CHAPTER XXIV
[1] Prussia and Holland possibly form exceptions in the matter. Frederick the Great (p. 474) was noted for his liberality in religious matters. There different varieties of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews were all tolerated, and there they mingled and intermarried. So well were the Jews received that the type—German-Jew—is to-day familiar to the world.
[2] As early as 1670, in the celebrated Bates case, the English court held that a teacher could not be dispossessed from his school for teaching without the Bishop's license, if he were the nominee of the founder or patron. This led (p. 438) to a great increase in endowed schools.
[3] In the Cox case (1700), another important legal decision, the English court held that there was not and never had been any ecclesiastical control over any schools other than grammar schools, and that teachers in elementary schools did not need to have a license from the Bishop. The year following, in the case of Rex v. Douse, the same principle was affirmed in even clearer language.
[4] It was not until 1779 that an Act (19 Geo. III, c. 44) granted full freedom to Dissenters to teach. In 1791 a supplemental Act (31 Geo. III, c. 32, s. 13-14) granted similar liberty to Roman Catholics.
[5] It was this second Society that did notable work in the Anglican
Colonies of America, and particularly in and about New York City (p. 369).
See Kemp, W. W., Support of Schools in Colonial New York by the S.P.G.
(New York, 1913.)
[6] Begun, in 1704, in London, these were continued yearly there until 1877. They were also preached for more than a century in many other places. To these sermons the children marched in procession, wearing their uniforms, and a collection for the support of the schools was taken. Of the first of these occasions in London, Strype; in his edition of Stow, says: "It was a wondrous surprising, as well as a pleasing sight, that happened June the 8th, 1704, when all the boys and girls maintained at these schools, in their habits, walked two and two, with their Masters and Mistresses, some from Westminster, and some through London; with many of the Parish ministers going before them; and all meeting at Saint Andrews', Holburn, Church, where a seasonable sermon was preached… upon Genesis xviii, 19, I know him that he will command his children, etc., the children (about 2000) being placed in the galleries."
[7] "The religious revival under Wesley owed, perhaps, more than is generally suspected to the Christian teaching in these new and humble elementary schools." (Montmorency, J. E. G. de, The Progress of Education in England, p. 54.)
[8] He gathered together the children (90 at first) employed in the pin factories of Gloucester, and paid four women a shilling each to spend their Sundays in instructing these poor children "in reading and the Church Catechism."
[9] Sunday being a day of rest and the mills and factories closed, the children ran the streets and spent the day in mischief and vice. In the agricultural districts of England farmers were forced to take special precautions on Sundays to protect their places and crops from the depredations of juvenile offenders.
[10] "In a very special way they met the sentiment of the times. They were cheap—many were conducted by purely voluntary teachers—they did not teach too much, and they had the further merit of not interfering with the work of the week." (Birchenough, C., History of Elementary Education in England and Wales, p. 40.)
[11] In a Manchester Sunday School, in 1834, there were 2700 scholars and 120 unsalaried teachers, all but two or three of whom were former pupils in the Sunday Schools, now teaching others, free of charge, in return for the advantages once given them.
[12] "The amount of instruction rarely, if ever, exceeds the first four rules of arithmetic, with reading and writing. The class of children instructed is presumed to be of the very poorest, living in the most crowded districts. No doubt a large number come under this designation, but not a few better-to-do persons are found ready to take advantage for their children of the free instruction thus held out to them, and even at times almost pressed upon them." (Bartley, George C. T., The Schools for the People, p. 385.)
[13] The Reverend George Crabbe (1754-1832). "The schools of the Borough."
[14] French Revolutionary thought "represented an attack on over- interference, vested interests, superstition, and tyranny of every form. It showed a marked propensity to ignore history, and to judge everything by its immediate reasonableness. It pictured a society free from all laws and coercion, freed from all clerical influence and ruled by benevolence, a society in which all men had equal rights and were able to attain the fullest self-realization. In its strictly educational aspects, it demanded the withdrawal of education from the Church and the setting up of a state system of secular instruction." (Birchenough, C., History of Elementary Education in England and Wales, p. 20.)
[15] The ideas of Malthus were especially offensive to his brother clergymen, and created quite a furor. Many regarded him as an insane and unorthodox fanatic. A prevailing idea of the time was that of a "beautiful order Providentially arranged," and it was the custom to give everything a rose-colored hue. The poor were thought to be contented in their poverty, and the rich and the aristocratic considered themselves divinely appointed to rule over them. Malthus saw the fallacy of such thinking, and stated matters in the light of biologic and political truths.
[16] Foster, John, An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance, p. 259.
[17] Bell, Reverend Dr. Andrew, An Experiment in Education made at the Male Asylum at Madras, Suggesting a System by which a School or a Family may teach itself under the Superintendence of the Master or Parent. London, 1797.
[18] Lancaster, Joseph, Improvements in Education as it Respects the Industrial Classes of the Community. London, 1803; New York, 1807.
[19] Both Bell and Lancaster worked with great energy to organize schools after their respective plans, and quarreled with equal energy as to who originated the idea. While both probably did, the idea nevertheless is older than either. In 1790 Chevalier Paulet organized a monitorial school in Paris; while the English schoolmaster, John Brinsley (1587-1665), in his Ludus Literarius, or the Grammar Schooles (1612), laid down the monitorial principle in explicit language.
