SUBSCRIPTIONS AND DONATIONS RECEIVED BY ROBERT BARCLAY, Esq., Treasurer, at the British and Foreign School Society's Offices, 114 to 116, Temple Chambers, Temple Avenue, London, E.C. Also by Members of the Committee, and the following Bankers:— Messrs. BARCLAY AND CO., LIMITED, Darlington. Contributors of One Guinea or more, annually, or of Ten Guineas and upwards in one donation, are Members of the Society, and entitled to vote at the Annual Meeting. Annual Subscriptions are due on the 1st of January in each year. FORM OF BEQUEST. E give unto the BRITISH AND FOREIGN SCHOOL SOCIETY, in London, the sum of pounds sterling, free of legacy duty, to be paid for the purposes of the Society to the Treasurer or Treasurers for the time receipt shall be a sufficient discharge for the same. being, whose REPORT. THE politics of education are again under discussion and the machinery of elementary schools is once more under revision: this time it may be hoped with a nearer approach to finality. The year covered by the one hundred and first Report of the British and Foreign School Society, however, has only witnessed the preliminaries of the new controversy. It will be for the next Report to trace its course and probably measure its fruits. The part taken by a non-political and non-ecclesiastical society is restricted to observation, suggestion, and exemplification, and this part the British and Foreign School Society has played for nearly a century. The Society claims to have laid the foundation of popular education. Whatever charity schools may have existed in the 18th century, it was not till Bell and Lancaster (to keep clear of controversy the order of the alphabet may be followed) devised plans for instructing numbers simultaneously that the idea of schools for the people at large could be realised. Joseph Lancaster started the idea of "schools for all "_ "irrespective of social position--fees being taken from those who could pay, and those who had no money being welcomed without payment; all being on a level in school, and the scholars being escorted to their parents' places of worship that families might not be divided in religious observances. Educational development in common was the accepted rule; separate instruction in dogmas and practices which differentiate in accordance with the views and wishes of the parents being provided by them. The paucity of reading-books made it almost necessary that Bibles should be used, and it did not occur to the friends who supported Lancaster that any, in a Protestant country, would object to the intelligent reading of the book which the British and Foreign Bible Society had just been formed to circulate, whatever explanations and commentaries the various sections of the Christian Church (and even sceptics and secularist parents and their leaders) might see fit to add out of school hours. The King voiced the conviction of the "British" School people when, in consenting to become patron and offering a munificent subscription, he expressed the hope that every child in his dominions might be taught to read the Bible. The success which attended those who took over Lancaster's work in 1808-viz., the maintenance of a central model school in Southwark, and aiding the establishment of similar schools in England and Wales (in Ireland also, and, indeed, all over the world)-was such as to alarm those who thought education a dangerous thing unless given under Church influence, and even religion a doubtful blessing unless coupled with membership of some definite ecclesiastical organisation. "The National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church throughout England and Wales" was formed as an enlarged and strengthened section of the Christian Knowledge Society. |