The History of Education Part 62

2. What type of school (283) was the re-created Superior Normal?

3. Just what did Victor Cousin recommend (284) as to (_a_) schools to be created; (_b_) control and administration; (_c_) compulsory attendance; (_d_) schools for the middle cla.s.ses; and (_e_) education and control of teachers?

4. Was Guizot's Law of 1833 (285) in harmony with the recommendations of Cousin (284)?

5. Why have public opinion and legislative action, in France and elsewhere, so completely reversed the positions taken by Guizot and his advisers (286) in framing the Law of 1833? 6. From Guizot's letter to the teachers of France (287), and Arnold's description of his work (288), just what do you infer to have been the nature of his interest in advancing primary education in France?

7. Contrast the reasoning of Guizot (286) and Quinet (289) on lay instruction. Of the reasoning of the two men, which is now accepted in France and the United States?

8. Contrast the letters of Guizot (287) and Ferry (290) to the primary teachers of France.

SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES

Arnold, Matthew. _Popular Education in France_.

* Arnold, Matthew. _Schools and Universities on the Continent_.

* Barnard, Henry. _National Education in Europe_.

Barnard, Henry. _American Journal of Education_, vol. XX.

Compayre, G. _History of Pedagogy_, chapter XXI.

* Farrington, Fr. E. _The Public Primary School System of France_.

* Farrington, Fr. E. _French Secondary Schools_.

Guizot, F. P. G. _Memoires_, Extracts from, covering work as Minister of Public Instruction, 1832-37, in Barnard's _American Journal of Education_, vol. XI, pp. 254-81, 357-99.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE STRUGGLE FOR NATIONAL ORGANIZATION IN ENGLAND

I. THE CHARITABLE VOLUNTARY BEGINNINGS

ENGLISH PROGRESS A SLOW BUT PEACEFUL EVOLUTION. The beginnings of national educational organization in England were neither so simple nor so easy as in the other lands we have described. So far this was in part due to the long-established idea, on the part of the small ruling cla.s.s, that education was no business of the State; in part to the deeply ingrained conception as to the religious purpose of all instruction; in part to the fact that the controlling upper cla.s.ses had for long been in possession of an educational system which rendered satisfactory service in preparing leaders for both Church and State; and in part--probably in large part--to the fact that national evolution in England, since the time of the Civil War (1642-49) has been a slow and peaceful growth, though accompanied by much hard thinking and vigorous parliamentary fighting. Since the Reformation (1534-39) and the Puritan uprising led by Cromwell (1642-49), no civil strife has convulsed the land, destroyed old inst.i.tutions, and forced rapid changes in old established practices. Neither has the country been in danger from foreign invasion since that memorable week in July, 1588, when Drake destroyed the Spanish Armada and made the future of England as a world power secure.

English educational evolution has in consequence been slow, and changes and progress have come only in response to much pressure, and usually as a reluctant concession to avoid more serious trouble. A strong English characteristic has been the ability to argue rather than fight out questions of national policy; to exhibit marked tolerance of the opinions of others during the discussion; and finally to recognize enough of the proponents' point of view to be willing to make concessions sufficient to arrive at an agreement. This has resulted in a slow but a peaceful evolution, and this slow and peaceful evolution has for long been the dominant characteristic of the political, social, and educational progress of the English people. The whole history of the two centuries of evolution toward a national system of education is a splendid ill.u.s.tration of this essentially English characteristic.

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EDUCATIONAL EFFORTS. England, it will be remembered (chapter XIX, Section III), had early made marked progress in both political and religious liberty. Ahead of any other people we find there the beginnings of democratic liberty, popular enlightenment, freedom of the press, religious toleration, [1] social reform, and scientific and industrial progress. All these influences awakened in England, earlier than in any other European nation, a rather general desire to be able to read (R. 170), and by the opening of the eighteenth century we find the beginnings of a charitable and philanthropic movement on the part of the churches and the upper cla.s.ses to extend a knowledge of the elements of learning to the poorer cla.s.ses of the population.

As a result, as we have seen (chapter XVIII), the eighteenth century in England, educationally, was characterized by a new att.i.tude toward the educational problem and a marked extension of educational opportunity.