[20] This Society adopted, as a fundamental principle, "that the national religion should be made the foundation of national education, and according to the excellent liturgy and catechism adopted by our Church for that purpose."
[21] "When Lancaster had his famous interview with King George III, that monarch was impressed, as he naturally might be, by the statement that one master 'could teach five hundred children at the same time.' 'Good,' said the King; 'Good,' echoed a number of wealthy subscribers to Lancaster's projects." (Binns, H. B., A Century of Education, p. 299.)
[22] In 1807 Mr. Whitbread, an ardent supporter of schools, said, in an address before the House of Commons: "I cannot help noticing that this is a period particularly favorable for the institution of a national system of education, because within a few years there has been discovered a plan for the instruction of youth which is now brought to a state of great perfection, happily combining rules by which the object of learning must be infallibly attained with expedition and cheapness, and holding out the fairest prospect of utility to mankind."
[23] When Lancaster first hired the large hall in Borough Road which later became an important training-college, and opened it as a mutual- instruction school, he announced: "All that will may send their children, and have them educated freely, and those who do not wish to have education for nothing, may pay for it if they please."
[24] In 1820, Brougham, in introducing his "Bill for the Better Education of the Poor in England and Wales," gave statistics as to the progress of education at that time in England. His estimate as to the numbers being educated were:
430,000 in endowed and privately managed schools;
220,000 in monitorial schools;
50,000 being educated at home;
100,000 educated only in Sunday Schools;
53,000 being educated in dame schools.
From these figures he argued that one in fifteen of the population of England and one in twenty in Wales were attending some form of school, but with only one in twenty-four in London. The usual period of school attendance for the poorer classes was only one and a half to two years.
[25] Known as the Health and Morals of Apprentices Act. It limited the working hours of apprentices to twelve; forbade night work; required day instruction to be provided in reading, writing, and arithmetic; required church attendance once a month; and provided for the registration and inspection of factories. The Act was very laxly enforced, and its chief value lay in the precedent of state interference which it established.
[26] Whitbread proposed a national system of rate-aided schools to provide all children in England with two years of free schooling, between the ages of seven and fourteen.
[27] See J. E. G. de Montmorency's State Intervention in English Education, pp. 248-85, for Brougham's address to the Commons in 1820 on "The Education of the Poor"; and pp. 285-324 for his address before the House of Lords in 1835, on "The Education of the People." Both addresses contain an abundance of data as to existing conditions and needs.
[28] So called because the House of Lords rejected the first two passed by the Commons, and finally accepted the third only because the King had agreed to create enough new Lords to pass the bill unless it was enacted by the upper House.
[29] This was a development of the monitorial system of training, and was virtually an apprenticeship form of teacher-training.
[30] In 1885 the same liberty was extended to rural laborers. This added two million more voters, and gave England almost full manhood suffrage. Finally, in 1918, some five million women were added to the voting classes.
[31] Nearly two million children had been provided with school accommodations, three fourths of which had been done by those associated with the Church of England. In doing this the Church had spent some £6,270,000 on school buildings, and had raised some £8,500,000 in voluntary subscriptions for maintenance. The Government had also paid out some £6,500,000 in grants, since 1833. In 1870 it was estimated that 1,450,000 children were on the registers of the state-aided schools, while 1,500,000 children, between the ages of six and twelve, were unprovided for.
[32] Speech before the House of Commons, July 23, 1870.
[33] "The clergy of the National Society exhibited amazing energy and succeeded, according to their own account, in doing in twelve months what in the normal course of events would have taken twenty years. By the end of the year they had lodged claims for 2885 building grants, out of a total of 3342. They also set to work, without any governmental assistance, to enlarge their schools and so increased denominational accommodation enormously. The voluntary contributions in aid of this work have been estimated at over £3,000,000. At the same time the annual subscriptions doubled…. By 1886, over 3,000,000 places had been added, one-half of which were due to voluntary agencies, and Voluntary Schools were providing rather more than two-thirds of the school places in the country. In 1897 the proportion had fallen to three-fifths." (Birchenough, C., History of Elementary Education, pp. 138, 140.)
[34] These were the seven endowed secondary boarding schools—Winchester (1382), Eton (1440), Shrewsbury (1552), Westminster (1560), Rugby (1567), Harrow (1571), and Charterhouse (1611)—and the two endowed day schools,— Saint Paul's (1510) and Merchant Taylors' (1561).
[35] At least one hundred towns, the Report showed, with a population of five thousand or over had no endowed secondary school, and London, with a population then (1867) of over three million, had but twenty-six schools and less than three thousand pupils enrolled. All the new manufacturing cities were in even worse condition than London.
[36] The University of London was originally founded in 1836, and reorganized in 1900.
[37] The scientist Thomas Huxley was a London School Board member, and, speaking as such, he expressed the views of many when he said: "I conceive it to be our duty to make a ladder from the gutter to the university along which any child may climb."
[38] Royal (Bryce) Commission on Secondary Education, vol. I, p. 299. London, 1895.
[39] Known as the "Education Act, 1918" (8 and 9 Geo. V, ch. 39). The Act has been reprinted in full in the Biennial Survey of Education, 1916-18, of the United States Commissioner of Education, in the chapter on Education in Great Britain. It also has been reprinted as an appendix to Moore, E. C., What the War teaches about Education, New York, 1919.