there was appointed a general colonial board of six trustees. One or more of the trustees were to visit each of the schools annually and award one prize for the best oration in English by a boy of German parentage, and one for the best oral examination passed by any boy in civil 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." It had been planned to establish twenty-five such schools, but owing to lack of funds, insufficiency of teachers, and quarrels as to location, there were probably always less than half that number. In the various schools and at different seasons of the year, the attendance ranged from twenty-five to sixty-six, and at most the number of pupils accommodated at any one time in all the charity schools must have been well under one thousand. The schools lasted only about a decade. From the beginning the minor sects-Dunkers, Mennonites, Schwenkfelders, Moravians, Siebentagers-eyed them with suspicion, and later the Lutherans and Calvinists were likewise persuaded that this English schooling threatened their language, nationality, and institutions. The resulting opposition ultimately led to their abandonment by the S. P. G. and the king. Yet the organization of these institutions left some good results. They stimulated the Germans to provide schools to maintain their own language and religion, they helped unify the people of Pennsylvania, and paved the way for the establishment of a system of public schools in 1834.1 1 See pp. 102f. schools for and the rudi established in Robert Raikes and the 'Sunday School' Movement Sunday in Great Britain.-A variety of charity school, quite instruction different from those already mentioned, sprang up in in religion England toward the close of the century under the name ments were of 'Sunday schools.' The reputed originator of these Gloucester, institutions was Robert Raikes (1735-1811) of Gloucester, England, in 1780 by England. This city was a manufacturing center, and Robert child labor, with all the attendant ignorance, vice, and Raikes, squalor, was everywhere in vogue. Several clergymen and philanthropists of the vicinity had sought with more or less success to improve conditions by gathering children and adults together on Sunday for instruction in religion and the rudiments, but until the time of Raikes no general system arose, and the Sunday schools scarcely spread to the neighboring parishes. The success of Raikes came largely through the publicity he was able to give the institutions in the columns of his Gloucester Journal, the proprietorship of which he had inherited from his father. He opened his first Sunday school in 'Sooty Alley' in 1780 under the direction of a Mrs. Meredith, whom he paid a shilling each Sunday to train the children. After six months he started a new school in Southgate street under Mrs. Mary Critchley, and further schools were soon established. The formal instruction in these Sunday schools was very rudimentary. It consisted at the best in teaching the pupils to read in the Bible, spell, write, and absorb the elements of religion. The religious training did not emphasize any particular creed, and was not obscured by sectarian bitterness. But even so mild an attempt at reform could not pass unchallenged by the conservatives. The upper classes held that "the lower orders of mankind and soon spread lands. are incapable of improvement," and feared that, unless the masses were kept in their place, there would be a social upheaval in England like that going on at the time in France. The poor, on their side, were suspicious of "people taking pains to bestow benefits without having some selfish object," and declared that "reading only serves to make poor folk proud and idle.” Yet the new movement was not without warm and influential friends among the nobility and others interested in reform, and Wesley even incorporated Sunday schools as one of the features of his religious 'societies.' In fact, despite opposition, the Sunday schools were a success from the start, and soon spread from the county of Gloucester to all corners of the United Kingdom. As early as 1784, schools of this type were opened in London, and the year following a general Sunday School Society was founded. In the course of a decade this organization distributed nearly one hundred thousand spellers, through England, Wales, twenty-five thousand testaments, and over five thousand Scotland, Ireland, and the bibles, and trained approximately sixty-five thousand Channel Is- pupils in a thousand schools. The Sunday schools that appeared in Wales were probably independent in their origin, although they may have been stimulated by the Raikes movement. They were largely developed through a clergyman of Bala, named Charles, who started them in 1785 as the best substitute within his means for the former 'circulating schools' of Jones,1 and instructed adults as well as children. Even in Scotland, where religious instruction in the family was excellently organized, there was a 'Sabbath Evening School' founded in 1797. Eight years before, Sunday schools were 1 See p. 42. formally organized in Down County, Ireland, and were schools of the Raikes type were likewise organized in various cities of the United sociations this kind of century before this, but they had been exclusively for States, and a religious teaching. The first school on the new basis little later aswas organized in 1786 by Bishop Asbury at the house of were formed Thomas Crenshaw in Hanover County, Virginia, in for promoting the hope of combating the ignorance, infidelity, and sectarianism that were rampant after the American revolution. Within a quarter of a century a number of other schools arose at Charleston, Pittsburg, Pawtucket Sunday in struction. (R. I.), Boston, New York, Paterson (N. J.), Stockbridge (N. Y.), Albany, and elsewhere. In these communities schools were provided for the laboring classes, whose children were generally very ignorant and vicious, and, as in the British movement, the teachers were at first usually paid. The chief texts used were the speller and hymn-book. But the organization of the system in the United States soon became more extensive than these isolated cases of Sunday schools. In 1791 the first permanent association for promoting Sunday instruction, "The First Day or Sunday School Society,' was organized at Philadelphia. It arose from the lack of free schools in the city and the need of improving material and intellectual conditions. It was formed by prominent men of several creeds, and was purely nonsectarian. By the close of the century it was training over two thousand children. 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, called the 'American Sunday School Union.' For a time this society continued secular instruction. It published suitable reading-books, and furnished primers, spellers, testaments, and hymn-books to needy Sunday schools at a reasonable rate, but it has gradually come to confine itself to the publication of stituting vol- religious literature and the encouragement of religious untary teach- instruction. In fact, after the first quarter of the nineers and purely teenth century the prevailing tendency in the Sunday schools of the United States was to substitute voluntary teachers and purely religious training for the system of But the tendency soon arose of sub religious training for the system of Raikes. |