[Gutenberg 62774] • The Renaissance of Girls' Education in England · A Record of Fifty Years' Progress

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1898. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XI THE INTERMEDIATE SCHOOLS OF WALES A Land of mountains seems to be a land of ideals. Separated by the elementary forces of nature from many of the currents of life that flow beyond it, thrown on itself, its own resources and its past, it cherishes its individuality with a fervour unknown to the people of a plain. Even ruthless modernity, with its complex train systems and mountain-borings, serves but to invade its privacy, not to change its character. Patriotism is stronger, national feeling more tenacious, the practical side of life has man less firmly in its grip. The Welsh people, with their proud claim to represent the original inhabitants of the island, their long roll of story and legend, their 'estranging' language, incomprehensible a few miles across the border, are still a race apart. Neither Saxon nor Norman, legislation nor intercourse, has ever been able to degrade them into a mere appanage of the English nation. Among the ideals long cherished here in vain by all classes, was that of a national system of education. It would not be fair to describe the country which produced the sweetest and best-trained singers in the United Kingdom, and could organise and carry out such elaborate musical and artistic competitions as those of the Eisteddfodd, as wholly uneducated, and yet until very recently it was undoubtedly lacking in schools and colleges. Like England, it benefited by the Education Act of 1870, which brought instruction to the children of the wage-earners, but it was the class above these, the professional and commercial, whose means or whose patriotism forbade their sending their sons and daughters to England, that felt the deficiency most keenly. Drawn into the stir, which in England followed on 1870, Wales began to move on her own l...