Jump to content

Page:George Lansbury - What I saw in Russia.pdf/122

From Wikisource
This page needs to be proofread.

96
WHAT I SAW IN RUSSIA


and their capacity was extremely limited : great efforts are being made to supply this deficiency ; training centres are being established.

Most residential schools in Moscow are very small. I should think forty was about the outside number in many of them. I yield to nobody in my knowledge of English schools ; I have seen all sorts of public and private schools—Mill Hill, Eton, Shrewsbury, and scores of Poor Law schools, besides hundreds of ordinary day schools. Consequently when visiting these schools in Moscow I could not be other than surprised how small they were and how limited in every way compared with our Poor Law schools. They looked and were, very mean, and in this they would have rejoiced the heart of the middle and upper class ratepayers in this country, who are always complaining that too much money is spent on the children of the poor. Yet the buildings, for size, light and air did remind me a little of the houses at Eton where the upper class boys live, but only because there seemed less cubic space than the numbers warranted.

For all this no intelligent observer who looked either at children or homes could but be agreeably astonished that so much has been attempted and so much done ; and no one seeing the general attitude of the children