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Victorian schools: everything you wanted to know
00:54:20
Rosalind Crone answers your questions on education in 19th-century Britain – from dame schools to the dunce's hat
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- [00:00]
Advertiser
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- [01:16]
Spencer Mizzen
Welcome to the History Extra podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine. The 19th century witnessed a revolution in Britain's schools as compulsory mass education was rolled out and thousands more children were learning to read and write. But what was it like to go to one of these schools? How tough was the discipline? How widespread was truancy? And did teachers get any formal training? These are some of the questions that Spencer Mizzen puts to Rosalind Crone for our latest Everything youg Wanted to Know episode on Victorian schools.
- [01:58]
Rosalind Crone
What did education in Britain look like when Queen Victoria came to the throne?
- [02:05]
Advertiser
That's a good question. It's a big question. First of all, education was incredibly diverse and one's experience of education depended on one's class, age, gender, and also their geographical location, among other things too. So by the time Queen Victoria came to the throne, full time formal schooling was pretty much the norm for males born into the upper and middle classes. Okay, so in England there was a range of private schools or endowed schools which charged fees to cater for this. And I'm talking here about the older grammar schools all the way through to the newer academies that were being set up. And for the wealthy and elite, of course, there were the famous public schools that many people would recognize today, often called the Seven Great Schools or the Clarendon Schools, Eton, Westminster, Harrow, Winchester, to name just a few of them. And there were also private preparatory schools that had been set up to prepare boys for entrance into these great schools. Now, turning to Scotland for a minute. In Scotland, there were no great public schools. In the 1830s, some elite families sent their sons to the English public schools, but many in the middle classes used the local day schools. There was a principle in Scotland that there should be no distinction in the schooling received by the rich and the poor, that the classes should mix in an educational setting and that talented boys from all classes should have the opportunity to progress through elementary school and then on to university. In practice, though, by the Victorian period, there had emerged a degree of class segregation in schools, and especially in towns and cities. Now, in English, of course, there were the two great universities, Oxford and Cambridge. But higher education was already expanding in the 10 years before Queen Victoria came to the throne. So there was the establishment of University College London in 1828, a secular alternative to Oxford and Cambridge. King's College London followed soon after in 1831, and Durham University in 1836, both of these being strongly Church of England, and finally St David's College in Wales in 1828. So they're the options for middle class and elite boys. What about the girls? Of course, we need to ask that girls of the elite and the middle classes continued to be taught at home by governesses, or they were sent to private schools which were predominantly single sex. They were pretty much all single sex and they operated more or less like finishing schools, though some offered a slightly more diverse curriculum and girls could not progress to university. Now, if educational provision for the middle classes and elite sounds complicated, it was even more so for those in the working classes and the lower middle classes, what historians typically call the masses. In Scotland, a system of universal elementary education existed, at least in theory. In 1896, a system of parish schools and burgh schools were established, and these were open to all, and they were meant to enable the humble, talented boys to progress all the way through their education to university. But in practice, it was much more complicated. In England and Wales, there was no system of universal elementary schooling for the masses. Instead, the government gave support to the existing efforts of the two big religious school societies, the National Society, founded by the Church of England in 1811, and the British and Foreign Society, which had been founded by the dissenters in 1814, and they were given grants from 1833. So this gave rise to a system of public elementary or voluntary schools. But these schools were not compulsory and they certainly weren't free. They charged between about 2 pence to 5 pence per week per student. And they didn't suit many working class families because of their insistence on regular attendance, their religious teaching and also their competition with paid work. So parents looked for alternatives. These included first working class private schools, what are sometimes called Dame schools. And perhaps people might remember in Charles Dickens novels, Dame Schools features, for example, in Great Expectations, Pip attends a Dame school. Now, Dickens gives quite a bad impression of them, and he's not necessarily wrong. There was a huge range of diversity and experience. Some were just more like childcare. But we need to be aware in the sources and including in the writing of Dickens, of a bit of middle class condescension going on here as well. Another option for parents, Sunday schools, established in the 1780s and connected with the Protestant churches. And these schools spread rapidly in the early 19th century because of the evangelical revival, but also because of their popularity. And they were really effective and successful because they fitted in quite well with working class life. They offered instruction on a Sunday, the day of rest, so they didn't interfere with paid employment. They were also free, or they charged very low fees. But often they only taught reading. And that has an impact, of course, on literacy. There were further philanthropic efforts, infant schools for poor young children who were too young for the elementary schools. There were workhouse schools for children who were living in the workhouse, charity schools, and also ragged schools meant for vagrant children, slum children, children dressed in ragged clothes, and they offered some basic instruction and also, crucially, free meals. Now, despite all these options, there were many working class children who still did not attend school for many reasons. These included the lack of a school nearby, the expense of going to school, paying the fees, and also the loss of a potential earner, someone who could contribute to the family finances.
