A student's history of education

by Frank Pierrepont Graves

PHILANTHROPY IN EDUCATION

OUTLINE

In England, during the eighteenth century, there were numerous attempts to provide education for the poor through charity schools. The most important factor in maintaining these institutions was the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge.

Among other organizations, there sprang up a Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, which supported schools throughout the American colonies, except Virginia. Charity schools were also maintained in America by various other agencies.

An attempt was likewise made by Raikes of Gloucester, England, to establish Sunday schools, for training the poor to read, and these institutions spread throughout the British Isles and America.

A system of instruction through monitors, developed by Lancaster and Bell, while formal and mechanical, furnished a sort of substitute for national education in England, and, spreading throughout the United States, paved the way for state support, and greatly improved the methods of teaching.

‘Infant schools’ for poor children also grew up during the nineteenth century in France, England, and the United States, and found a permanent place in the national systems, but they soon became formalized and mechanical.

Philanthropic education proved a first step toward universal and national education.

Reconstructive Tendencies of the Eighteenth Century.—The eighteenth century cannot be regarded altogether as a period of revolution and destruction. While such a characterization describes the prevailing tendencies, there were also social and educational forces that looked to evolution and reform rather than to a complete disintegration of society and a return to primitive Even in Rousseau and the philanthropinists, living. Even in Rousseau, the arch-destroyer of traditions, we found many evidences of a reconstruction along higher lines, and such a positive movement was decidedly obvious in Basedow, Salzmann, and other philanthropinists. But in England reforms were especially apparent. In the land of the Briton, progress is proverbially gradual, and sweeping victories and Waterloo defeats in affairs of society and education are alike unwonted. The French tendency to cut short the social and educational process and to and especially in England. substitute revolution for evolution is out of accord with the spirit across the English Channel.

The Rise of Charity Schools in England.—And yet conditions in England at this time might well have incited people to revolution. Wages were low, employment Wretched conditions of laboring class. was irregular, and the laboring classes, who numbered fully one-sixth of the population, were clad in rags, lived in hovels, and often went hungry. Opportunities for elementary education were rare. The few schools that remained after the Reformation had largely lost their endowments or had been perverted into secondary institutions, and had suffered from incompetent and negligent masters and from the religious upheaval of the times. It was as a partial remedy for this situation, that, toward the close of the seventeenth century, there sprang up a succession of ‘charity schools,’ in Charity schools as remedy. which children of the poor were not only taught, but boarded and sometimes provided with clothes, and the boys were prepared for apprenticeship and the girls for domestic service. Probably about one thousand schools upon this general philanthropic basis had been established in England and Wales by the middle of the eighteenth century. Most of these had received substantial endowment, but numbers of them were maintained by private subscriptions.

The Schools of the S. P. C. K.—A factor that was even more important in opening charity schools was the ‘Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge’ (often abbreviated to S. P. C. K.). This society was Foundation, founded in 1698 by Reverend Thomas Bray, D. D., and four other clergymen and philanthropists. As a rule, management, its schools were established, supported, and managed by local people, but the Society guaranteed their maintenance, and assisted them from its own treasury whenever a stringency in funds arose. The S. P. C. K. also inspected schools, and advised and encouraged the local books, managers, and furnished bibles, prayer books, and catechisms at the cheapest rates possible. It made stringent regulations of eligibility for its schoolmasters, requiring, teachers, in addition to the usual religious, moral, pedagogical, and age tests, that they be members of the Church of England and approved by the minister of the parish. Each master was expected to teach the children their catechism, and purge them of bad morals and manners, and course. besides training them in reading, writing, and elementary arithmetic. The pupils were, moreover, clothed, boarded, and at times even lodged.

The number of charity schools of the S. P. C. K. grew by leaps and bounds, and by the close of the first decade there were eighty-eight within a radius of ten Development, miles of London. The gifts made had amounted to almost ten thousand pounds, and nearly one thousand boys and over four hundred girls had been sent out as apprentices. And before the middle of the eighteenth century the total number of these charity schools in England and Wales reached nearly two thousand, with about fifty thousand boys and girls in attendance. This increase in facilities for the education of the poor was not kindly received by many in the upper classes, who often felt that “there is no need for any learning at all for the meanest ranks of mankind: their business is to opposition and advocacy, labour, not to think.” But the charity schools had also many warm supporters, and Addison even believed that as a result of them there would be “few in the next generation who will not at least be able to write and read, and have not an early tincture of religion.” The benefactions for these institutions continued to increase for nearly half a century, but by the middle of the eighteenth decadence, century popular interest had waned. The subscriptions began to fall off, the system of inspection and the teaching became less effective, and the schools ceased to expand. Nevertheless, the S. P. C. K. had succeeded and influence. in impressing the Church of England with a sense of responsibility for the establishment of a national school system upon a religious basis. Its schools were largely continued throughout the eighteenth century, and in most instances after 1811 were absorbed by the new educational organization of the English Church, the so-called ‘National Society’ (see p. 239).

Other British Charity Schools.—These institutions of the Church of England society may be regarded as typical of British charity schools in general. There were, however, Nonconformist schools. also a dozen well-known foundations by nonconformists, including the ‘Gravel Lane School’ of Southwark, London, which was started over a decade before the S. P. C. K. was organized. And an interesting type of philanthropic institution known as ‘circulating ‘Circulating schools.’ schools’ was founded in Wales. These schools simply aimed to teach pupils to read the Bible in Welsh, and when this had been accomplished in one neighborhood, the school was transferred to another. But a much more important organization was the offshoot of the S. P. C. K., that arose chiefly to carry on charity schools in the American colonies. This association, the ‘Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foundation of the S. P. G. Foreign Parts,’ (commonly known as S. P. G.), was founded by Dr. Bray three years after the parent society, but no schools were established for several years.

The Charity Schools of the S. P. G.—The first school S. P. G. school in New York City,— of the S. P. G. was opened in New York City in 1709 under William Huddleston, who had been conducting a school of his own there. It was intended that the new school should follow the plan of the charity schools in England, but, while free tuition and free books were granted from the beginning, it was not until many years later that the means of clothing the children gratuitously was provided. Under different masters and with varying fortunes, the school was supported by the society until 1783, when the United States had finally cut loose from the Mother Country and started on a career of its own. Meanwhile Trinity Church had come more and more to take the initiative in the endowment and support of the school, and since the withdrawal of the now ‘Trinity Church School.’ society from America the institution has been known as ‘Trinity Church School.’

Schools of the same type were active throughout the colonies in the eighteenth century. We possess more or less complete accounts of these institutions in New Other colonies York and all the other colonies, except Virginia, where they were not believed to be needed. Except for size and local peculiarities, all of them closely resembled Attendance, the school in New York City. The attendance ranged from eighteen or twenty pupils to nearly four times that number. Girls were generally admitted, and occasionally equalled or exceeded the boys in number. As a rule, children of other denominations were received on the same terms as those of Church of England members, and at times nearly one-half the attendance was composed of dissenters, but often those outside the Church were given secondary consideration, or the catechism was so stressed by the school that the dissenting children were withdrawn and rival schools set up. The character course, and books. of the course of study in these charity schools is further indicated by the books furnished by the society. In packets of various sizes it sent over horn-books, primers, spellers, writing-paper and ink-horns, catechisms, psalters, prayer books, testaments, and bibles. There is also some evidence that secondary instruction was carried on intermittently in the various centers by the missionaries or by the schoolmasters in conjunction with their elementary work.