ENGLISH NATIONAL
EDUCATION
A Sketch
of the Rise of Public Elementary Schools in England
By
H. HOLMAN, M.A.
Formerly Scholar of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge
and one time
Professor of Education at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth Author of "An
Introduction to Education" &c.
LONDON
BLACKIE. & SON, LIMITED, 50 OLD BAILEY, E.C.
GLASGOW AND DUBLIN
1898
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THE ENGLISH NATIONAL EDICATION
PREFACE
Not wealth but the power to produce wealth is the true measure of the commercial prosperity of
a country. Not men but minds are the first requisites for superiority in production. Not handcraft but
braincraft is the prime source of productive excellence Not a worker but an intelligent worker is the
mainstay of the industrial world. Not a machine but the creative and guiding intelligence is the greatest
economizer. Mind is the great parent machine, and the great master machine The mechanical is never
the highest expression of the rational Therefore, the best capital of a nation is the brain-power of its
people
What did Prussia do when humbled to the dust by France? Reformed her schools. What did
France do when crushed by Germany? Reformed her schools. The competition of nations is a battle of
minds. Not the mere fighter, but the thinker is victor to day. It would appear that the French were not
less heroic, but worse organized, in their last great war Germany is our rival in trade because she is our
superior in schools Just as Waterloo was said to have been won in the playing-fields (and class-rooms
— epigrams are always incomplete) of Eton, so the world's commerce is being won and lost in our
schools.
If this be so, our country can have, in practical affairs, no higher interest, no supremer duty, and
no more valuable investment than is to be found in securing an unequalled system of national
education. It behoves every intelligent citizen, there fore, to know what is involved in this matter, what
has been done, and what is still required We ought to concern ourselves very seriously about what is
being done to raise to its highest powers the collective reason of the nation, by developing the minds of
the individuals, and whether we are most effectively cultivating, improving, and expanding the rational
resources — the chief beginning and chief end of national greatness — of the kingdom.
The aim of this volume is to supply this knowledge, with regard to our public elementary
schools, so far as that is possible within the limits allowed by a small handbook. Only the main stream
of development has been followed, and even that has had to be treated somewhat slightly in parts. The
earlier periods have been most fully treated, because the more recent are likely to be more or less
familiar to the readers, and because it is the beginnings of things which most often afford us the truest
in-sight into their nature and value. To the reformer such know-ledge is indispensable, or he may
destroy what he most desires to develop; whilst even the revolutionist will best know what not to do,
after his undoing, by a study of the real nature of what he means to improve out of existence. There is
so preponderating an amount of the past in the present, that we can only fully know the latter through
the former.
There is, therefore, an endeavour in the following pages to set forth the ideals which determined
the actions of those who built up the present system of public elementary schools, and the actual steps
which they took to realize their aims. The inner life of the school: its organization, methods, teachers,
subjects, and scholars; the inner intentions, so far as revealed by words and deeds, of the promoters of
schools; and the real results achieved, are the main topics which we seek to describe. Whether the
country has been establishing a system of national education, or only a partial system of schools, and
whether we are strengthening the mind or only storing the memory, are questions which have to be
frequently asked whilst reading the history of its efforts. Schools, scholars, and teachers are
indispensable, but, having got them, it then becomes the more important that we should have a
scientific system of education — that is, a method of dealing with the mental powers, based upon a
scientific knowledge of them, and designed to develop and perfect them — and that our well-trained
teachers should be scientific educators. These would seem to be the standards of criticism by which to
judge the value of what has already been done, and what remains to be accomplished for national
education.
H. H.
WOODFORD GREEN,
April, 1898.
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CONTENTS
Preface _____________________________________________________________________ 1
Chapter I. The Reign of the Voluntary System. _____________________________________ 3
Chapter II. The Reign of the Voluntary System — Continued. _______________________ 12
Chapter III. The Days of Doles. ________________________________________________ 23
Chapter IV. The Committee of Council on Education. ______________________________ 30
Chapter V. The Committee of Council on Education — Continued. ___________________ 39
Chapter VI. A Semi-state System._______________________________________________ 53
Chapter VII. A Semi-state System — Continued. __________________________________ 66
Chapter VIII. Codes and Cram. ________________________________________________ 76
Chapter IX. The Partial Reign of Law. __________________________________________ 86
Chapter X. The Partial Reign of Law — Continued.________________________________ 99
Chapter XI. Retrospect and Prospect.___________________________________________ 112
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The business of education is not, as I think, to make them perfect in any one of the sciences, but
so to open and dispose their minds, as may lest make them capable of any, when they shall apply
themselves to it. — JOHN LOCKE.
The primary principle of education is the determination of the pupil to self-activity — the doing
nothing for him which he is able to do for himself. — SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON.
In education the process of self-development should be en-couraged to the fullest extent. —
HERBERT SPENCER.
English National Education.
CHAPTER I.
THE REIGN OF THE VOLUNTARY SYSTEM.
Primary education, for the children of the working-classes, did not exist, in any general sense,
till the beginning of the eighteenth century. It is true that almost all the grammar and other endowed
schools, so freely founded during the sixteenth century and earlier, made provision for the education of
"poor scholars". But either this had never meant much more than exhibitions, as we should now call
them, for the children of those whose parents' means had become very much reduced, or it may have
been intended only for a few bright and fortunate individuals, who, by some happy accident or good
fortune, came under the favourable notice of those who were able to secure their admission to a school.
