be vastly weakened; while that very considerable number of schotarf, who attend no Sunday School at all, will be deprived of that help and guidance which they now receive in the religious teaching of the Voluntary Schools. The outcry against the religious instruction is a got-up outcry for a purpc8e of its own, and has no justification from facts. If anything it is Church children that have suffered, because in deference t > the presence of Nonconformist children, Church teaching has not been insisted on in its fulness. Certainly there is little evidence of proselytism in the upgrowth of Nonconformist children educated in them, and even Mr Lloyd-George himself, an ex- national school boy, has twitted Churchman with inefficiency in this respect, and suggested that they would have done much more for the advancement of the Church if they had spent the money laid out on day schools in some other methads. And now let me point out some fallacies that are much used to abscure the points at issue. 1. Favour shown by the State towards the Church and Voluntary Schools. Since the State begin to interest herself in education at all she has shown no favour to them, which was not equally offered to Nonconformists, whether in the matter of building or in that of maintenance; but the Nonconformists did not choose to spend their money in that way: they had other objects in view. In the Acts of 1870 and 1902, however, the State has shown marked favour to the Noncon- formists and that, to no small extent, at the cost of the Voluntaryists. She established that form of religious instruction which satisfied them, and gave them moreover the rates which they forced the Voluntaryists to pay their full share of, with- out receiving hitherto any share in it themselves. 2. Under the new ism their conscience forbids them to pay any rate whatever in support of schools where definite religious instruction is given. But they, themsalves, do profit to the tune of many thousands a year by the exemption of their chapels, where the strictest sectarianism is taught, as places of religious worship Whether they observe the condition is another matter; but that they are benefited largely in this matter of rates is palpable. Truly they swallow the camel but they strain at the gnat." 3. Public money must not be given except to schools under complete local control. "Public" money is, of course, Nonconformist money when once paid in, and Churchmen cease then to have any right in it! One has heard before of the highly moral axiom What is mine is mine and what is yours is mine too." But if it be (. public" money, where does the local" claim come in ? Public control we have long known, and the Board of Education, through H.M. Inspectors, has insisted impartially, at least, if not always wisely, on securing efficiency; but- local control is liable to a good deal of partisan- ship and petty intrigue, and I am not so sure that the Representative Governors just elected by the Local Education Authority on the School Manage- ment are pre-eminent as experts on education or likely, altogether to dispel the suspicion of other aims than efficiency in that direction. By the way representation" is sometimes claimed as the accompaniment or correlative of contribution, but if the County Council refuses any portion of the fund they raise, where does the" representation" come in. 4. It is easy to magnify the grants of public money and belittle the value of the leturn, but the payment of these grants is made for work done, and if the work is not done, a',d done efficiently, those grants are withheld. Tiiat the Voluntary Schools have done their work well is proved alike by their extent and their efficiency, and the very name of "Non-prvvided." (i.e., by the Local Education Authority) is a standing witness to the fact. 5. There is a soothing notion that men may refuse to pay their quota of the rates and still exercise their privilege of franchise as loyal citizens; that they may at the same time pOJ3 as martyrs, passive resistors"" if you will, and retain their electoral claims. This, too, is a little f illacy, and its unveiling may appeal to their ccnsjienge, where higher considerations are powerless. Meanwhile, where is the child ? We seem to have forgotten him altogether. In your last issue there was an amusing, tragico- comic story, headed with the question, "Where is the dove P" Substitute for the dove the child, for the preacher the Prime Minister in h;s zeal for education, for the sexton the Local Education Authority, for the expectant audience the m inagers teachers, parents, and the general public, for the signal the appointed day, for the mysterious delay and the ravages of that prowling beast the felis domestica, the frantic efforts of the Free Church Council and the Liberation Society, and you will at once recognise in the denotement; the answer to the question, Inside the cat."—I am, &c., D. R. THOMAS.

+■ FATALITY AT LLANYBLODWEL.

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