Religious and educational aspects of temperance / by various authors.

Date:
[1874?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Religious and educational aspects of temperance / by various authors. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    119/172 page 115
    MR. J. S. WRIGHT’S SPEECH. H5 solemn resolve, and I hope that you London people are going to do the same. When we have filled our schools with pupils, we have got to find out the best way of teaching them and of instructing them on the soundest principles, and to give them the best text-hooks to learn from. AH the work is not done, un- happily, when we have got our children through our schools. (Hear, hear.) No, a great deal of their future will depend upon how we get them through ; for we know to-day that, after the teachers’ work has been done, the publican lays hold of them but too soon— (hear, hear)—they exchange but too soon the school- room for the tap-room. After drinking in knowledge they drink in gin and beer, and things of a like nature. I believe that edu- cation will do a great deal of itself to reduce this, but still that is our great obstacle—it is the thing that takes away half, aye, three parts, of the fruits of our work in our Sunday-schools, and it will be the chief destroyer of the work of our day-schools. Well, gentlemen of the Temperance League, you have not begun your work one day too soon ; but there is one danger—I think we are trying to teach the children too many subjects, and there is a danger in that. It is not only the three “ R’s” now ; that is a thing of the past; that is obsolete, for there is such a lot of subjects besides. We have masters for music and for drill, and we teach them cookery, and I know not what, but we have pretty well forgotten the question of temperance. (Hear, hear.) lu Birmingham, some time ago, our attention was drawn to it by one of the members of our board ; and although my colleagues are not all abstainers, and though I do not think there is one who, like myself, has been one for the third of a century—(cheers)— yet they have all, I believe, great respect for the movement, and would earnestly desire to promote it amongst the young. There was no difficulty, therefore, made about temperance being one of the common subjects taught in our schools. You will think that a very good resolution, and probably, also, that Birmingham set an example to the rest of the country. But we were met with this difficulty—“ Where are your books V’ This caused some of our friends to look through the school-books published by Chambers, Nelson, &e., but, though they have produced them in such num- bers, there is barely a line upon temperance, and even that line of the faintest and feeblest character. That giant evil, which brings about so much misery among our children, was hinted at merely, and in scarcely the faintest notes of condemnation. (Hear, hear.) I do not think we could read a full chapter in any one of the productions that are now supplied to our schools in regard to genuine temperance truth. It was, therefore, with profound satisfaction that we found that the Temperance League were taking up the question, and pre- paring a school-book. I do not think they could have done any
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