Thisessay will be focusing on education systems for children before and after theeducation act that was established in the 1870’s. Seeing children everywhere goto school five days a week, for approximately 7-8 hours, seems very natural tous. From a very young age children are put into schooling and it is expected offrom the society and government. Until the 1870’s children were not seen to bemuch different from their parents and lived the same lifestyle that theirparents would, even if it meant working. In today’s society children are apartfrom the adults with their own meals, entertainment, clothing and so on. Some like Nikolas Rose (1999) go as far as tosay that “Childhood is themost intensively governed sector of personal existence.
… The modernchild has become the focus of innumerable projects that purport to safeguard itfrom physical, sexual, or moral danger, to ensure its ‘normal’ development, toactively promote certain capacities of attributes such as intelligence, educability,and emotional stability” (p.
124)Thisshows how much a child’s childhood experience is linked to their schooling andeducation system, these childhood experiences are carried on with them throughadolescence and adulthood. The Enlightenment thought of children as theirfuture and the ones who would determine how their future would be. The child isviewed to be blank state by the likes of John Locke, so these blank states needto be transformed into balanced and independent adults. If you think of it thisis a lot of pressure to put on someone of a young age of 4-11, this pressurewill definitely impact their childhood with unhealthy motivation to succeed inschool.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau thoughtthat aim of education was to preserve and prolongation of childhood, since thechild is assumed to have a blank state then they are clean and whole so it isideal to have a population full of human with these attributes however, is it unhealthyfor the child and their experiences as a child. Industrial Revolution (FactoryChildren)Beforeschooling became compulsory in the 1870’s children had different roles to playin the society, with the industrial revolution came classes, where the wealthyand the industrial workers were grouped in to their economic and social class. Duringthis time, there were 1120 under 14s for every 1000 adults aged 25-60(Cunnigham, 2006) (pg 161). Depending on the family you’ve come from childhoodwas either wonderful or terrible, this was dependent on the economic status ofthe family you came from. For the working-class children were part of the harshways to make ends meet and survive.
Children would work in factories in veryharsh conditions and long hours. Textiles were one of the factories that mostchildren worked at, the factories sometimes went on for 24hrs a day which leadto children as young as six years of age worked overnight shifts. The work theydid was dangerous and very exhausting (Horn, 1994). Many didn’t seechild labour as a problem because childhood didn’t have any importance or thethought to be protected like what we think of childhood today and most peopleaccepted the idea of “cooperative family economy, in which all householdmembers contributed to the material support of the family” (Mintz & Kellogg, 1988). There was early Factory Acts, in 1802, 1819and 1833, which didn’t allow children under the age of nine to be employed in avariety of work mills. Further acts in the 1844 lowered the minimum age to 8but introduced daily schooling and reduction of work hours to maximum sevenhours in a day. The fact that children were working in the industrialrevolution wasn’t bothering but it was their work in textile mills, mines andchimney sweeps which most dramatically effected the reformers and philanthropistswho campaigned against it.
The work environment was brutal and violent, thefirst Factory Act in the 1802’s against child labour was ineffective due to theexpansion of the industry and introduction to steam power. There were severalways in which reformers attacked child labour, their focus was on moral andphysical consequences. Hugh Cunningham has previously argued that these objectionsled to the “utilitarian” argument that child labour threatened the reproductionof society.
This he continues, implied that ‘there was a proper way to rearchildren, one… which would recognise that childhood had its own special characteristics (Hendrick, 2003). Middle classchildren during this time, especially boys, went to school for much longer thanchildren did in the past. This new focus of education was mostly for thespirit. Sunday SchoolsSundayschools was set up by Hanna More (1745-1833) she was part of the wealthy evangelicalswho wanted to reinvigorate the Church of England which you could say is themodified form of Methodism. They were named the Clapham Sect, it’s members westrongly opposed to slavery and were dedicated to missionary work, they werealso involved in the foundation of the British and Foreign Bible Society in1804.
In 1787 Wilberforce, who was a member of the sect, from various visits toCowslip Green, Wrington announced that “something had to be done for Cheddar”.Apart from the poverty he was upset about the lack of spiritual comfort, out ofthis the idea emerged that a Sunday school needed to be opened. Two years laterHanna and Martha More opened a school in Cheddar. Their aim for schooling wasn’tto bring about a good social environment for the children but to preserve thesocial stability that existed, ‘Beautifulis the order of society’, Hannah wrote, ‘when each according to his place, payswilling honour to his superiors – when servants are prompt to obey theirmasters, and masters deal kindly with their servants; – when high, low, richand poor – when landlord and tenant, master workmen, minister and people… sitdown satisfied with his own place’ (Simon, 1964). Their plan forinstructing the poor was very limited and strict to make sure they were stillin their order of society “They learn of week-days such coarse works as may fitthem for servants. I allow of no writing for the poor.
