The History Of Education by Ellwood P. Cubberley (epub e reader .txt) 📖

of the time. In Catholic France, and in some German Catholic lands as well, teaching congregations (p. 345), some of whose members had some rudimentary training for their work, were in charge of the existing parish schools. These provided a somewhat better type of teaching body than that frequently found in Protestant lands, though by the latter part of the eighteenth century the beginnings of teacher-training are to be seen in some of the German States. The Church of England, too, had by this time organized strong Societies [16] for the preparation of teachers for Church-of-England schools, both at home and abroad. In Dutch, German, and Scandinavian lands, and in colonies founded by these people in America, the parish school, closely tied up with and dependent upon the parish church, was the prevailing type of vernacular school, and in this the teacher was regarded as essentially an assistant to the pastor (R. 236) and the school as a dependency of the Church.

 

[FIG. 135. A “CHRISTIAN BROTHERS” SCHOOL

La Salle teaching at Grenoble. Note the adult type of dress of the boys.]

 

In England, in addition to regular parish schools and endowed elementary schools, three peculiar institutions, known as the Dame School, the religious charity-school, and the private-adventure or “hedge school” had grown up, and the first two of these had reached a marked development by the middle of the eighteenth century. Because these were so characteristic of early English educational effort, and also played such an important part in the American Colonies as well, they merit a few words of description at this point.

 

THE DAME SCHOOL. The Dame School arose in England after the Reformation.

By means of it the increasing desire for a rudimentary knowledge of the art of reading could be satisfied, and at the same time certain women could earn a pittance. This type of school was carried early to the American Colonies, and out of it was in time evolved, in New England, the American elementary school. The Dame School was a very elementary school, kept in a kitchen or living-room by some woman who, in her youth, had obtained the rudiments of an education, and who now desired to earn a small stipend for herself by imparting to the children of her neighborhood her small store of learning. For a few pennies a week the dame took the children into her home and explained to them the mysteries connected with learning the beginnings of reading and spelling. Occasionally a little writing and counting also were taught, though not often in England. In the American Colonies the practical situations of a new country forced the employment as teachers of women who could teach all three subjects, thus early creating the American school of the so-called “3 Rs”—“Reading, Riting, Rithmetic.” The Dame School appears so frequently in English literature, both poetry and prose, that it must have played a very important part in the beginnings of elementary education in England. Of this school Shenstone (1714-63) writes (R. 235): In every village marked with little spire, Embowered in trees, and hardly known to fame, There dwells, in lowly shed and mean attire, A matron old, whom we schoolmistress name, Who boasts unruly brats with birch to tame.

 

[Illustration: FIG. 136. AN ENGLISH DAME SCHOOL

(From a drawing of a school in the heart of London, after Barclay)]

 

The Reverend George Crabbe (1754-1832), another poet of homely life, writes (R. 235) of a deaf, poor, patient widow who sits And awes some thirty infants as she knits; Infants of humble, busy wives who pay, Some trifling price for freedom through the day.

 

This school flourished greatly in America during the eighteenth century, but with the coming of Infant Schools, early in the nineteenth, was merged into these to form the American Primary School.

 

[Illustration: FIG. 137. GRAVEL LANE CHARITY-SCHOOL, SOUTHWARK

Founded in 1687, and one of the earliest of the NonConformist English charity-schools. Still carrying on its work in the original schoolroom at the time this picture appeared, in Londina Illustrata in 1819.]

 

THE RELIGIOUS CHARITY-SCHOOL. Another thoroughly characteristic English institution was the church charity-school. The first of these was founded in Whitechapel, London, in 1680. In 1699, when the School of Saint Anne, Soho (R. 237), was founded by “Five Earnest Laymen for the Poore Boys of the Parish,” it was the sixth of its kind in England. In 1699 the “Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge” (S.P.C.K.) was founded for the purpose, among other things, of establishing catechetical schools for the education of the children of the poor in the principles of the Established Church (R. 238 b). In 1701 the “Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts” (S.P.G.) was also founded to extend the work of the Anglican Church abroad, supply schoolmasters and ministers, and establish schools, to train children to read, write, know and understand the Catechism, and fit into the teachings and worship of the Church. To develop piety and help the poor to lead industrious, upright, self-respecting lives, “to make them loyal Church members, and to fit them for work in that station of life in which it had pleased their Heavenly Father to place them,” were the principal objects of the Society.

 

All were taught reading, spelling, and the Catechism, and instruction in writing and arithmetic might be added. The training might also be coupled with that of the “schools of industry” (workhouse schools, as described by Locke [R. 217]) to augment the economic efficiency of the boy. Girls seem to have been provided for almost equally with boys, and, in addition to being taught to read and spell, were taught “to knit their Stockings and Gloves, to Mark, Sew, and make and mend their Cloathes.” Both boys and girls were usually provided with books and clothing, [17] a regular uniform being worn by the boys and girls of each school.

