Concerning Salzmann's school.

4. GAGE, W. L. The Life of Karl Ritter. (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1867.) Chap. ii, pp. 16-43.

Concerning the Prussian System.-5. NOHLE, E. History of the German School System, Report of the United States Commissioner of Education, 1897-1898. Vol. I, pp. 50-56. The two best accessible accounts in English are Nos. 5 and 6.

6. PAULSEN, F. German Education, Past and Present. (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1908.) Pp. 136–144.

7. BARNARD, H. American Journal of Education. Vol. XXII, pp. 861-884, and Vol. XX, pp. 335-360. Contain translations of laws, etc.

8. CLAUSNITZER, LEOPOLD. Geschichte des preussischen Unterrichtsgesetzes, mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Volksschule. (Berlin, 1892.) I have found this work, with its brief interpretation of sources, the most instructive of several German works.

CHAPTER XI

SECULARIZING TENDENCIES IN ENGLISH

ELEMENTARY EDUCATION

Main points of the chapter. 1. The secularizing of English eleimentary schools was retarded by the power of the Established Church, by the conservative influence of the House of Lords, and by the payment of state funds to voluntary religious educational organizations.

2. The theory that education was a matter for which the family and the Church were primarily responsible continued in England down to the nineteenth century.

3. The first significant effort to provide nonsectarian elementary education on a large scale was made by the nonsectarian Lancasterian British and Foreign School Society (1808).

4. The National Society for promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church (1811) was organized as a sectarian rival of the British and Foreign School Society.

5. A new sentiment in favor of secular public schools began to develop during the eighteenth century. Various social changes, including those produced by the factory system, were causes in this development.

6. The fight for secular schools, begun actively in 1807, continued without any great success until 1870. Associations in favor of secular schools, organized in the larger commercial cities, played a prominent part in the fight.

7. Three acts of the government were especially important steps in developing secular national schools. These were: (a) the act passed in 1833 by the House of Commons granting money for the erection of schoolhouses, thus establishing the principle of state support; (b) the appointment in 1839, by Queen Victoria, of a Committee of the Privy Council, to administer the funds appropriated by the House of Commons for education, thus establishing the principle of state supervision of elementary education; (c) the act passed by Parliament in 1870, authorizing the election of local school boards, which were empowered to levy taxes for the support of schools in which attendance might be compulsory, and no sectarian religious instruction could be permitted.

Development of secular schools in England greatly retarded. The secularizing of the schools of England offers the greatest contrast to the secularizing of Prussian schools. In Prussia the legal secularization took place early and rapidly because it required simply the decrees of enlightened absolute monarchs. In England the legal secularization was very slow and long delayed for a number of reasons. Chief among these were the following:

1. The persistence of the theory that education was primarily the business of the family and the Church, and that the state was not responsible for it.

2. The fact that a national system of schools could not be created by the decrees of enlightened monarchs, but had to be created by the enlightened public opinion as represented in Parliament.

3. The conservative influence of the House of Lords, which aimed (a) to keep the poor in ignorance; and (b) to maintain the power of the Established Church.

4. The payment of the first state funds appropriated for elementary schools to voluntary religious educational organizations, thus creating vested private interests which later opposed the establishment of real public schools.

Inasmuch as similar reasons (excepting the third) were factors in the retardation of the development of secular public schools in the United States, we shall study briefly the process by which the English system was partially secularized.

Education considered a matter of family and Church monopoly. The fact that education was considered to be legally a matter for which the state was not responsible is shown by court decisions. Thus the following decision rendered by the court in 1795 asserted the independence of the family in matters of education. It stated that "a father was bound by every social tie to give his children an education suitable to their rank, but it was a duty of imperfect obligation, and could not be enforced in a court of law." (1: 181.)

The legal monopoly of the Church in matters educational during the Middle Ages was described in Chapter II. During and following the period of the Reformation this theory continued in force, and schoolmasters in England were required to be licensed by the bishops of the Established Church. In the eighteenth century, however, this practice began to be questioned in the courts, but the prevailing opinion, as often cited in speeches in Parliament, continued to be that the Church had general control. An example of the opposite tendency is the following incident. In 1701 an elementaryschool master who had been indicted for teaching school without a license from the bishop was discharged by the court on the basis that "the school was not within the Act of James I, because the act extends but to grammar schools, and this school was for writing and reading." (1: 173.) By this decision the legal control of education by the Church was declared not to extend to elementary education. Some judges even questioned whether the bishops had jurisdiction over grammar-school masters, but the general tendency of the decisions of the eighteenth century was to affirm the control by the bishops in such cases.

Church made little provision for elementary education. — The English (Episcopal) Church, however, failed to make any adequate provision for elementary schools. In this respect it was much inferior to the Catholic Church on some parts of the Continent, where such societies as the Brethren of the Christian Schools organized very effective schools. Practically the only significant endeavor made by the English Church before the nineteenth century was in the organization in 1699 of the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge. The object of the Society is well suggested by its name to promote Christian knowledge by erecting catechetical schools and diffusing the Scriptures and the liturgy of the Established Church. Its officers were members of this Church, and its rules were approved by the bishop. The Society stated

that part of its work was the "erecting of schools in . . . cities and the parts adjacent for the instruction of such poor children in reading, writing, and the catechism, whose parents or relatives are not able to afford them the ordinary means of education." This plan was carried out, and by 1729 the Society had opened 1658 schools, containing 34,000 children. A branch of this organization was the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, which established schools in America.

Voluntary agencies depended on for elementary schools for the poor. These societies are typical of the endeavors made in England during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to provide elementary schools for the poor. The little children of parents who could afford to pay were educated in the home or in private dame schools, but the children of the poor received no education, or only such meager instruction as was provided in the charity schools maintained by the voluntary efforts of individuals or philanthropic societies. The most important of these voluntary agencies were (1) the Sunday schools from 1780 on; (2) the British and Foreign School Society (1808, 1814); and (3) the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor (1811).

Secular Sunday schools organized after 1780.- The Sunday schools, unlike those of recent years, were organized not merely for religious instruction, but to give instruction in reading and writing; hence they were largely secular in purpose. They were particularly valuable in the manufacturing districts for children and adults who were employed during the week days. Thus in Manchester, in 1834, Sunday schools were open for secular instruction five and a half hours on Sunday and two evenings in the week. Two organizations, the Society for the Support and Encouragement of Sunday Schools (1785) and the Sunday School Union (1803), were devoted to the propagation of such schools. The movement spread almost immediately to the United States.