My object is not toteach dogmas and opinions, but to form the lower classes to habits of industryand virtue (More, 1859).” Dame SchoolsOtherthan Sunday schools there were also Dame schools that were run by elderly Damesfrom their homes, the parents of the children had paid for the fees andaccording to the sum you paid was the what kind of education your child receivedsome studied reading and writing and for some it was just a childmindingservice. These schools were often found in the areas of poverty, the standardsof the school varied greatly too, some were just overseen by illiterate womenwhich taught foundations in reading, writing and arithmetic. These schools ranup till the time when schools became compulsory in the 1670’s.Ragged SchoolsAnoption for the urban children who were less privileged was the “ragged schools”named after the children that were clothed raggedly it was part schooling partsocial services that offered basic education in addition to meals and clothing.Lord Shaftesbury became to be chairman of Ragged schools and championed themovement for 39yrs.
Several different schools claim to have been the firsttruly free school for poor. Children who attended the schools were oftenexcluded from the ones that went to Sunday school, because of their unkempt appearanceand often ‘challenging’ behaviour. Children of the working class and the middleclass didn’t socialise due to this barrier they had. The “Voluntary” schoolsInthe 1808 the Royal Lancastrian Society was created to promote schools using theMonitorial System of Joseph Lancaster. This era you could say was the closestto the school systems that we have now, the education was in reading, writing,arithmetic and non-denominational Christianity. In 1811, the National Societyfor Promoting Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Churchwas established by the Anglican Church. The monitorial system made it so theparents would only pay minimal fees since the teachers would teach advancedstudents and these students would then control and instruct the lower grades. Theenvironment of these classes was reported to be very large class, lack ofindividual instruction, a high noise level and general disorder and the use ofthe monitorial system.
The education that the females had were worse than theboys were getting “Girls leaving school can scarcely read, or write, andcertainly not spell, and only a few can cast up a simple sum. They have noknowledge of needlework, and cannot cut out or even mend… (Hurt, 1974).June Purvis, author of the sole book-length study of Victorian working-classwomen’s education, notes that schools of the aforementioned (“National” and”British”) societies enrolled more boys than girls, and in some cases set theage entry two years later for girls than for boys (Purvis, 1989). As suggested by thepassage just quoted, girls’ curricula were heavily weighted toward needlework, andeven that was often neglected. In Hope Deferred, Josephine Kamm reports thatthe managers of one local school submitted the same garment for inspection yearafter year, made not by pupils, as claimed, but by an old woman in the village (Kamm, 1965).Theeducation ActTheelementary education act in 1870 which is commonly known as fosters education act,this set the framework that school for children between the ages of 5 and 12 inEngland and Wales. This act made it compulsory for public taxes to be used to supportreligious schools, the government also offered special building grants toalready existing educational bodies, these were mostly religious schools DerekGillard reports that between 1870 and 1885, the number of Church of Englandschools rose from 6,382 to 11,864, and Roman Catholic schools from 350 to 892(Ch.
3, n. pag.), these church schools would continue into the next century andbeyond. The system was both voluntary denominational schools andnon-denominational state schools. After the church schools, school boards wereformed, members of the London School Board were elected, London was divide intoten electoral districts. E.
R. Robson was the first SBL Architect appointed in1872 and succeeded by T.J. Bailey. Board school classes were large, inclassroom that were designed to accommodate up to eighty students. Teacherswere paid annually on the basis of examinations mainly in reading, writing andarithmetic.
It was compulsory for children between the ages of 5 and 13 toattend schools in their district and attendance of the students were enforcedby an Attendance Officer. According to Purvis, this curriculum may have led tothe teaching of arithmetic to girls for the first time (Purvis, 1989) but there wasteaching of writing from dictation, oral reading of short passages and simple arithmetic,which constituted most of the curriculum. An examination of the “Standards ofEducation” was issued by the Education Department in 1872 indicated the levelof achievement required. These standards weren’t high and rates of failure washigh, inspectors reported that 53% of pupils failed one of the first fourgrades in reading, and 57% in writing (Vincent, 1981).
Much like today,even with schooling being compulsory, the families’ income had a great effect onthe pupils. Some were forced to work for much of the year or removed fromschool earlier than they wished. The poet John Clare had worked in the fieldsfrom earliest boyhood: “As to my schooling, I think never a year pass’d me tillI was 11 or 12, but 3 months or more at the worst of times was luckily sparedfor my improvement” (Vincent, 1981). John Harrisrecalled that “At nine years of age I was taken from school and put to work inthe fields, to drive the horses in the plough” (Boos, n.d.).
The servant Henry White had been removed from school for a year at age eight tocare for several younger siblings, and finally, “having reached the mature ageof ten years and my parents having to provide for the wants of several otherlittle ones, I had to prepare to take my part in bearing the burden and heat ofthe day. It was about Harvest time, the middle of August 1832, when I commencedto toil for my daily bread” (Boos, n.d.).
