Part 1 (1/2)

Schools, School-Books and Schoolmasters

by W Carew Hazlitt

PREFACE

Although the co section has been thrown into the introductory form, it has seemed to me necessary to annex a few lines by way of preface, in order to explain that the following pages do not pretend to deal exhaustively with the subject of which they treat, but offer to public consideration a series of representative types and selected specimens To have barely enumerated all the authors and works on British education would fill a voluer than that in the hands of the reader

My main object has been to trace the sources and rise of our educational systeeneral view of the principles on which the groundwork of this syste, the narrative will be found to eht to be interesting

The bias of the voluraphical; but its production has involved a very considerable a books which proved serviceable, but a those which yielded me no contribution to my object

W C H

BARNES COMMON, SURREY, _November 1887_

SCHOOLS, SCHOOL-BOOKS, AND SCHOOLMASTERS

I

Introductory survey of the old syste--Salutary influence of the Church--Education of Englishmen in their own homes and on the Continent--Severity of early discipline--Dr Busby

I A fair body of authentic evidence has been collected, and is here before us, exhibiting and illustrating the origin and progress of the educational movement, and the opportunities which our ancestors acquired and improved for mental cultivation and literary developes lish and Scots, at all events, of for the rudi, and that the qualifications necessary and sufficient for ordinary persons and careers ithin the reach of all ence and resources

Moreover, when the taste for a , and for a circle of accomplishments, set in with the Stuarts, the appliances of every kind for gratifying and pro it were superabundant; and London and other cities swarmed with experts, who either attached the on their clients or receiving them at their own places of business The youth of farammar-school or the tutor to the University, enjoyed, froan to flock hither froreatly increased facilities for co themselves in special departht to belong to gentleular and general, its fashi+ons and sentian to overcouages and literatures than our own, and with the pursuits and amusements of countries which a narrow strip of sea separated, was the beneficial consequence of the French and Italian sympathies which the union of the crowns, after the death of the last of the Tudors, introduced into England

We are scarcely entitled to plue to look back on obsolete educational theories and principles The change which itness is of recent date and of political origin It is within an easily measurable number of years that the democratic wave has loosened and shaken the direct clerical jurisdiction over our schools and our studies What nificant fact can there be, in proof of the conservative bigotry of those who so long exercised control in schoolrooe, that a primer compiled in the first quarter of the sixteenth century was still substantially the standard authority less than a hundred years since?

When we regard a History of English Literature, and the works which either constitute its principal strength and glory, or even such as, rather from the circumstances connected with them than their own intrinsic importance, lend to it a certain incidental or special value, it beco the men and women whose names compose the roll of fa, what they were and remain?

As for the woovernesses and professors; and Ballard's volume on Learned Ladies will sheas capable of accomplishment in a few isolated and conspicuous cases, before any scheher education of the sex had been broached But it is with the men that I have lishreater number who have adopted other vocations, passed of course through the scholastic ordeal They were sent to school, and perhaps to college; and they had books put into their hands, as our boys have books put into theirs--books written by the scholars of the tie and opinion of the time

With the fewest exceptions, the boy was the father of the man, and what he had himself acquired he was content to see his children acquire There were centuries during which the lines of instruction and the scope of culture varied little

The greater part of our early English teachers came across the sea, or had been educated there; our best books were rammarians, and the iymnasia_ and academies of the Continent

II We all know that the Church in early ti and mischievous influence, did ress of literature and art, and was instruenius, whichclerical elelish civilisation in another equally ith of time the schools attached to the monasteries were not only the best, but alher class could be obtained They were, in point of fact, the precursors of the similar establishes; and it is further to be remarked, that, besides the ordinary features of a hta constant succession of candidates for the choir of the chapel It was through the h an ecclesiastical channel that we derived both our most ancient schools of music and our primitive educational machinery, the two alike destined to become sensible, in course of tiinable by their monastic institutors