ABSTRACT
Of course, those who saw in the new Committee of Council a threat to the dominance of the Church in education were quite right. The omission of any ecclesiastics from the Committee had not been accidental; it typified the new spirit which the Committee intended to show. In describing the thought of the period Kay-Shuttleworh said, ‘The school, it is probable, was, in the conception of the majority of the clergy and laity, simply a means of spreading Christian truth, and of establishing the discipline and ceremonials of the Church in the conviction and sympathies of the great mass of the population.’ If this was the aim, secular learning was of little importance; and the academic qualifications of the teacher were largely immaterial when compared with his regularity of church attendance. The intention of the Committee was to change this.
As far back as 1839 [he records in another place], the Government requested me to give my attention to the organization of a system of Public instruction; and I had received from the chief ministers of the Crown a special injunction, and that was to assert the civil influence in Education. They did not intend leaving it simply to the Church or the religious bodies; they felt that, if it was to become national, the State must have something to do with it. They intended to assert the civil power in the interest of the great masses of the people, because, without that power, mere voluntary zeal would not master the whole of the difficulty of the case. 1
