At the same time as the French Revolution was bursting onto the political stage in France, equally cataclysmic events were taking place in England, but this time in the arena of economics. The industrial revolution was to be as great a turning point in England as the Revolution in France.
Foreign trade had grown spectacularly following the navigation Acts of 1651 and 1660 which subordinated the colonies to Parliament and made trade to the colonies the monopoly of English shipping. At the end of the 18th century
foreign trade was three times greater than at the beginning. A large proportion of this came from the slave trade which was believed to be the most profitable of all branches of English commerce and this along with the ‘organized looting’ of India led to large flows of capital into the country (Hill, 1967). Capital investment in industry also came from Dutch investors (after the defeat of the Dutch in the trade wars, 1652-74), landowners and from families of small producers who ploughed their profits back into industry (Hill, op.cit, Fraser, 1973) and this was facilitated by an efficient banking system. Increased demand for food caused by the great population increase in the 1780s and 1790s led to an agrarian revolution contemporaneous with industrialisation resulting in a vast increase in agricultural production. Above all it was the steam engine supplying power and bringing about the mechanisation of production which created a new world (Fraser, 1973).
The system of colonial strength and commercial power was overtaken in the nineteenth century by modern industry – the new source of power. This led to a major change in British strategy and policy from colonial and commercial imperialism to a new imperialism based on free trade (Gamble, 1981). Thus, at the time of the French revolution, England led the world in trade and commerce and was becoming the dominant maritime and industrial power, a position she held until the end of the 19th century. Yet this commercially
commercial and social life was very late in developing a national education system.
In the latter half of the 18th century, training in science and technology was
taking place in the factories under the aegis of the radical industrial reformers such as Matthew Boulton who perfected the steam engine. These radicals were non-conformists who, following the Act of Uniformity 1660 and the Test Acts of 1665 were excluded from the Universities and Grammar Schools. Many of them, for example, Joseph Priestley, taught in dissenting academies. The most famous of these academies were in Warrington, Manchester, Daventry and later in Hackney. At the same time groups of radicals formed societies, the most famous of which was the Lunar Society in Birmingham which comprised luminaries such as Matthew Boulton, James Watt, Samuel Galton, manufacturer and chemist, Joseph Priestley, scientist, Unitarian minister and educationalist, Erasmus Darwin, Richard Lovell Edgeworth, Thomas Day and Josiah Wedgewood. This group moved on from engagement with science and technology to wider social, political and educational questions (Simon, 1960). These academies and centres of self- education were of the utmost value to early industrialization and its success in England.
Despite this significant success, literacy rates fell especially in the industrial areas (Sanderson, 1983). This is challenged by West (1975a) whose refutation is based on the percentage capable of signing the marriage register – around 60% in 1850 (Carpentier (2001, pp. 37-42). Carpentier argues, however, that the level of literacy reached a plateau by the second half of the eighteenth century. According to Green (1991) the success of early industrialization did not create an incentive for educational development as (i) the country did not need to catch-up economically, (ii) the auto- didacticism of many of the early engineers and inventors, so successful initially, led to a certain complacency which supported a reliance on the empirical and ad hoc methods of scientific and technical learning, and (iii) the reliance on child labour in creating profits for industrialists and in providing the crucial additional wage for working class parents created hostility on the
part of the manufacturing middle class to extension of working class education.
Thus unlike in France where passionate debate took place about the establishment of a new form of education for a new society where education was a right, no such revolutionary discussion took place in political circles England. It was considered that the economy would be better served by investing directly in industry than from any benefits from pumping money into educating the masses who were better employed by servicing the labour- intensive industries (Sanderson, op. cit.).
The radicals of the societies and academies referred to above were initially sympathetic to the French Revolution in 1789 and wrote pamphlets in support of it, later refuting Burke’s famous denunciation, as Thomas Payne, whose Rights of Man appeared in 1791, had also done. Priestley was himself invited to join the revolutionary Convention in Paris. At the same time they were campaigning for reform in parliament. Repression quickly followed with members arrested for sedition and treason, academies closed and Priestley and Payne fled to America. The political reaction to the French Revolution marked the end of this phase of social development which had given rise to the spirit of scientific and free enquiry (Simon, op. cit.).
The Whig and Tory parties dominated politics at the time. These were seen by the middle class as aristocratic factions who retained power by denying the franchise to the majority of the people and who ruled in the interests of the landowner class. The Radical movement, representing middle-class interests spearheaded Parliamentary reform during the first part of the 19th
century culminating in the Reform Act of 1832 which extended the franchise and in the Repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846. The demand for educational reform was an important aspect of this movement (Simon, op. cit.). James Mill and Jeremy Bentham were two major spokesmen for this movement. Their theories were mainly responsible for bringing education into the mainstream of political life. Mill’s ideas developed a theory of universal suffrage and with it that of universal education as a means of uniting the
mass of the people against the aristocratic oligarchy and in favour of a society governed by those most qualified to do so in the interests of all, i.e. the middle class. Mill launched a sharp ideological attack on the traditional educational institutions, e.g. the endowed grammar and ‘public’ schools and the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. These were closely linked to the Anglican Church and the aristocracy and the education given there, based uniquely on the classics with occasionally modern languages and gentlemanly pursuits, was irrelevant to middle-class life. Mill also put forward an alternative policy for the establishment by the middle-class of its own institutions free from ancient statutes and clerical authority.