- [08:58]
Rosalind Crone
Can we jump forward 64 years now to when Queen Victoria died? Because by then the picture had changed quite radically, hadn't it? And many more Britons were literate than was the case in the 1830s, and the numbers of children actually attending schools had risen. So can you talk us through the chief milestones in that journey, the journey between 1837 and 1901. What were the kind of landmark moments that drove this education revolution?
- [09:32]
Advertiser
That's a great question. So during the Victorian period, there were several big transformations or significant changes in the provision of education. First and foremost, as you've already touched upon in your question, was the transformation of education for the masses from a situation at the beginning of Queen Victoria's reign where education was not compulsory, where many children did not attend school, and when they did, where there were lots of options to choose from, all the way to a situation at the end of her reign, where across Britain there existed universal, compulsory and free elementary education delivered primarily in one type of public elementary school. And of course, related to this, the great achievement of mass literacy. Let's start the story then. In 1837, okay? Scotland already had a system of sorts of universal elementary education. In England and Wales, there wasn't one. But there was a strong desire among MPs to create one. However, since the turn of the 19th century, proposed legislation to do this had failed to pass because of what historians call the religious problem. Basically, everyone agreed that education for the masses was needed and that it must have a moral core. But no one could agree on who should provide that moral core. Should it be the dissenters and the nonconformists, the secularists, the Catholics? They all objected to the role of the Church of England, who believed that they should provide it because of course, they were the established church. And of course they objected. The Anglicans objected to the idea of non denominational religious instruction. By the 1830s, we have a social crisis in England and Wales, okay, resulting from rapid urbanization and industrialization. And there was a really big push for social reform as part of this. There was a strong desire to do something about education because many saw education as this, like panacea, this cure all for society's problems. Now, instead of setting up a system of universal education, the government sidestepped that again because of the religious problem, and they decided to support existing efforts. So in August 1833, they proposed a grant in aid of the erection of schoolhouses by the National Society and the British and Foreign Society, those church societies with elementary schools. It got round the religious problem. It gave to both, which was good, and although modest, it was a modest grant. It's still significant as it marks the first state funding for elementary education outside of prisons in England and Wales. And in 1836, that grant was extended to Scotland by supporting existing efforts to educate the masses. This grant did nothing to address areas of educational destitution. And what I mean by that is places where there were no schools and where literacy rates were poor. Attempts to address this through legislation on universal schooling just continued to be blocked through the 1830s, or they focused on particular constituencies. So, for example, in 1833 and 44, factory children. Now there was legislation on the education of Factory children in 1834, legislation as part of the Poor Law on the education of children in workhouses, where the government could act, though, was through addressing the quality of education that was provided in the schools they were giving money to. Basically they wanted to know that they're getting value for money. This is part of a Benthamite approach to government based on evidence, et cetera. That meant in 1839, the government did two really important things. First, they established the Committee of Privy Council on Education to oversee the administration of grants that they were already giving. And this was the forerunner of today's Department of Education. The second thing they did is that the government established an Education Inspectorate. Now this was the forerunner of today's Ofsted and grants to schools were made dependent on them submitting to inspection. In 1840, the education committee expanded grants. They proposed new grants for building masters houses and also for buying teaching apparatus and furniture because the Inspector's report showed that many schools didn't have basic equipment, blackboards, desks, etc. But the most significant reform that was delivered by the committee, the Education Committee at this time was the 1846 pupil teacher training Scheme. This allowed good students of at least 13 years of age to be selected for a 5 year apprenticeship as a pupil teacher. They would learn under the master in the school and they would receive a salary and they could also apply for a special Queen's Scholarship to attend an approved training school. If you passed as a pupil teacher and you became a teacher, you would then get an addition to your salary. Okay. This created a system of certificated teachers. So you finished your training, you got a certificate and then you would get a special addition to your salary from the government. And after 15 years of service you could retire and receive a pension. And this did a lot of work to raise the status of elementary school teaching and it gave teachers some degree of financial stability. Want to shop Walmart Black Friday deals first Walmart plus members get early access to our hottest deals. Join now and 50% off a one year annual membership shop Black Friday deals first with Walmart plus see terms@walmartplus.com that.
