Note 157 — Chapter II
Reading edition
"It would be said that we should be giving the pauper children a better education than that obtainable by the independent labourer's child. While I allow and lament this truth, I wholly deny its force. Because the schooling of children out of the workhouse is neglected, is this a valid reason and excuse for equally neglecting those who are within it? According to this argument, not a single ray of moral or religious knowledge should be allowed to illumine the mind of a pauper child; he should be brought up a perfect brute, since it is certain that this is the lot of innumerable independent children" (E. Carleton Tufnell, in Report on the Training of Pauper Children, 1841, p. 355).