English Catholics and Education
Carter, B. Barclay
ENGLISH CATHOLICS AND EDUCATION By B. BARCLAY CARTER SINCE the passing of the Elementary Education Act of 1870, primary education in England and Wales has been based on what is known as...
...authorities for all building connected with the provided schools would be raised from 20 percent to 50 percent...
...In these, the higher posts are reserved for religious and since financial reasons may compel the appointment of a religious instead of a possibly more competent lay-teacher, many brilliant Catholics either turn to other professions or teach in non-Catholic schools (which they frequently do, in a truly apostolic spirit...
...The Anglo-Catholics, who realize that, as the Hadow Report itself points out, "religious teaching cannot be confined to a separate period" but "will affect the teaching of other subjects, such as history and literature," are in a minority...
...Lloyd George and other prominent Liberals—there has always been an affinity between Liberals and Nonconformity as between Conservatives and the Church of England—lent their support to Passive Resistance Leagues, the members of which allowed their furniture to be distrained rather than pay an education rate from which dreaded Catholicism could derive the smallest benefit...
...Since the war the cost of all building has doubled, while the increase and redistribution of the Catholic population —converts number some 12,000 a year—has created an ever-increasing need for schools...
...And, this time, Catholics stand alone...
...Again, there is the squandering of energies in sheer defense (the danger of all minorities...
...It is ridiculous that not till this year, on the initiative of the feminist St...
...There is not enough faith in it to offend anybody...
...no less than forty typewriters...
...And it must be noted with how much sympathy they have been met by the local authorities concerned...
...A talk with some of the Reverend Mothers of the great training colleges for teachers reveals a breadth of vision and discernment of all the terms of the problem that is sometimes hardly discernible in official pronouncements...
...up-to-date fittings in which art and common sense combine...
...On the principle "no public money without public control," the local authority shall in return have the appointment of teachers, with the proviso that a certain number of these shall be approved by the school managers as "willing and competent to give special religious instruction...
...Owing to the economic crisis, these recommendations were never put into effect...
...Among English Catholics are few wealthy families, and many poorest of the poor...
...But these number only some 9,000...
...There are bishops who, like the Bishop of Nottingham, threaten that in the event of any grouping of Catholic and non-Catholic schools, the Catholic schools shall be closed...
...On the other hand there are promising signs of a new and progressive spirit which properly fostered may leaven the whole of Catholic education...
...The number of its schools is decreasing, while modernism and distaste for dogmatic precision has made them susceptible of assimilation to the provided schools...
...In 1926 the Hadow Committee convened by the Board of Education produced an admirable Report on the Education of the Adolescent...
...This school aims at and achieves the best, with full and open-minded realization of the needs of the modern child...
...in the last century Manning imperatively discouraged them, and his attempt to found a Catholic university was a misfortune in a country where the great institutions have their roots in the ages...
...There seems to be in Parliament a disposition to remove our grievances and grant us a full measure of justice in due course...
...Pioneer attempts such as these are the finest defense of Catholic education...
...an airy dining-room where for sixpence each child—some 280 girls, and about the same number of boys—have an adequate dinner...
...Nevertheless the non-provided schools have once more to fight for their existence...
...Another religious, ten years ago head-mistress of the first Catholic Central School, now directs the girls' section of the Oratorians' Central School in London, a school so progressive that it has become "news...
...Even since the Act of 1902 their position has been one of increasing difficulty...
...The increasing enlargements required by the Board of Education led to the blacklisting of many schools financially unable to conform to the new requirements...
...And there are many non-Catholics who hold the view expressed by the Times in a very favorable commentary on a recent encyclical, "that the strength of national education lies in a greater respect for family life and in avoiding the danger of a state interference that may become not a necessary help but a monopoly...
...The Board of Education declared that its grant to the local...
...This fact in 1902 aroused a storm of bigotry...
...And Catholics and Anglicans, strained to the utmost to keep pace with existing building requirements, declared that they could not possibly conform to the new plan without state aid...
...The Balfour Act of 1902, which vested the care of public education in the Municipal and County Councils, ordained that if a non-provided school, certified efficient and necessary, accepted a one-third representation of the Local Education Authority on its board of managers, the local government should pay for books, general equipment and teachers' salaries...
...The Bishop of Pella, the most competent Catholic authority on educational matters, would have all fight for a settlement such as he himself promoted in Scotland: by the Scottish Act of 1918 Scottish Catholics are proportionately represented on local education committees, which select teachers from a panel previously approved by the religious authorities concerned—a system which would need adaptation, for the Scots differ from the English in that with them education and religion are a twofold passion, and religion is always theologically vertebrate, whether Presbyterian or Catholic...
...A Notre Dame nun, head-mistress of a primary school in a Liverpool slum, has achieved such wonders that she was recently decorated by the king...
...This Report, produced by true educationalists after consultation with all the competent authorities, including the Catholic Education Council, stated the ideal of primary education to be "the forming and strengthening of character, the training of the tastes which fill and dignify leisure, the awakening and guiding of the intelligence, especially on its practical side," and to this end recommended that all children between eleven and fifteen who fail to pass into the secondary schools, which are predominantly literary or scientific, should be transferred to well-equipped modern schools for "a humane and broadening general education with a practical bias in the last two years...