- [15:49]
Rosalind Crone
Was actually what we just talked about there. Roslyn touches upon a question we've had submitted on social media by Harabel and that was was there any formal training for teachers or were they just given jobs for having a bit of knowledge about stuff? So the answer to that question then is know that there was a system of formal training in which pupils can basically make the move from being a pupil actually into being a teacher and offering the knowledge of their training to future pupils.
- [16:20]
Advertiser
Yes, it's slightly more complicated. 1846 is significant because it makes training very important to teachers. Before 1846 there was some training for teachers, but it was delivered in a very small number of institutions. There was just one school in Scotland for training teachers and two in England, both based in London. So many teachers were untrained. And actually when there was a parliamentary inquiry in the 1830s that looked into the character of teachers, who's teaching in these public elementary schools, they were quite disparaging actually about the teachers that existed. And they said that they usually lower middle class men and women who have failed in other careers. So they're the sons of publicans or the sons of small tradesmen or superior mechanics who for some reason are not able to flourish in other things.
- [17:13]
Rosalind Crone
So it didn't enjoy a very good status then in the mid 19th century, the vocation of teaching?
- [17:19]
Advertiser
No, not at all. And that's the importance of the 1846 minute in trying to do something about that. That pupil training scheme was incredibly successful. There were many applications and many certificates issued, so it was very good. However, there were many teachers in the system who still remained untrained.
- [17:38]
Rosalind Crone
So can you now tell us about the 1878 Education Act? Why was that such an important moment in this story?
- [17:45]
Advertiser
Yeah, absolutely. Moving on to 1870, crucial movement in the story now in the late 1860s, finally that strong opposition to universal state funded education collapsed and William Forster was able to push an education bill through Parliament which created a system of universal elementary schooling in England and Wales for the first time. Now, it was a bit of a fudge, it was a bit of a compromise again because of the religious problem. Voluntary schools that were run by the church school societies were allowed to continue unchanged. But where there was a deficiency of schooling, where one of these schools hadn't been set up, or where rate payers demanded it, a school board could be established. And this school board had the power to build and run schools and draw, crucially draw on local rates to do this. For their funding, school boards could offer non denominational syllabus or non denominational religious instruction, or they could exclude religious instruction altogether. They could be entirely secular and they could also use local laws, local bylaws to compel attendance. In 1872 similar legislation was introduced for Scotland. And here those parish and town schools that I talked about earlier were taken over by elected school boards and compulsory attendance was introduced straight away. In England and Wales they had to wait until 1880 and Mandela's education act of that year for compulsory attendance. And that legislation required school boards or sanitary authorities where school boards didn't exist to make attendance bylaws. And if they didn't, they would have them made for them. So this heralded the advent of compulsory full time elementary schooling in England and Wales. And the legislation required children between the ages of 5 and 10 to attend, rising to the age of 12 at the end of the century. And it was this legislation, this 1870 combined with 1880, that really started to kill off alternatives for working class education. I'm talking here in particular about those private adventure schools or dame schools that the working class were using.
