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society from America the institution has been known as now 'Trinity 'Trinity Church School.'

Schools of the same type were active throughout the colonies in the eighteenth century. We possess more or less complete accounts of these institutions in New

Church

School.'

York and all the other colonies, except Virginia, where Other colonies. they were not believed to be needed. Except for size

and local peculiarities, all of them closely resembled

the school in New York City. The attendance ranged Attendance, from eighteen or twenty pupils to nearly four times that number. Girls were generally admitted, and occasionally equalled or exceeded the boys in number. As a rule, children of other denominations were received on the same terms as those of Church of England members, and at times nearly one-half the attendance was composed of dissenters, but often those outside the Church were given secondary consideration, or the catechism was so stressed by the school that the dissenting children were withdrawn and rival schools set up. The character of the course of study in these charity schools is further course, and indicated by the books furnished by the society. In packets of various sizes it sent over horn-books, primers, spellers, writing-paper and ink-horns, catechisms, psalters, prayer books, testaments, and bibles. There is also some evidence that secondary instruction was carried on intermittently in the various centers by the missionaries or by the schoolmasters in conjunction with their elementary work.

books.

the S. P. G.

Throughout its work in the American colonies the S. P. G. met with various forms of opposition. The dissenters, Opposition to Quakers, and others were often openly hostile through fear of the foundation of an established national church

similar to that of England, and both sides displayed considerable sectarianism and bigotry. After 1750 the opposition to the society increased in bitterness and became more general, owing to the feeling that its agents were supporting the king against the colonists. Yet its patronage of schools was most philanthropic and important for American education in the eighteenth century. While it insisted upon the interpretation of Christianity adopted by the Church of England, it stood first and foremost for the extension of religion and education to the virgin soil of America. It carried on its labors with devoted interest and showed great generosity in the maintenance of schools, and the support and influence of schools in the colonies by the S. P. G. must have education. exerted some influence toward universal education.

Its devotion

and generosity,

upon universal

Charity Schools among the Pennsylvania Germans.During the eighteenth century the efforts of the S. P. G. were supplemented by the formation of minor associations and the establishment of other charity schools in various colonies. Perhaps the most noteworthy instance was the organization in 1753 of 'A Society for Propagating the Knowledge of God among the Germans,' and the maintenance of schools among the sects Organization, of Pennsylvania. These schools were managed by a general colonial board of six trustees, who visited the schools annually and awarded prizes for English orations and attainments in civic and religious duties. The course of study included instruction in "both the English and German languages; likewise in writing, keeping of common accounts, singing of psalms, and the true principles of the holy Protestant religion." Twenty-five schools were planned, but probably there were never more than half

course, and

of S. P. K. G.

that number. The schools lasted only about a decade, as disappearance the Germans soon came to feel that this English school- schools. ing threatened their language, nationality, and institutions.

The Sunday School' Movement in Great Britain.— A variety of charity school, quite different from those already mentioned, sprang up toward the close of the century under the name of 'Sunday Schools.' To overcome the prevailing ignorance, vice, and squalor in the manufacturing center of Gloucester, England, Robert Foundation, Raikes in 1780 set up a school in Sooty Alley for the instruction of children and adults in religion and the rudiments. Six months later he started a new school in Southgate street, and soon had other schools established. He paid his teachers a shilling each Sunday to train the children to read in the Bible, spell, and write. This charity education, meager as it was, was attacked by opposition, many of the upper classes, and was often viewed with suspicion by the recipients themselves. Yet the new movement had warm supporters among the nobility and advocacy, and such reformers as Wesley, and the schools soon spread to London, and then throughout England, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and the Channel Islands. A Sunday School Society was founded in 1785, and within a decade distributed nearly one hundred thousand spellers, twenty-five thousand testaments, and over five thousand bibles, and trained approximately sixty-five thousand pupils in one thousand schools.

6

spread.

The Sunday School' Movement in the United States. The Raikes system of Sunday instruction was also soon introduced in America. The first school was organized in 1786 by Bishop Asbury at the house of Thomas centers

Individual

associations.

Crenshaw in Hanover County, Virginia, and within a quarter of a century a number of schools arose in various and permanent cities. Before long, permanent associations were also started to promote Sunday instruction. "The First Day or Sunday School Society' was organized at Philadelphia in 1791, and during the first two decades of the nineteenth century a number of similar societies for secular instruction on Sunday were founded in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and elsewhere. In 1823 these associations were all absorbed into a new and broader organization, known ever since as the 'American Sunday School Union.' At the start it published suitable reading-books, and furnished primers, spellers, testaments, and hymn-books to needy Sunday schools at a reasonable rate.

prepared the way for universal education.

Value of the Instruction in 'Sunday Schools.'-Both in Great Britain and the United States, however, the Sunday schools gradually tended to abandon their Makeshift, but secular instruction and become purely religious. At the same time the teachers came to serve without pay and to instruct less efficiently. And the value of the secular teaching was not large at the best, as the work was necessarily limited to a few hours once a week. Raikes and all others interested in these institutions recognized their inadequacy as a means of securing universal education, and regarded them merely as auxiliary to a more complete system of instruction. But while a makeshift and by no means a final solution for national education, they performed a notable service for the times, and helped point the way to universal education.

The Schools of the Two Monitorial Societies.-While philanthropic education started largely in the eighteenth

century, some of the schools continued well into the nineteenth. This was especially the case with the 'monitorial' system, started at Southwark in 1798. This district of London was thronged with barefoot and unkempt children; and Lancaster, the founder of the school, Lancaster undertook to educate as many as he could. His schoolroom was soon filled with a hundred or more pupils. In order to teach them all, he used the older pupils as assistants. He taught the lesson first to these 'monitors,' and they in turn imparted it to the others, who were divided into equal groups. Each monitor cared for a single group. The work was very successful from the first, but Lancaster, attempting to introduce schools of this kind throughout England, fell so recklessly into debt that an association had to be founded in 1808 to continue the work on a practical basis. Within half a dozen years Lancaster withdrew from the organization, but the association, under the name of the 'British and Foreign Society,' continued to flourish and found Society; new schools.

and the British

So successful was the Lancasterian work that the Church of England, fearing its nonsectarian influence upon education, in 1811 organized 'The National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church.' This long-named association was to conduct monitorial schools under the management of Doctor Andrew Bell, who had experi- National mented with the system in India before Lancaster opened Society. his school. Although they had formed no part of Bell's original methods, the Anglican catechism and prayer book were now taught dogmatically in the schools founded by the National Society. Bell proved an admirable

Bell and the

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