The practice of teaching children provident habits has been adopted for about eight years in the National Schools of Belgium.  The School Board of Ghent is convinced of the favourable influence that saving has upon the moral and material well-being of the working classes, and believes that the best means of causing the spirit of economy to penetrate their habits is to teach it to the children under tuition, and to make them practise it.

It is always very difficult to teach anything new to adults,—­and especially lessons of thrift to men who are thriftless.  Their method of living is fixed.  Traditional and inveterate habits of expenditure exist among them.  With men, it is the drinking-shop; with women, it is dress.  They spend what they earn, and think nothing of to-morrow.  When reduced to a state of distress, they feel no shame in begging; for the feeling of human dignity has not yet been sufficiently developed in them.

With children it is very different.  They have no inveterate habits to get rid of.  They will, for the most part, do as they are taught.  And they can be taught economy, just as they can be taught arithmetic.  They can, at all events, be inspired by a clever teacher with habits of economy and thrift.  Every child has a few pence at times.  The master may induce them to save these for some worthy purpose.  At Ghent, a savings bank has been introduced in every school, and the children deposit their pennies there.  It is introduced into the paying schools as well as the free schools; for habits of thrift are as useful to men and women of the richer as of the poorer classes.  The results of the lessons on Economy have been highly satisfactory.[1] The children belonging to the schools of Ghent have accumulated eighteen thousand pounds, which is deposited in the State Savings Bank at three per cent. interest.  This system is spreading into Holland, France, and Italy.  It has also, to a certain extent, been adopted in this country.  Thus Glasgow, Liverpool, Birmingham, Great Ilford, and the London Orphan Asylum, all show specimens of School Banks; and we trust that, before long, they will be established in every school throughout the kingdom.

[Footnote 1:  A pamphlet published at Ghent says of the paying schools:  “The spirit of economy is introduced there under the form of charity.  The young girls buy with their pocket money, firstly materials, say cotton or linen, of which they afterwards make articles of dress during the hours set aside for manual work:  afterwards the shirts, stockings, dresses, handkerchiefs, or aprons, are distributed to the poorer children of the free schools.  The distribution Becomes the object of a little holiday:  we know of nothing that can be more touching.  The poor children are assembled in the Collier school; our young ladies go were also; one of them says a few words feelingly to her sisters in the poorer classes; one of the girls of the free schools replies.  Then the pretty and useful things which have been made during the last year are distributed.  It is the donors themselves who present the fruits of their labour to the poorest among the poor.  The distribution is intermingled with singing.  Need we reiterate the blessings of this blessed economy?”]