- [20:19]
Rosalind Crone
So Rosalind, I've got a quote here from a guy who just mentioned we, Forrester, who was obviously a very important figure in this story. He was an industrialist quote I've got here. He says, upon the speedy provision of elementary education depends our industrial prosperity. So I'm trying to get to the bottom of what really drove these moves. Why the movers and shakers in Britain were so keen that a greater proportion of the population enjoyed the benefits of education. Were they genuinely worried that if they didn't make these moves that Britain would somehow fall behind, that it would lose out in the rapidly industrializing world of the second half of the 19th century?
- [21:05]
Advertiser
Yeah. Okay, so what we've got here is a kind of a short termism, which looks particularly at the economy and pressing issues around around 1870. But there's also a kind of a long term answer to that. You know, looking at the fact that at the beginning of the 19th century there was so much appetite for elementary schooling for the masses, you know, to do something about it. So let's start with 1870 to begin with. What was the pressing need there? I think it's important to say that Britain had managed to industrialize without a system of universal elementary schooling and without mass literacy, which is quite interesting because often economic growth and literacy go hand in hand. Okay. It was a bit of an outlier in this as well, and other states like if we take Germany for example, the desire to industrialize in Germany actually provided the incentive to establish mass schooling. So with Britain it was a bit back to front. If we get to 1870, that's a kind of crucial time because if you look at the economies in Europe and we look at industrial rivalries and everything, those are the countries Britain's neighbors are catching up quite quickly. Rivalry is becoming a thing. And rivalry was expressed economically and also militarily. And Prime Minister William Gladstone at the time, in 1870, looked over at Europe and he attributed German success in the Franco Prussian War of 1870 to their system of schooling. He said it was a marked triumph to the cause of systematic popular education. Yeah, so that provided a kind of a short term trigger. We need to do this. But there's also a longer term story that goes right back to the early 19th century and about that desire for universal education. It's important not to just focus on that short term, that this is a long time in the making and really just frustrated by that kind of religious question and what to do about it. It goes back to Britain moving from being a kind of primarily agricultural, rural based society to one that's predominantly industrial and urban. And with that, the development of a literate society or a heavily text based society with text all around. It's certainly the case that there was a lot of working class demand for literacy to acquire the skills. And the elites by the early 19th century had more or less decided, well, it's probably best if we try to control that demand. It's not good if they go and try to get this themselves. And those concerns really came about at a time of social crisis. If we think of what's going on in revolutionary France, radicalism, et cetera. So they really don't want them going out reading radical political tracts. Instead, ultimately they want them to read the Bible.
- [24:00]
Rosalind Crone
So they wanted to retain an element of control then basically it's what historians.
- [24:05]
Advertiser
Have called social control, you know, in driving this. Also, education was seen as a useful tool for inculcating morality and discipline to create a disciplined workforce. So employers at the time in the early 19th century believed that educated workers were more disciplined, they were more willing to follow orders, and they were less likely to go on strike. And it's interesting to see in the early part of the 19th century that funding for education often increased after strikes and riots. So they saw education as a solution that would get rid of that. Education was also regarded as an antidote to crime. And this was proved by statistics which showed high degrees of illiteracy or poor religious knowledge among prisoners. And those statistics were constantly aired throughout the century and put in front of the public to say, we need to do something. And then of course, as the 19th century progressed, the idea of enfranchisement of the population, so expanding who had the vote, gave further impetus to this idea of mass literacy and the importance of mass education. Because you want your voters to be literate and engaging in society and thinking about what they're doing at the ballot box.
- [25:24]
Rosalind Crone
What did the public make of these moves? I mean, did the idea of everyone between the ages of 5 and 10 going to school encounter any resistance. You mentioned earlier that in the past, young children haven't been able to go to school because they were required to work help at home. Was truancy an issue?