The Church and State in Education
Some reference to the situation with regard to the relationship between religion and the state in England and its importance for education is appropriate at this point. Relations between the church and state differed greatly in France and England; whilst there was continual power struggle between these in the former, there was unity in the latter after Henry VIII had broken with Rome and proclaimed himself Head of the Church of England in the 16th century. Things were, however, more complex than this, since the
reformed church was not a monolithic institution, as the Catholic Church was, but instead was split into various denominations. These denominations approximated very roughly to the different social classes since the Restoration, when the Puritan aristocracy and gentry reverted to the Church of England. Using the slightly crude metaphor of Harold Perkin’s (1969) sandwich, Anglicans (and in some areas such as rural Lancashire, Roman Catholics) were at the top and bottom and Dissenters in the middle, for example, the Quaker bankers and ironmasters, Presbyterian, Congregational and Baptist merchant clothiers and traders of the 18th century. Not all
Dissenters, however, were capitalists nor capitalists Dissenters for it included many yeomen farmers and ordinary textile workers and excluded, for example, many London merchants and bankers, and Liverpool slave-traders (Perkin, op. cit.). Those who were dependent on the landowner elite for employment, tenancies or patronage could not afford the luxury of dissent. To these sects were added the Methodists after Wesley’s separation from
the Church of England in 1784. This mainly appealed to working-men who were becoming independent of landlord and employer (Perkin, op. cit.). Although the Radical leaders such as James Mill and Bentham were agnostics, the dissenters were drawn to many of the ideals of utilitarianism, such as, industry, hard work and thrift, because of their similarity to Puritan values. They worked together to reinforce the moral superiority of the middle class.
Whilst the system of education under the Université set up by Napoleon in 1806, which controlled all schools in France, particularly the secondary lycées and colleges and the institutions of higher education, was secular and centralised under the state, the secondary schools and the two universities in England were controlled by the Church of England. A licence to teach had also to be obtained from the bishop. Roman Catholics and non-conformists were not able to attend these institutions. The Church of England was also dominant in most of the elementary charity schools under the auspices of the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge until 1811, and after that by the National Society for the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Church of England.
Rather than attempting to wrest control over education from the ruling elite of church and state, the dissenting sector undertook a strategy of substitution and they set about establishing their own schools (Archer, op. cit.). The Dissenting Academies were famous examples of this strategy (see above) but they were at a higher level and aimed at the middle class and for those who were debarred from Oxford and Cambridge. The Methodists, with their democratic organisation of local preachers and lay administrators, were in favour of encouraging popular education and were foremost in developing the Sunday school movement in the late 18th century. Although their efforts
were mainly condescendingly philanthropic, they paved the way for the voluntary movement in the early part of the 19th century (Barnard, 1947).
The catalyst for the setting up of the foremost voluntary associations was the introduction of the monitorial system which was a method to provide popular
education on a large scale and which fitted with the ideas of political economy of the time. This system was introduced, on the one hand, by Andrew Bell, a Church of England clergyman, who experimented with this method while a missionary in Madras, and by Joesph Lancaster, a Quaker, who opened a private school in Southwark. Quakers became involved in Lancaster’s school and its numbers grew to 800. Donations also poured into it. These rival monitorial schools gave rise to a long enduring controversy that lasted throughout the 19th century and was reinforced by the formation of
the two voluntary societies, one pertaining to the established church, the National Society (referred to earlier) and the other, pertaining to the Dissenters, the Royal Lancastrian Association, founded in 1810 and renamed in 1814 as the British and Foreign School Society. It was supported by radical Whigs such as Brougham, Whitbread, and James Mill and its methods spread to the continent and the colonies – hence the word ‘foreign’ in the title. Its elementary schools were open to children of any denomination (Barnard, op. cit.). The National Society’s schools had to give pupils instruction in the liturgy and catechism of the Church of England. This cleavage between the two religious societies has been hailed as a reason for the delay in establishing a national system of elementary education. This, however, was just a symptom of this delay because this differentiated and voluntary form of schooling fitted very well into the ethos of English society and its liberal values whereby a centralised system under state control would be anathema to it.
Primary education and the struggle for universal education
In France universal elementary education had been posited as a fundamental right of all sections of the population during the French Revolution, and while this had not been achieved until the 1880s, successive governments, with the exception perhaps of Napoleon Bonaparte who focused primarily on secondary education, had taken steps, albeit tentatively, towards this goal. In England the cause was much more protracted.
