Fourth annual report of the Williams Secular School.

  • Williams Secular School
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Fourth annual report of the Williams Secular School. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    24/48 page 18
    from the pen of Major Mair, of 29 Abercromby Place, giving an account of the impressions which were conveyed to his mind by the examinations, and which will be read with interest by the friends of secular education. The soundness of Major Mair’s impressions, and the general participation in them by the audience, have been strikingly evinced by subsequent events. The working men of Leith solicited and obtained'the advice of Mr Combe and Mr Simpson, and the aid of Mr Williams, in organizing a school to be conducted under their own auspices, on principles similar to those of the Edinburgh Se- cular School. They have succeeded beyond their expectations. Mr James Hay of Leith gave them a school-room free of rent, and he and others assisted them with subscriptions in aid of large contributions made by themselves for the purchase of the neces- sary furniture, books, and apparatus. They engaged as head teacher Mr William Ellis, who had studied for some months un- der Mr Williams, and as assistant, James Lambert, one of Mr Williams’ pupil teachers, in addition to a young woman who teaches the girls sewing. The school was opened on the 7th of March, and before the end of the month had 140 pupils in at- tendance, and could receive no more, as the school-room was inconveniently crowded. Mr Williams has also been engaged in giving lessons in phy- siology and physical science to the pupils in two of the most dis- tinguished female boarding-schools in Edinburgh ; and also in an eminent boarding-school for boys. The religious prejudices which formerly were brought to bear against the school are now, when its nature and merits have be- come better known, confined to a few of the most narrow-minded of the community. The clergyman of the parish, and several other clergymen have visited it during the past year, visits which are welcomed equally by the teachers and the promoters of the school. From the Rev. W. Id. Gray, Mr Williams received a kind letter, objecting to the omission of doctrinal religion in Mr Ellis’s work, mentioned in the foot-note on page 11, and in the school. Mr Williams wrote a reply, explaining the object of Mr Ellis’s work, and the position of the school in reference to the omission complained*of. This reply embodies so fully the views of the pro- moters on this interesting subject, that they have requested and obtained the permission of Mr Gray and Mr Williams to print the correspondence in the Appendix, No. III. The friends of secular education have long felt it as an injustice and a grievance, that while they are taxed to fill the national ex- chequer, funds should be copiously drawn from that source and bestowed on schools established for teaching sectarian religion alono- with secular instruction, while all aid is refused by the o 7 *
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