Thus it is said that George Abbott, who afterwards became Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University and
Archbishop of Canterbury, was first brought into notice because of some remarkable circumstances
attending his birth. He was born in 1562, and his mother was the wife of a poor clothworker at
Guildford. Before his birth, his mother dreamt that, if she could eat a jack or a pike, her child would
become a great man. When taking a pail of water from the river which flowed by the house, she found
therein a jack, which she forthwith cooked, and ate nearly the whole of it. The matter was noised
abroad, and several persons of quality, on hearing of it, offered to stand sponsors at the child's
christening. The offer was gladly accepted, and, doubtless as a result of this, the boy was after-wards
sent to a Free Grammar School in the town, founded by a grocer of London, in 1553, for thirty "of the
poorest men's sons" of Guildford, to be taught to read and write English, and cast accounts perfectly, so
that they should be fitted for apprentices. From the grammar school he went to Balliol College, Oxford.
His elder brother was also fortunate, and became Bishop of Salisbury; whilst his younger brother
became a rich London merchant, Lord Mayor, and member of Parliament.
But such remarkable successes were very few and far between, and only serve to impress upon
one the neglected condition and profound ignorance of the great majority. Speaking of the general
condition of things at this period (the sixteenth century), with regard to the education of the children of
the very poor, Mr. A. F. Leach, a writer of great authority, says: "We may approach this matter from
another point of view, and ask whether it is likely that, in days when the labouring-classes were still
serfs, and Parliament actually petitioned the Crown against their being allowed to go to the Universities
or Schools, that bishops and lords and county gentlemen would, at great expense and labour, found
educational institutions for the benefit of half a dozen poor choristers? The poor who are spoken of in
these old foundations are not the poor in our sense, the destitute poor, unsuccessful among the
labouring classes, but the relative poor, the poor relations of the upper classes. That occasionally bright
boys were snatched up out of the ranks of the real poor and turned into clerics, to become lawyers, civil
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servants, bishops, is not to be doubted. But it was the middle class, whether country or town, the
younger sons of the nobility and farmers, the lesser landholders, the prosperous tradesmen, who created
a demand for education, and furnished the occupants of Grammar Schools."
The same writer says that of 159 schools existing at the time of the Reformation, of which
records still remain, 93 were Grammar Schools which were not free, 21 were Free Grammar Schools,
23 were Song Schools (in which boys were trained for church choirs, and received a kind of superior
elementary education), and 22 were Elementary Schools. Now these last named were by no means
schools for the very poor, but schools in which only reading, writing, and arithmetic were taught. In
some of them only reading was taught, in others only writing, and in others only arithmetic. The class
of pupils who attended such schools may be judged of by the fact that Sir Isaac Newton was sent to a
village school, where he was taught reading, writing, and arithmetic; and that the great Dr. Johnson was
first taught reading by a dame who kept a school for little children in Lichfield. Primary schools such
as these appear to have been first established in the fourteenth century; but Mr. Herbert Spencer holds
that there were elementary schools in the villages as early as the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
But most of the really primary schools which existed were entirely private in their nature, and
there seems to be no evidence of any endowment or corporate control of them, except in so far as we
might include the Song Schools. Indeed, the nearest approach to anything like state education was in
the reign of Alfred the Great, who is said to have given one-eighth of his whole revenue to founding; a
school for the sons of the nobles. He is also believed to have re-established many of the old monastic
and episcopal schools. It was his desire that "all the youth of England ... should be well able to read
English". He compelled every person of rank or substance, who, either from age or want of capacity,
was unable to teach himself to read, to send to school either his son or a kinsman, or, if he had neither,
a servant, so that at least he might be read to by some one. Thus some at least of the very poor
doubtless received an education from the state in those days.
Also, inasmuch as some of the Grammar Schools were established by royal charter, and
sometimes endowed from the royal exchequer, or were under some kind of public control as to their
endowments, they may be said to have been semi-state institutions. And since, in some cases, little
more than reading and writing, and Latin, with a little arithmetic, were taught, these were hardly more
than primary schools. Few besides the clergy and those belonging to the learned professions, such as
law and medicine, knew much, if anything, of Latin. Thus, Dekker, a dramatist who lived and wrote at
the beginning of the seventeenth century, makes one of his characters, a man of substance, who is
asked, "Can you read and write, then?" reply, "As most of your gentlemen do — my bond has been
taken with my mark at it".
From the earliest times there have been schools, conducted by the clergy, in which the sons of
the very poor might find a place and obtain the learning which might lead to their rising to fame and
fortune. For example, it is recorded that Sampson, Abbot of St. Edmund's, a son of the people, rose to
be a bishop, and became a peer of parliament, during the reign of Richard I. But such opportunities
were almost wholly confined to those who were desirous of entering the church, and were thought
capable of being of service to her interests. In fact, up to quite recent times, the ranks of the clergy were
largely recruited from the sons of the labouring poor, in the same way as the clergy of the Roman
Catholic Church are, for example, in Ireland at the present day. In former times education was, for the
most part, of the church, by the church, and for the church; and it was only as the advantage, or
necessity, of extending it to the laity, for the purpose of confirming and expanding the influence and
authority of the church, was realized, that knowledge was more generally imparted. A very striking
piece of evidence of this limitation is given us in the old law called the Benefit of Clergy, which was
passed in the eleventh century. By this law a cleric could claim to be handed over from a secular to a
clerical court. After a time the ability to read was considered sufficient evidence to establish the claim
to this privilege, which was not finally abolished till 1706.
Two other ways in which a few of the children of the people received what may be called a
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