Even before the beginning of the century the courts had taken a new att.i.tude toward church control of teaching, [2] and in 1700 had freed the teacher of the elementary school from control by the bishops through license. [3] In 1714 an Act of Parliament (13 Anne, c. 7) exempted elementary schools from the penalties of conformity legislation, and they were thereafter free to multiply and their teachers to teach. [4] The dame school (R. 235) now became an established English inst.i.tution (p. 447).

Private-adventure schools of a number of types arose (p. 451). The churches here and there began to provide elementary parish-schools for the children of their poorer members (p. 449), or training-schools for other children who were to go out to service (R. 241). Workhouse schools and "schools of industry" also were used to provide for orphans and the children of paupers (p. 453).

THE CHARITY-SCHOOL SYSTEM. Most important of all was the organization, by groups of individuals (R. 237) and by Societies (S.P.C.K.; p. 449) formed for the purpose, and maintained by subscription (R. 240), collections (R.

291), and foundation incomes, of an extensive and well-organized system of Charity-Schools (p. 449). The "Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge" dates from the year 1699, and the "Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts" from 1701. The first worked at home, and the second in the overseas colonies. [5] Both did much to provide schools for poor boys and girls, furnishing them with clothing and instruction (R.

292), and training them in reading, writing, spelling, counting, cleanliness, proper behavior, sewing and knitting (girls), and in "the Rules and Principles of the Christian Religion as professed and taught in the Church of England" (R. 238 b). The Charity-School idea was in a sense an application of the joint-stock-company principle to the organization and maintenance of an extensive system of schools for the education of the children of the poor, the stock being subscribed for by humanitarian- minded people. The upper cla.s.ses had for long been well provided, through tutors in the home and grammar schools and colleges, with those means for education which have for centuries produced an able succession of gentlemen, statesmen, governors, and scholars for England, and many of the commercial middle-cla.s.s had, by the eighteenth century, become able to purchase similar advantages for their sons. These now united to provide, as part of a great organized charity and under carefully selected teachers (R. 238 a), for the more promising children of their poorer neighbors, the elements of that education which they themselves had enjoyed.

The movement spread rapidly over England (p. 451), and soon developed into a great national effort to raise the level of intelligence of the ma.s.ses of the English people. Thousands of persons gave their services as directors, organizers, and teachers. Traveling superintendents were employed. A rudimentary form of teacher-training was begun. The preaching of a Charity Sermon each year [6] with a special collection, became a general English practice.

THE VOLUNTARY SYSTEM. The rise of the Methodist movement, [7] after 1730 (p. 489); the earthquake shocks of 1750; the rise of the popular novel and newspaper; the printing of political news, and cheap scientific pamphlets (p. 492); and the growing tendency to debate questions and to apply reason to their solution--all tended to give emphasis in England to these eighteenth-century charitable means for extending education to the children of those who could not afford to pay for it. Unlike the German States, where the State and the Church and the school had all worked together from the days of the Reformation on, the English had never known such a conception. The efforts, though, of the educated few, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, to extend the elements of learning, order, piety, cleanliness, and proper behavior to the children of the ma.s.ses, formed an important subst.i.tute for the action by the Church-State which was so characteristic a feature of Teutonic lands.

We see in these eighteenth-century efforts the origin of what became known in England as "the voluntary system" and upon this voluntary support of education--private, parochial, charitable--the English people for long relied. Of action by the State there was none during the eighteenth century, aside from an Act of 1767 (7 Geo. III, c. 39) relating to the education of pauper children. This established the important principle-- unfortunately not followed up--of providing that poor parish children of London might be maintained and educated "at the cost of the rates."

THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL MOVEMENT. One other voluntary eighteenth-century movement of importance in the history of English educational development should be mentioned here, as it formed the connecting link between the parochial-charity-school movement of the eighteenth century and the philanthropic period of the educational reformers of the early nineteenth.

This was the Sunday-School movement, first tried by John Wesley in Savannah, in 1737, but not introduced into England until 1763. The idea amounted to little, though, until practically worked out anew (1780) by Robert Raikes, a printer of Gloucester, and described by him (1783) in his _Gloucester Journal_ (R. 293), after he had experimented with it for three years. [8] His printed description of the Sunday-School idea gave a national impulse to the movement, and Sunday Schools were soon established all over England to take children off the streets on Sunday and provide them with some form of secular and religious instruction. [9]

The movement coincided with new religious, social, and economic forces which were at work, and which awakened an interest not only in the education of the children of the poorer working-cla.s.ses, but caused the upper and middle cla.s.ses in society to feel a new sense of responsibility for social and educational reform. The cold and unemotional religion of the English Church in the early eighteenth century had created an indifference to the simple truths and duties of the Gospels. The great religious revival under Wesley and Whitefield had challenged such an att.i.tude, and had done much to infuse a new spirit into religion and awaken a new sense of responsibility for social welfare. The rapid growth of population in the towns, following the beginnings of factory life (p.

