sion of sound and cheap elementary instruction
to all classes of the people," issued its report, in which it
recommended _inter alia_ that the Grants paid to elementary schools
should be expressly apportioned on the examination of individual
children. This recommendation was carried into effect in the Lowe
Revised Code of 1862; and from that date till 1895 a considerable
part of the Grant received by each school was paid on the results of
a yearly examination held by H.M. Inspector on an elaborate syllabus,
formulated by the Department and binding on all schools alike. On the
official report which followed this examination depended the
reputation and financial prosperity of the school, and the reputation
and financial prosperity of the teacher.[9] The consequent pressure
on the teacher to exert himself was well-nigh irresistible; and he
had no choice but to transmit that pressure to his subordinates and
his pupils. The result was that in those days the average school was
a hive of industry.

But it was also a hive of misdirected energy. The State, in
prescribing a syllabus which was to be followed, in all the subjects
of instruction, by all the schools in the country, without regard to
local or personal considerations, was guilty of one capital offence.
It did all his thinking for the teacher. It told him in precise
detail what he was to do each year in each "Standard," how he was to
handle each subject, and how far he was to go in it; what width of
ground he was to cover; what amount of knowledge, what degree of
accuracy was required for a "pass," In other words it provided him
with his ideals, his general conceptions, his more immediate aims,
his schemes of work; and if it did not control his methods in all
their details, it gave him (by implication) hints and suggestions
with regard to these on which he was not slow to act; for it told him
that the work done in each class and each subject would be tested
at the end of each year by a careful examination of each individual
child; and it was inevitable that in his endeavour to adapt his
teaching to the type of question which his experience of the
yearly examination led him to expect, he should gradually deliver
himself, mind and soul, into the hands of the officials of the
Department,--the officials at Whitehall who framed the yearly
syllabus, and the officials in the various districts who examined
on it.

What the Department did to the teacher, it compelled him to d