Up to the 1830s several unsuccessful attempts to initiate state intervention in support of elementary education were made by successive Radical Whigs
starting with Samuel Whitbread’s Parochial Schools’ Bill in 1807. It was thrown out on the following bases: (i) cost, (ii) the undermining of the Anglican Church’s monopoly in education, and (iii) that education would cause discontent among the ‘lower classes’. This parliamentary lobbying in favour of elementary education gave rise to reports published in 1816 and 1818 which indicated a growing desire for education throughout the country. A picture of poverty-stricken London emerged with descriptions (reminiscent of those of Dickens written 20 years later) with stories of children only able to come to school when it was their turn to wear the family suit (Maclure, 1969). Henry Brougham’s Parish Schools’ Bill of 1820 called for schools to be partly maintained through the rates and partly through wealthy parents’ fees. This Bill was opposed by the various denominations and met the same fate as its predecessor. Roebuck’s Bill of 1833 was more ambitious than its forerunners and approximated to providing universal and compulsory schooling funded by the state and controlled by elected district committees. This, naturally, clashed with the dominant ideology of the minimal state and liberalism. It was given the death sentence by Peel who, encapsulating the English ethos of the time, argued that in a country, such as England, proud of its freedom, education ought to be left free from state control (Hansard, July 30th, 1833, col. 169, in Green, ibid, p. 263). The result was not entirely
negative, however, for that year the government made its first grant of £20,000 for the erection of schoolhouses. It was renewed and increased each following year and amounted to £836,920 in 1859 (Barnard, op. cit.).
It is of interest here to compare this liberal ideology at the heart of government policy in England which equated freedom with lack of state support for elementary education while the poor people were deprived of it, and the situation in France in 1830 when, following the Loi Guizot every commune in France was required by government to set up a primary school and which set up a primary education system under state control in keeping with an ideology which saw popular education as a duty and responsibility of the state. State intervention in English education was opposed, however, not only by the Anglican-Tory alliance, but also by the non-conformists and middle class Liberals with the exception of Utilitarian Radicals such as
Bentham and Mill. The enlightenment ideas championing an education free from religious indoctrination had been expounded by Tom Paine, Jeremy Bentham, James Mill and Robert Owen. It was the working-class organisations who took up afresh the campaign for a publicly provided system of secular education, for example, the London Working Men’s Association, the Lancashire Public School Association under the leadership of Richard Cobden, William Newton, the first independent Labour candidate for parliament, the Miners Association of Great Britain and Ireland, and of course the Chartists, such as William Lovett, Ernest Jones and Julian Harney. It was, however, on the issue of state education that Chartism, at the height of its political struggle, became divided. William Lovett, earlier suspicious of government intervention in education, by the 1840s was campaigning for a national system of non-sectarian schools, financed by the state, but under the control of local committees, which would be elected by universal suffrage. Fergus O’ Connor was opposed to this and referred to Lovett’s approach as “Knowledge Chartism” causing the latter to drop out of the mainstream Chartist movement.
At the same time Robert Owen’s organisation, The Universal Society of Rational Religionists, spearheaded the socialist educational and propaganda activities of the early 1840s. It established Halls of Science, which spread particularly throughout the North. The Manchester Hall was the most important of these where lectures on scientific, economic and political subjects were given, concerts and parties organised, evening classes for instruction in ‘the three Rs’, a Sunday school providing scientific education and a day school with over 100 pupils (Simon, op. cit.). The Owenite socialist movement declined in the mid-1840s and became submerged in the secularist movement which spread during the latter half of the century. The working class self-education movement continued, therefore, to develop independently from the efforts of middle class reform.
A factory commission was set up and its report in 1833 represented an important turning point in social policy. It forbade the employment of children under nine, children between nine and thirteen were limited to an eight-hour
day, and young persons under eighteen were restricted to a twelve-hour day. Most importantly it specified that two hours a day were to be set aside for education and four factory inspectors were designated to enforce the Act (Fraser, op. cit. p. 21). Fraser (op. cit.) explains how it was possible to regard Althorp’s Act as an exception to and a confirmation of laissez-faire. It acknowledged the right of the state to intervene to protect exploited sections of the community, i.e. children, who unlike adults were not ‘free agents’. Thus the exception proved the rule.
Secondary Education
Throughout the Nineteenth century there was no public system of secondary education in England, a situation which was totally at variance with the situation in France where a system was established under Napoleon in 1806. Secondary education took place in independent schools which were financed by endowments and fees in (i) endowed grammar schools or (ii) private schools. The endowed school was a very ancient institution founded mainly by bishops or churchmen or wealthy benefactors. Many of these schools preceded the Reformation and these were refounded thereafter. The most prestigious of these, Eton, founded by Henry VI in 1440 and Winchester by William of Wykeham in 1382 were set up as boarding schools and had direct links to Oxford and Cambridge. The other schools which make up the nine ancient public schools originated as endowed grammar schools and were set up as non fee-paying schools for the education of local boys. These schools, for example, Rugby, Harrow and Shrewsbury, developed from modest beginnings into boarding schools of renown, drawing pupils from across the country. These also included Westminster and Kings College, Canterbury, originally cathedral schools, as well as Charterhouse and Merchant Taylors’ and St. Paul’s which were day schools. As well as these there were hundreds of endowed grammar schools dotted around the country which at the time of the Taunton Commission numbered close to 800 (Barnard, op. cit.). During the eighteenth century many of these schools stagnated and had