493), had created new social and economic problems, and the neglect of children in the manufacturing towns had shocked many thinking persons. The way in which parents and children, freed from hard labor in the factories on Sundays, abandoned themselves to vice, drunkenness, and profanity caused many, among them Raikes himself (R. 293), to inquire if "something could not be done" to turn into respectable men and women "the little heathen of the neighborhood." The Sunday School was his answer, and the answer of many all over England. [10]

In 1785 "The Society for the Support and Encouragement of Sunday Schools in the different Counties of England" was formed with a view to establishing a Sunday School in every parish in the kingdom, and the Queen headed a subscription list, following a general appeal for funds. By 1787 it was estimated that 234,000 children in England and Wales were attending a Sunday School, and by 1792 the number had increased to half a million.

The Parliamentary return for 1818 showed 5463 Sunday Schools in existence, and 477,225 scholars; in 1835 the returns showed 1,548,890 scholars, half of whom attended no other school, and approximately 160,000 voluntary teachers. [11] In Manchester, then a city scourged with almost universal child-labor, the schools (1834) were in session five and a half hours on Sunday and two evenings a week. The moral and religious influence of these schools was important, and the instruction in reading and writing, meager as it was, filled a real need of the time.

OTHER VOLUNTARY SCHOOLS; "RAGGED SCHOOLS." The Charity Schools and the Sunday Schools were the two most conspicuous of the voluntary-organization type of undertakings for providing the poor children of England with the elements of secular and religious education. Many other organizations of an educational and charitable nature, aided also by many individual efforts, too numerous to mention, were formed with the same charitable and humanitarian end in view. Others, similar in type, charged a small fee, and hence were of the private-adventure type. Sunday Schools, day schools, evening schools, children's churches, bands of hope, clothing clubs, messenger brigades, s...o...b..ack brigades, orphans' schools, reformatory schools, industrial schools, ragged schools--these were some of the types that arose. Only one of these--"Ragged Schools"--will be described.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 182. A RAGGED SCHOOL PUPIL (From a photograph of a boy on entering the school; later changed into a respectable tradesman. From Guthrie)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 15. JOHN POUNDS'S RAGGED SCHOOL AT PORTSMOUTH]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 16. AN ENGLISH VILLAGE VOLUNTARY SCHOOL (Reproduced from an early nineteenth-century engraving, through the courtesy of William G. Bruce)]

The originator of the "Ragged Schools"--schools for the education of dest.i.tute children, waifs and strays not reached by other agencies--was a large-hearted cobbler of Portsmouth, by the name of John Pounds (1766- 1839), who divided his time between cobbling and rescue work among the poorest and most degraded children of his neighborhood. His school is shown in the picture facing this page. (Plate 15.) In his shoeshop he taught such children, free of charge, to read, write, count, cook their food, and mend their shoes. He was a schoolmaster, doctor, nurse, and playfellow to them all in one. His workshop was a room of only six by eighteen feet, yet in it he often had forty children under his instruction. His work set an example, and "Ragged Schools," or "Schools for the Dest.i.tute," began to be formed in many places by humanitarians.

These took the form of day schools, night schools, Sunday Schools, and the so-called industrial schools (R. 294). The instruction in most of them was entirely free, [12] but some charged a small fee, in a few cases as high as a shilling a month. It was one of these schools that Crabbe described when he wrote: [13]

Poor Reuben Dixon has the noisiest school Of ragged lads, who ever bowed to rule; Low in his price--the men who heave our coals, And clean our causeways, send him boys in shoals.

To see poor Reuben, with his fry beside- Their half-check'd rudeness and his half-scorned pride- Their room, the sty in which th' a.s.sembly meet, In the close lane behind the Northgate street; T' observe his vain attempts to keep the peace, Till tolls the bell, and strife and trouble cease, Calls for our praise; his labours praise deserves, But not our pity; Reuben has no nerves.