- [25:44]
Advertiser
Absolutely. There was definitely opposition or at least resentment among some who were compelled to attend or whose children were compelled to attend school after 1870. Until 1891, we didn't talk about 1891, the fees act, where schools became free. So if you think in 1870, universal education in 1880 made compulsory for everyone, and you still have to pay for your child to go to school, and, you know, this was a real drain on family finances. And even after 1891, the Fees act education meant that families lost a member who could contribute to the family income, either through paid work or through supporting other family members who are in paid work looking after younger siblings or some kind of ancillary work, the kind of the fetching and carrying that you can do in order to improve the efficiency of the wage earner. Even in the mid to late Victorian period, many of the jobs that were done by the laboring poor, they didn't require literacy and numeracy, at least not beyond what could be taught or acquired informally. And if we think about the standard of education that was being delivered through compulsory education after 1870, it was really not enough to move into the more literate and numerate occupations to promote social mobility. Social mobility was never an aim of the Education Acts at all. The aim of the Education Acts was merely to ensure that boys and girls could function in a literate and numerate society, so that they were able to read a paragraph in the newspaper, they were able to write a letter home if they were living at a distance, and they were able to assess the correctness of a common shop bill to make sure they weren't being diddled. Now, as a result of the 1870 and 1880 education acts, attendance at school did increase, which was a good thing. But even at the end of the century, a sizable percentage of children were still not attending regularly. I'll give you some stats because it's really interesting. So in England and Wales, if we take the names of those who were on the school register, 68% were attending regularly in 1870. This rose to 76% in 1885 and then 82% in 1896. That's almost still 20% of children not turning up on a daily basis to school. And these are national figures which hide regional variations as well, because there were real pockets in industrial and rural areas where non attendance was Higher. And the use of child labour was still much more persistent. Truancy was an issue then and school attendance committees were established and there were school attendance officers who were employed to go into the communities and find these children and enforce attendance. Often, however, there were too few officers. The officers employed were paid low salaries, so they weren't really so committed. And also some boards were even reluctant to compel attendance in areas where there was a local need for child labor. They kind of colluded a bit, you know, to, to allow that to continue in urban areas. Those school attendance officers, they really had a hard time. In some of those working class neighborhoods, they would had things thrown at them by children who would then run away down alleys and they couldn't catch them. And then of course, we move on to the sanction. The fines that the parents had to pay, that was the punishment, of course, for not sending your child to school. But actually the fines were quite low. And, you know, if you put it in the context of what the child would be able to earn or support another family member to earn, you could kind of suck it up. Soon parents worked out that their own property, their goods, their household goods could not be seized in default of fine. So they just didn't bother to pay them. Magistrates, they didn't really want to find parents anyway. They didn't really agree. So many were reluctant to convict. So, you know, it didn't work very well. However, it's really important not to overstate truancy and opposition in the last quarter of the 19th century. This really must be balanced with growing desire of parents to see their children educated. And also the way in which, after 1870, especially full time formal elementary education was really becoming normalized, even among those at the very bottom of society.
- [30:42]
Rosalind Crone
Roslyn, can I now turn to a few questions which have been sent in to us over social media. The first one is from the Alga boy, and that is, was corporal punishment widespread? So, you know, just to elaborate on this a bit, I guess there's this popular perception of Victorian schoolchildren being terrorized by disciplinarian teachers and being subjected to the dunces, heart the cane and worse. I mean, is this reputation entirely deserved?
