Welsh Journals

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To enable a child to become familiar with a new language, it was essential that he 'should be sent among those who speak it, and where he himself is obliged, in order to make his wants known, to speak it as best he can'. He did not believe that 'the process of acquiring a knowledge of a living language through the medium of another is not found to be successful'. 87 Even in infants' schools, 'the principle holds good that the less Welsh spoken the better. A good teacher accustomed the children to speak English at all times in conjunction with school work.' At most, Welsh should only be used to explain the meaning of some difficult English words. But, 'the advocates of the plan of teaching English and Welsh reading simultaneously to young children can hardly be aware of the difficulty of the scheme which they propose'.88 Pryce held firmly to these views until eventually he modified them somewhat just before his retirement in 1894, and in the face of the demands of 'The Society for the Utilization of the Welsh Language'. The Inspectorate exerted a significant influence on teacher training colleges in the Victorian era. Although H. Longueville Jones, H.M.I., was associated with the bilingual experiment at the South Wales and Monmouthshire Training College opened at Carmarthen in 1848, by the mid-1850s, the Inspectorate showed no real enthusiasm for the use of the Welsh language in the training of teachers. In 1861, the Rev. B. M. Cowie, H.M.I., reporting on the small number of students who were examined in the Welsh paper in the teachers' certificate examination at Carmarthen, suggested that 'it would be more profitable to them to spend their time in learning arithmetic than in keeping up a national distinction which is comparatively useless'.89 Eventually, during the late 1880s and 1890s, the attitude of the Inspectorate in Wales towards the Welsh language became more favourable. To a considerable extent, this owed a great deal to the influence of Dan Isaac Davies, a sub-inspector in Merthyr, and one of the founders in 1885 of 'The Society for the utilization of the Welsh language', which played a significant role in influencing the Cross Commission's recommendation in 1888 that Welsh be included as a grant-earning class subject in the Code of Regulations for elementary schools.90 This was implemented in the 1890 Code. It was a time when a number of influential Welshmen-the historian, J. E. Lloyd, T. E. Ellis M.P., Principal Francis Roberts of Aberystwyth, Isambard Owen, T. Marchant Williams, Professor Thomas Powel and Emrys ap Iwan-as well as the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, demanded the 87 Ibid., p. 420. 88 Ibid., p. 422. 89 Ibid. (1861-62), p. 288. 90 Hughes, op. cit.