'Mid noise and dirt, and stench, and play, and prate, He calmly cuts the pen or views the slate.

In 1844 "The Ragged School Union" was formed in London, and maintained there many of the types of schools mentioned above. The "Const.i.tution and Rules of the a.s.sociation for the Establishment of Ragged Industrial Schools for Dest.i.tute Children in Edinburgh" (R. 294) gives a good idea as to the nature, support, and instruction in such schools. As late as 1870, when national education was first begun in England, there were about two hundred of these Ragged Schools in London alone, with about 23,000 children in them. Upon many such forms of irregular schools England depended before the days of national organization.

OTHER EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY INFLUENCES. During the latter half of the eighteenth century French Revolutionary thought [14] and American political action began to exert some influence on public opinion in England. The small upper ruling cla.s.s, alarmed at the developments in France, became confirmed in its opposition to any general popular education aside from a little reading, writing, counting, and careful religious training, while on the other hand men of more liberal outlook felt that popular enlightenment was a necessity to prevent the ma.s.ses from becoming stirred by inflammatory writings and speeches. The increasing distress in the agricultural regions, due to the rapid change of England from an agricultural to a manufacturing nation; the crowding of great numbers of working people into the manufacturing towns; and the social misery and political unrest following the Napoleonic wars all alike contributed to a feeling of need for any form of philanthropic effort that gave promise of alleviating the ills of society. There now grew up a small but influential body of thinkers who favored the maintenance of a system of general and compulsory education by the State, and the separation of the school from the Church. The most notable proponents of this new theory were Adam Smith, the Reverend T. R. Malthus, and the Anglo-American Thomas Paine. The first approached the question from an economic point of view, the second from an economic and biologic, and the third from the political. In 1776 Adam Smith's _Wealth of Nations_ appeared. This was one of the great books of all time. Among other matters he dealt with the question of education. He pointed out that English society was now becoming highly organized; that the new manufacturing life had completely changed the simple conditions of an earlier agricultural society; that in the narrow round of manufacturing duties and town life people tended to lose their inventiveness and to stagnate; and that the individual degeneracy which set in in a more highly organized type of society became a social danger of large magnitude. Hence, he argued (R. 295), it was a matter of state interest that "the inferior ranks of the people" be instructed to make them socially useful and to render them "less apt to be misled into any wanton or unnecessary opposition to measures of government." Accordingly, he held, the State had every right, not only to take over elementary education as a state function and a public charge, but also to make it free and compulsory.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 183. ADAM SMITH (1723-90)]

In 1798 the Reverend T. R. Malthus's _Essay on Population_ appeared. This was a precursor of the work of Darwin, and another of the great books of all time. He pointed out that population everywhere tended to outrun the means of subsistence, and that it was only prevented from doing so by preventive checks which involved much misery and vice and pauperism. To prevent pauperism each individual must exercise moral restraint and foresight, and to enable all to do this a widespread system of public instruction was a necessity (R. 296). The money England had spent in poor- relief he regarded as largely wasted, because it afforded no cure. In the general education of a people the real solution lay. He said:

We have lavished immense sums on the poor, which we have every reason to think have constantly tended to aggravate their misery,... It is surely a great national disgrace that the education of the lowest cla.s.ses in England should be left to a few Sunday Schools, supported by a subscription from individuals, who can give to the course of instruction in them any kind of bias which they may please. (R 296.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 184 REV. T. R. MALTHUS (1766-1834)]

Agreeing thoroughly with Adam Smith that a general diffusion of knowledge was a safeguard to society, he urged the teaching of the elements of political economy in the common schools to enable people to live better in the new type of compet.i.tive society. [15]

In 1791-92 Thomas Paine published his widely read _Rights of Man_. He expressed the French Revolutionary political theory, holding that government, while capable of great good were its powers only properly exercised, was, as organized, an evil. In a well-governed nation none would be permitted to go uninstructed, he held, and he would cut off poor- relief and make a state grant of 4 a year for every child under fourteen for its education, and would compel parents to send all children to school to learn reading, writing, and arithmetic.

Each of these three books had a long and a slowly c.u.mulative influence, and a small number of young and powerful champions of the idea of popular education as a public charge began, early in the nineteenth century, to urge action and to influence public opinion.

II. THE PERIOD OF PHILANTHROPIC EFFORT (1800-33)