- [31:15]
Advertiser
I love this question. It's a great one because my children ask it all the time. How cruel was the Victorian school? The Victorians were hot on discipline. Let's start with that because I think that's a good place to start. And schools were places where discipline was taught. Okay. This was really crucial part of character formation. And so, yeah, they could be quite strict. This was especially the case in the public elementary schools, the schools that were run by the National Society, the British and Foreign Society, and of course, the board schools. And one of their aims, of course, from early on in the 19th century, was to remove the working class child from their corrupting, undisciplined environment of the working class home or the community, and to remould the child according to middle class values, middle class principles, and to prepare them to be good subjects. And of course, they insisted then on regularity of attendance, on punctuality, on clean clothes and a full set of clothes as well, including shoes. And this meant that these schools often conflicted with the realities of working class life, where the necessity of work interfered with the regularity of attendance, and where clothes might be ragged or shoes even absent, because there just was a lack of money. Discipline was enforced through punishments, including some corporal punishments, the legal doctrine that remains today. In loco parentis, of course, this gave teachers the authority of a parent and allowed them to use reasonable chastisement in order to discipline or correct the children in their care. And the forms of corporal punishment included the cane on the back of the hand or the bottom for boys, the legs for girls, or a ruler. And in some schools, teachers had a leather strap with tails as well. But it's important to say that the use of corporal punishment in Victorian schools was not uncontentious. The Victorians were obsessed with discipline. They were also obsessed with self discipline and self control. And this was a time when acts of interpersonal violence were being challenged and curtailed. And manliness was becoming associated with more peaceful behavior. Violent outbursts, losing control considered unnecessary, manly and brutish, something that the working class people might do. So therefore, the importance of that idea of reasonable chastisement, and no reasonable chastisement was generally approved of, it was under constant debate of what was reasonable. Now, the educational innovators and pedagogical theorists from the early 19th century onwards, they really emphasized the importance of affection and relationship building in those relationships between pupils and teachers over resort to corporal punishment. And the education journals read by teachers in the second half of the 19th century, they regularly debated corporal punishment, its use and its efficacy. From the 1840s, the school inspectors who went out there to inspect the public elementary schools, they really protested first about excessive use of corporal punishment, the cane, et cetera, and then turn to advocating for its abolition altogether. I would say there's been too little research by historians on school punishments to be honest in the Victorian age to be able to say how widespread or how cruel or how common corporal punishment was. And historians have really tended to rely on the reminiscences of former schoolboys that we find in autobiographies or the extreme cases that came before the courts to paint a brief picture. But, you know, it's important not to use these examples as evidence of, you know, what was going on generally, because actually there was a real turn away from beating kids at this time. And also we must be aware it's not just corporal punishment in schools. You mentioned another punishment. You know, there was a range to choose from. Writing lines was really common and really irksome to children as well. The wearing of the dunce hat, forms of humiliation could sometimes be far more effective than the cane, which hardened people. Detention, which upset both students and parents a lot, all the way to expulsion, kicking them out.
- [35:52]
Rosalind Crone
Got a question here from somebody called Hastergram, and it's kind of related to the previous question, and that is, were left handers really punished for not writing with their right hands?
- [36:05]
Advertiser
Yeah, that's an interesting one. So I've read the claims, I know of the claims. It's almost rolling off the tongue, isn't it, that we say these days, you know, Victorian schools, you were punished if you wrote with your left hand and forced to write with your right. Yeah. And I had a look at some of the recent stuff on left handedness that does claim this contemporary writing. It is true that at this time in the Victorian period, a lot of time was spent on teaching pupils how to write correctly, much more so than today. And that's not just about how to hold the pen, but it was about your posture as well and how to sit appropriately and all the rest. And there was a lot of interest at mid century in what we call the Malhauser method, which was about dividing up the elements of pen strokes into the lines and the curves and the loops. And students would practice these by using a kind of grid style, you know, and then putting them all together. In all the educational histories that I've read, it's a lot. And in all the sources I've looked at over the time, I've not seen evidence of the punishment of left handedness or even much comment on it. And this includes all my research into prison schools. And I think this is where I would expect to see it, because prisons brought in a form of compulsory education quite early on in the century. And because of that there was so much difference that they had to accommodate in their schoolrooms, in their teaching, and they were very good at commenting on this difference. And you can see various today what we could call, you know, educational needs that were expressed in different terms. Of course, coming through. But I've never seen a reference to left handedness.