 

[Illustration: FIG. 138. A CHARITY-SCHOOL GIRL IN UNIFORM

Saint Anne’s, Soho, England]

 

The chief motive in the establishment of these schools, though, was to decrease the “Prophaness and Debauchery … owing to a gross Ignorance of the Christian Religion” (R. 237) and to educate “Poor Children in the Rules and Principles of the Christian Religion as professed and taught in the Church of England.” Writing, in 1742, Reverend Griffith Jones, an organizer for the S.P.C.K. in Wales, said: It is but a cheap education that we would desire for them [the poor], only the moral and religious branches of it, which indeed is the most necessary and indispensable part. The sole design of this charity is to inculcate upon such … as can be prevailed upon to learn, the knowledge and practice, the principles and duties of the Christian religion; and to make them good people, useful members of society, faithful servants of God, and men and heirs of eternal life.

 

These schools multiplied rapidly and soon became regular institutions, as the following table, showing the growth of the S.P.C.K. schools in London alone, shows:

 

Year Schools Boys Girls Total

1699 0 0 0 0

1704 54 1386 745 2131

1709 88 2181 1221 3402

1714 117 3077 1741 4818

 

In England and Ireland combined the Society had, by 1714, a total of 1073

schools, with 19,453 pupils enrolled, and by 1729 the number had increased to 1658, with approximately 34,000 pupils. From England the charity-school idea was early carried to the Anglican Colonies in America and became a fixed institution in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and somewhat in the Colonies farther south. In the Pennsylvania constitution of 1790 we find the following directions for the establishment of a state charity-school system to supplement the parish schools of the churches: Sec. I. The legislature shall, as soon as conveniently may be, provide, by law, for the establishment of schools throughout the State, in such manner that the poor may be taught gratis.

 

[Illustration: FIG. 130. A CHARITY-SCHOOL BOY IN UNIFORM

Saint Anne’s, Soho, England]

 

The first Pennsylvania school law of 1802 carried this direction into effect by providing for pauper schools in the counties, a condition that was not done away with until 1834. In New Jersey the system lasted until 1838.

 

THE PRIVATE-ADVENTURE, OR “HEDGE,” SCHOOL. This was a school analogous to the Dame School, but was kept by a man instead of a woman, and usually at his home or shop. Plate 15, showing a shoe cobbler teaching, represents one type of such schools. The term “hedge schools” arose in Ireland, where teaching was forbidden the Catholics, and secret schools arose in which priests and others taught what was possible. Of these McCarthy writes: [18]

 

On the highways and on the hillsides, in ditches and behind hedges, in the precarious shelter of the ruined walls of some ancient abbey, or under the roof of a peasant’s cabin, the priests set up schools and taught the children of their race.

 

The term soon came to be applied to any kind of a poor school, taught in an irregular manner or place. Similar irregular schools, under equivalent names, also were found in German lands, [19] the Netherlands, and in France, while in the American Colonies “indentured white servants” were frequently let out as schoolmasters. The following advertisement of a teacher for sale is typical of private-adventure elementary school-keeping during the colonial period.

 

[Illustration: FIG. 140. ADVERTISEMENT FOR A TEACHER TO LET

(From the American Weekly Mercury of Philadephia, 1735)]

 

These schools were taught by itinerant school-keepers, artisans, and tutors of the poorer type, but offered the beginnings of elementary education to many a child who otherwise would never have been able to learn to read. In the early eighteenth century these schools attained a remarkable development in England.

 

A new influence of tremendous future importance—general reading—was now coming in; the vernacular was fast supplanting Latin; newspapers were being started; little books or pamphlets (tracts) containing general information were being sold; books for children and beginners were being written; the popular novel and story had appeared; [20] and all these educative forces were creating a new and a somewhat general desire for a knowledge of the art of reading. This in turn caused a new demand for schools to teach the long-locked-up art, and this demand was capitalized to the profit of many types of people.

 

THE APPRENTICING OF ORPHANS AND CHILDREN OF THE POOR. The compulsory apprenticing of the children of the poor, as we have seen (p. 326), was an old English institution, and workhouse training, or the so-called “schools of industry” became, by the eighteenth century, a prominent feature of the English care of the poor. These represented the only form of education supported by taxation, and the only form of education to which Parliament gave any attention during the whole of the eighteenth century. This type of institution also was carried to the Anglican Colonies in America, as we have seen in the documents for Virginia (R. 200 a), and became an established institution in America as well.

 

The apprenticing of boys to a trade, a still older institution, was also much used as a means for training youths for a life in the trades, not only in England and the American Colonies, but throughout all European lands as well. The conditions surrounding the apprenticing of a boy had by the eighteenth century become quite fixed. The “Indenture of Apprenticeship” was drawn up by a lawyer, and by it the master was carefully bound to clothe and feed the boy, train him properly in his trade, look after his morals, and start him in life at the end of his apprenticeship. This is well shown in the many records which have been preserved, both in England (R. 242) and the American Colonies (R. 201).

For many boys this type of education was the best