Economic Illiteracy
If Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli really wanted a better-educated public, he must tackle the high cost of living.
1868
Queen Victoria 1837-1901
If Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli really wanted a better-educated public, he must tackle the high cost of living.
1868
Queen Victoria 1837-1901
As the 1860s progressed, calls grew for a Government shake-up of the education system. But in February 1868, John Bright MP, one of the country’s leading Liberals, told his Birmingham constituents that local communities would handle the three Rs without any help from fancy theories, if Government policy hadn’t made daily living into such a desperate scramble to survive.
I HAVE always argued that the ignorance of the people is the most deplorable feature in our national character. I have argued that if food could be cheaper, and trade more free, and industry more regular, and wages higher, the result would be to raise the mental condition of our population.* I believe it has been raised, and is being raised, and one of the signs that it has been raised is that it asks to be raised still higher.*
We who have had some little education ourselves, — though I am sorry to say I have nearly forgotten all I ever had, — we, in endeavouring to extend the means of education for the people, should go on with what I would rather call a steady wisdom than with such a precipitate and feverish action as may raise great difficulties in our path.*
I hope it will be as much as possible local, and not unduly sustained by either Government control or Government grants. I am sure that the good which the people will receive will be greatly enhanced in value by the self-respect created and the energy developed among the people if they are allowed to a large extent to do the work themselves.*
* Bright blamed the cosy relationship between Government and big business for leaving working men with no time or money to invest in education. Big business was afraid of foreign and domestic competition, and Government supplied the taxes and regulations which kept rivals out of the market, enabling employers to keep prices high, wages low, hours long, and workers tugging their forelocks. Bright and his friend the late Richard Cobden MP (1804-1865) had campaigned tirelessly against this cronyism for more than twenty years.
* That working men could now think of clamouring for schools and colleges was, in Bright’s opinion, a result of economic reforms going back to The Repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, which he and Richard Cobden had masterminded. The Corn Laws had been a supreme example of cronyism, and their fall brought many working families in British cities back from the brink of starvation.
* “Nothing has become clearer to me during this investigation” wrote Joshua Fitch, assessing the rather depressing state of Yorkshire schools for the Newcastle Commission in 1868, “than the fact that any sweeping or Procrustean measure will do great injustice... Nothing could be more fatal to true educational progress than any public measure designed to make all schools conform to one type”. Procrustes was a giant in The Six Labours of Theseus who, to ensure that all visitors perfectly fitted his guest-bed, chopped down tall men to make them shorter, and stretched out short men to make them taller.
* See also William Gladstone on A Spirit of Self-Reliance.
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
Wages were low and hours long. There was no time to spend on education. Bright blamed the Government.
See if you can include one or more of these words in your answer.
IAccuse. IIHand-to-mouth. IIILeisure.