- [37:46]
Rosalind Crone
Now I've got a couple more questions here. Submitted via social media. Usha Dobrovolski asks what lessons were children taught? And Tracy ca this is kind of related. She asked, was there a uniformity to what the children were taught? I mean I was there a national curriculum and you've kind of touched upon this already, but I wonder if you just. Yeah, just explore that again, please.
- [38:13]
Advertiser
Sure. So what lessons children were taught varied considerably across schools. And over time the curriculum was heavily dependent on class and gender. So if we take the public elementary schools, those schools for the masses. At the beginning of the Victorian period, the focus of these schools was very heavily on religious instruction combined then with some instruction in the basic elements. So reading, writing and arithmetic. By 1837, most public elementary schools were teaching reading and writing simultaneously. So rather than sequentially, which had happened before this period. Reading before writing. Reading was considered essential because it gave children the ability to read the Bible. And writing was also considered to be important because it reinforced the reading skill. Arithmetic was considered much less important and sometimes it was not even taught. So there you go. Reading. Texts used to support reading and writing were mostly moral and typically religious as well. Writing was taught through copying passages out from these texts or from the Bible. And there was a very heavy reliance on rote learning as well. In their religious instruction, pupils were required to learn by heart the typical things, the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, the Commandments and the catechism. From about 1840, there were moves to secularize the curriculum in these schools or to decrease that reliance on religion as the sole subject of study. And this was because educational experts were starting to see problems with that approach. Morality was still important, though it remained key, and you can see that in still the reading text that were being used. But you also see some other subjects beginning to creep in, including grammar, history, geography, for example. And religious instruction, of course, remained a separate subject that was done intensively. Now this changed radically in 1862 with the introduction of examination by standards. That's the revised code I talked about before, which made a large proportion of the school's grant dependent on satisfactory examination in the standards, of which there were six. The intention of the government was very much then to focus attention on reading, writing and arithmetic, the basic elements. And schools could still provide religious instruction as well. But the state made the point they're not going to pay for it and that's crucial. And with the introduction of standards in the 1860s, some of those other subjects I mentioned, history, geography, et cetera, were removed from the curriculum and only reintroduced later in the century once the basics had been taken care of.
- [41:08]
Rosalind Crone
And Chloe Dalton wants to know, did physical education form part of the curriculum?
- [41:13]
Advertiser
Great question, not part of the curriculum. But it's certainly the case that sport or physical education did become part of the experience of schooling. So for example, if we start with the great public schools, eton, Rugby, Winchester, etc. Boys were playing sport when they were not in lessons. They were often organising themselves. They enjoyed sport, cricket, rugby, football, rowing as well. After 1850 though, the school authorities started playing much more of an active role in organizing this for the boys because they saw a value in organised sport, in channeling the boys energies, their boisterousness. It's better than rioting or going into town and creating problems essentially. In the elementary schools, state supported church schools, and later the board schools for the masses. We see the introduction of gymnastics and also drill. Drill was explicitly mentioned in the 1871 educational code. And the code said children could attend drill under a competent instructor for not more than two hours a week. And the purpose of this drill was very much obedience and discipline. And at the end of the century we do see some attempts by schools in certain areas to organize games, football for example, typically though outside of school time, so not really part of the curriculum. But there's a growing understanding that these, these are good things for children to do.
- [42:45]
Rosalind Crone
So would you say that the drive to open up access to education across Victoria's reign, would you say it works? I mean, how did this legislation actually change society? Did it help children thrive? Did it prepare them for the workplace in this rapidly industrialized society? Did it help make Britain more competitive?
