NATIONAL EDUCATION, SYSTEMS OF, the provision made by various states for the education of their citizens. In England the term national education is commonly used as implying only a provision made for the instruction of children of the poorer classes. But it is capable of a much more extensive application, and in most of the countries in which the state provides for the education of the people, th‘ state regulates, more or less, all instruction, from that of the primary school to that of the university. In Eng land. national education in this sense has no existence. The parish schools (q.v.) of Scotland at one time were all but national,. but the altered circumstances of the country gradually deprived them of that character. The imperfect means adopted to supply the deficiency in both parts of the kingdom are described under the head of Pitivy Courtm, CoNtmerron op, os EDUCATION. See also SCHOOLS, PUHLIC AND (GRAMMAR; INDI7S TRIAL SCHOOLS; REFORMATORY SCHOOLS, CAC. In Ireland the foundation of a really national system was laid in 1883 in the "national schools" (supplemented since by the queen's colleges and university), the principle of which is briefly stated under IRELAND. These schools have exhibited a steady and even surprising progress, when we consider the determined opposition they have met with from powerful ecclesiastical parties, both Catholic and Protestant. In several of the British colonies the local legislatures have boldly dealt with the question on the national principle, in opposition to the denomina tional. See VICTORIA.
In this article we propose to give some account of the national system in various coun tries, and to indicate sonic of the matters as to which we have to look for instruction to foreign experience. Before so, it may be well to notice the obstacles in the way of the establishment of national doing among ourselves. And first, in Great Britain the establishment of a national system of education, and of all interference with educa tion on the part of the state, has until lately been opposed upon principle by a numerous and respectable body of politicians. They, for the most part, consisted of dissenters, who, beginning with voluntaryism in ecclesiastical matters, had passed on to the doctrine of laissez fa tre in politics. The others were chiefly speculative persons, deeply imbued with the same doctrine, who, profoundly disbelieving in the wisdom of statesmen and the capacity of officials, and apparently in the possibility of foresight in large affairs, held that the state should undertake as little as possible, and leave things 1!) what they called their natural course. The arguments used by these two, classes were not always alike.
Individuals of the former class were apt to go back to the religious ground from-which they started, maintaining that education ought to be religious, that the state ought not to teach religion, that therefore education was out of the province of the state. But what the spokesmen of both classes most insisted on was this: that education should be left to the law of supply and demand, or rather, to the voluntary actions of individuals, single or combined. It was in that way, they declared, that the education of tho people could be most beneficially carried on; for so carried on, it would always he, both in kind and in extent, what, on the whole, the circumstances of the people required. In the hands of government, they said, an educational system must be, more or less, an instru ment of state. And, at the best, the extent and the quality of the instruction provided must depend upon the will of persons who might be very ignorant of the wants of the people. They used declamation about the bad way in which governments did every thing they attempted; about the danger of creating a host of new officials; and about the impropriety of interfering with natural laws, and of discouraging voluntary agency. Then they enlarged upon the great progress which education had made in England since the beginning of this century, independently, as they said, of the state—maintaining not only that it had been as great as the circumstances of the country permitted, but that it was almost as much as the state had accomplished in any country; and that it proved that in England, supply and demand, or the voluntary principle, would soon provide for the education of the whole people. The greater part of die increase in the supply of education, so far as it was not due to the action of the state, had come from the benevolent exertions of individuals. But their chief reliance was upon the agency of individuals or societies inspired by benevolence or religious zeal. They 1:31d that the same objections did not apply to voluntary organizations which lay against the state; they declared that it was the great glory of England to accomplish, by such means, things which elsewhere were attempted only by the state. Combined voluntary action, they said, was consonant with the national habits and institutions; it was a part of the system which had made the English a free, self-reliant, and enterprising race; it should he fostered, not discouraged; and it was worth our while to pay a price, if necessary, rather than let it be superseded by the action of the state.