religious doctrines four or five years at a stretch, know as little at
the end as at the beginning. One child "went to Sunday school
regularly for five years; does not know who Jesus Christ is, but had
heard the name; had never heard of the twelve Apostles, Samson, Moses,
Aaron, etc." {112b} Another "attended Sunday school regularly six
years; knows who Jesus Christ was; he died on the Cross to save our
Saviour; had never heard of St. Peter or St. Paul." {113a} A third,
"attended different Sunday schools seven years; can read only the
thin, easy books with simple words of one syllable; has heard of the
Apostles, but does not know whether St. Peter was one or St. John; the
latter must have been St. John Wesley." {113b} To the question who
Christ was, Horne received the following answers among others: "He was
Adam," "He was an Apostle," "He was the Saviour's Lord's Son," and
from a youth of sixteen: "He was a king of London long ago." In
Sheffield, Commissioner Symonds let the children from the Sunday
school read aloud; they could not tell what they had read, or what
sort of people the Apostles were, of whom they had just been reading.
After he had asked them all one after the other about the Apostles
without securing a single correct answer, one sly-looking little
fellow, with great glee, called out: "I know, mister; they were the
lepers!" {113c} From the pottery districts and from Lancashire the
reports are similar.

This is what the bourgeoisie and the State are doing for the education
and improvement of the working-class. Fortunately the conditions under
which this class lives are such as give it a sort of practical training,
which not only replaces school cramming, but renders harmless the
confused religious notions connected with it, and even places the workers
in the vanguard of the national movement of England. Necessity is the
mother of invention, and what is still more important, of thought and
action. The English working-man who can scarcely read and still less
write, nevertheless knows very well where his own interest and that of
the nation lies. He knows, too, what the especial interest of the
bourgeoisie is, and what he has to expect of that bourgeoisie. If he
cannot write he can speak, and speak in public; if he has no arithmetic,
he can, nevertheless, reckon with the Political Economists enough to see
through a Corn-Law-repealing