- [43:08]
Advertiser
I would say that education was a huge part of modernizing Britain. Moving from a traditional agricultural society that's based on very much an oral culture and passing down stories and superstition and the supernatural into a modern society which is much more about literate culture, reading text, text based, evidence based thinking, all the rest of it, you know. And I would say that education was a big part of that. And that's not just mass education, but it's a way in which education was reformed over the century as well for boys of elite families, for the middle classes, the reorganization of schools for the middle classes which we haven't touched upon. And of course opening educational opportunities for girls, again, something that we haven't discussed, but was big in the 19th century. So by the end of the 19th century, girls were starting to attend university, even if in most places they couldn't take degrees. I think the cumulative effect of 1870, 1880, 1891, those big education acts at the end of the century, did change British society as well. Universal compulsory schooling did help to soothe tensions, soothe social tensions between the classes. It coincided with gradual improvements in living conditions and wages for the working classes. And also this meant there was a kind of decreasing hostility of the working classes to new structures of authority that had been established in the 19th century, the police, etc. And we also see declining crime rates. It also provided new opportunities for these students. You know, if you're taught to read and write and to count, you are equipped with a transformative skill that you can use to improve your life in various ways, to give more meaning to your life. And certainly mass elementary education prepared sections of the working classes to take advantage of new opportunities that were opening up in employment in the clerical sector, in white collar employment in the late 19th and early 20th century. And also, of course, providing universal mass elementary education is a thin end of the wedge because very soon you get the pressure to expand into secondary education and roots into secondary education. We start to see them right at the end of the 19th century and then they come in in the 20th century.
- [45:42]
Rosalind Crone
Finally, Roslyn. In what ways can we still see the influence of Victorian education, a Victorian education system today in the 21st century?
- [45:55]
Advertiser
Yeah, in so many ways. I'll give you a number. First of all, we can see it in our built heritage. The Victorians embarked on this massive program of building schoolhouses because of the expansion of education in cities, in towns, in villages. And so many of these schoolhouses not only survive today, but they're still in use. And it's great when you go through a village, you walk through London and you can see them still being used. Second, it's interesting, we haven't really touched on this, but the Victorians had the opportunity to do something, to deal with the charitable status of schools, which had become educational institutions for the wealthy through various commissions in the middle of the century. But instead, the great public schools, the Clarendon Schools, the Etons and, and Westminster and Winchester, they were freed of their obligations, in fact, to provide free or subsidised schooling to the poor, and instead they were granted substantial independence. And this established a precedent of tax free charitable status for private schools, which has persisted to today. And it's something that, of course, is being debated by the new labor government. Third, the Victorians, with their policies on education, supported a mixed economy of private and state provision in education, not to mention homeschooling. And this mixed economy persists today. We still feel strongly that parents have a right to choose how they educate their children. You know, the state steps back on that one and that's not the case in other countries around the world. Fourth, the Victorians established a system of inspection for state funded schools, which continues today in the reconstituted form of Ofsted. And not without controversy through that history, there's still that kind of tension between the teachers and the inspectors. Fifth, the 1870 Education act, the compromise which allowed church schools to continue as they were while the state established non sectarian or secular schools in areas of educational destitution. This bequeathed to us a state school system which includes faith schools of Christian denominations, and that persists today. It's not an entirely secular system like we see in a lot of other countries, and we still use some of the same language. The voluntary controlled school persists today and about 15% of schools remain voluntary controlled and most of them associated with the Church of England, our established church. And sixth, finally, on the issue of compulsion and school attendance, the reasons for truancy today remain remarkably similar and stubborn as they were at the end of the 19th century. And we still have a division of responsibility and accountability for attendance that's divided between the different authorities and authorities and schools, et cetera. And basically, we're still employing Victorian solutions to the problem of truancy in the form of punishments, like fines and eventual imprisonment on default.
- [49:16]
Spencer Mizzen
That was Rosalind Crone, professor of History at the Open University and the resident historian on the BBC podcast Lady Killers with Lucy Worsley. Rosalind's books include Violent Victorians, published by Manchester University Press in 2012, and Illiterate Inmates, published by Oxford University Press in 2022. And if you enjoyed this episode, then Rosalind also joined us on the podcast to talk about the history of British prisons, from hard labour to revolting food. A link to that episode is in the description of this one. Thanks for listening. This podcast was produced by Jack Bateman.