...Again, it is only recently that Catholics have taken to frequenting the universities...
...And where "owing to reorganization, children are transferred to a provided school from a non-provided school," they may be withdrawn for certain hours of "special religious teaching outside the school...
...The Bishop of Pella is one of the few who view the bill with optimism...
...The atmosphere governing these provisions is very different from the intolerance of thirty years ago, but they are none the less inacceptable to Catholics...
...Realizing that the expense would be more than doubled if the non-provided schools could not be used, Sir Charles Trevelyan replaced his first bill by one empowering local authorities to give grants to aid in the reconstruction of the voluntary schools during the first three years...
...a well-equipped laboratory, library and art room...
...the Church of England schools alone are nearer 10,000, while there are 1,331 Catholic primary schools with 374,169 pupils...
...The Church of England parochial schools were the chief beneficiaries under this Act, but Catholics, powerful in Parliament by the Irish Party vote, had been in the forefront of the battle to obtain it...
...once Catholic schools exist, there is no questioning as whether the Catholic atmosphere obtained at such a cost may not be unduly tinctured with the atmosphere of ages which could learn from the decried present where child psychology is concerned...
...Can Such a Faith Offend...
...There is a current that considers managerial appointment of teachers the last ditch to be surrendered, and those who would even welcome the suggested appointment by local authority, provided that none but Catholics are appointed...
...fourteen has marked the age-limit of compulsory education, and might continue to do so but for another factor— the unemployment question...
...The present Labor Cabinet, under the incubus of an unemployment rising toward $2,000,000, realized that to extend the school age to fifteen, with maintenance allowance in case of need, would take a considerable number of youngsters off the labor market, at the same time saving them from temporary occupations which too often leave them with no future save the dole...
...The best in architecture—modern simplicity, plane surfaces with windows that fill the walls, and harmonious color schemes...
...If indeed the bill can be amended, and Catholic schools find a permanent place in the national system, the benefit to them may be great...
...The foundation managers bear all building expenses and appoint the teachers, the local authorities holding a right of veto on educational grounds...
...is the title of a recent book by the modernist Bishop Barnes...
...While all Catholics recognize that no special religious teaching will compensate for the Catholic atmosphere which should pervade every hour of a Catholic school, and while the hierarchy has passed a unanimous resolution that "We cannot contemplate relinquishing any of the rights possessed by the managers of nonprovided schools regarding the appointment and dismissal of teachers, except as part of a satisfactory permanent national settlement," the Catholic position is weakened by want of a united policy...
...The Church of England, by a majority report of its hierarchy, welcomes the suggested settlement...
...The inferior standing of many of the Catholic schools has led many to look gloomily on their prospects, and to prophesy their eventual extinction now that there is no Irish Party to protect them in Parliament...
...On the other hand, and in greater numbers, are the non-provided denominational schools, built by the various religious communities, mainly Church of England, Catholic, and Wesleyan...
...It remained for the Labor Party's education bill to bring matters to a crisis...
...The Catholic community suffers from an "inferiority complex" as regards its schools...
...The war years like a broad river divide that period of now almost forgotten bitterness from present-day tolerance...
...The training colleges run by the Notre Dame nuns in Liverpool and Glasgow, or that of the Holy Child order in London, can hold their own with any in the kingdom...
...There are bishops who, like the Bishop of Southwark, realize that in many districts such regrouping is inevitable, and that to withhold a Catholic child from the advantage of a central school would be to place him at a cruel disadvantage by which his faith would not necessarily gain...
...The present bill which is now at its committee stage must be amended so as to provide a lasting and equitable national settlement—the seventeen Catholic Labor members, who include the solicitor-general, have threatened to vote against it unless this is done...
...Inadequate as it is," he has announced, "it is a prelude of something bigger...
...to which G. K. Chesterton replied, "Dear me, no...
...It is here that the problem of the non-provided schools becomes acute...
...Joan's Alliance, has it been suggested that they should be represented on the Catholic Education Council—a suggestion which, it is grimly suggested, may not be popular since "they know too much...
...It must be recognized that up to the present their standing has not been satisfactory, for reasons mainly financial, but complicated by those of history...
...It was everywhere stated that the Dual System was only temporary, and one measure after another was brought in to end it, only to be defeated on one occasion by the House of Lords, on others by Irish influence...
...On the one hand are the provided schools, built and maintained out of the local rates plus a grant from the London Board of Education, and in these, "no religious catechism or religious formulary which is distinctive of any particular denomination shall be taught...
...They have accordingly brought in a bill on the lines of the Hadow Report providing for the regrouping or building of schools, so that after eleven children may be transferred to a central modern school, for a four years' course...
...ENGLISH CATHOLICS AND EDUCATION By B. BARCLAY CARTER SINCE the passing of the Elementary Education Act of 1870, primary education in England and Wales has been based on what is known as the Dual System...
...As a result even the great Catholic secondary schools have hitherto been inferior to non-Catholic schools of the same status...
Vol. 12 • August 1930 • No. 14
