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England lagged behind Germaby and America, even Scotland, in developing state-financed public education system. Public education emerged in the form of several different types of schools from which the public school system developed. Some of the first English state schools were founded during mid-century. There were two primary types of private schools in England during the mid-19th century. The princpal school type wwre the public schhols. Despite the term 'public', these were fee-paying private schools, in most cases boarding schools. Many of the public schools had long historie, some founded as far back as the 16th century. Children of a wide age range attededvthe schools, but they tended to be rough places for younger children. Reconizing this, numbers of school masters began founding prepararory schools for the younger children. This began in the mid-19th century. Gradually the conventopn developed of preprtoy dchools handling boys 7-13 years of age anf the public schools 3-8 years of age. there were variaions from school to school. Colleges were a lkittle different. Oor information on schoolwear during this period is limited. There were on uniforms at the dame schools and even by the 1860s there ere few state chools. Charity scghiols were some of thge first nglish school to adopt uniforms. Most public schools by the 19th century had uniforms. The best known is Eton College.
Photography was invented in France (1839), although an English researcher was also working on photigraphy. The firsr successful comercial format was the Daguerreotype. HBC-SU relies hevily on the photographic record for our assessments. nfortunately, the numbers of Daguerreotypes made in Britain and Europe in general (even France) are much more limoted than in the United States. Thus it is not until the albumen proocess is perfected and the appearanc of CDVs (1860s) that we begin to see large number of school images. Most of what we see is individual portaits of boy in their school wear, usually mening school uniform. This is becuse the boys having portaits made were largely from well-to-do families which would hve sent their boys to prepararory and public schools.
We have just begun to compile English school decade trends for the mid-19th century. A problem here as that school photogrphy was not fesible with early photographic types. We have individul portrits like the portrait here (figure 1), but no group images until the CDV appeared (1860s). There are some painted portraits. We note Nathanelle and Johnnie Boyd in 1848. They wear short brown jackes with open-collared shirts and white long trousers. We believe this is their school uniforms. Now while portraits of individual boys in their school uniforms were possible. School classes or other groupings could not very well be taken. First, for a rnge of issues, the industry did niot expabd rpidly. We note far fewer British images (1840s-50s) than in America. Second, these early photogrphic types (Dags abd Ambros) were taken in the studio. And studios were designed for individuals or small, modtkly famiky groops, not school classes or other large groups. Third and most importantly, only one image resulted from a Dag or Ambro shoot. So the students and their parents could not purchase copies. And what use is a class portrait if the members of the class czan not get copies. This only came with the introduction of the Albumen process which created negatives. This meantthat wiyh ngstives, multyiple cpoies couild be made. The result was CDVs and and cabinet cards. It took some gtime vfor school portraits to become an established tradition. e see some school portasits in the 1860s, but not many. Not only did it take time for a new tradition to be estzblished, byt the CDV was very small nd thus group photogrphs meant that individuals pictured were tiny.
England lagged behind Germaby and America, even Scotland, in developing state-financed public education system. Public education emerged in the form of several different types of schools from which the public school system developed. Some of the first English state schools were founded during mid-century.
One such type of school was the dame school. They were not a public school in the true sence of a state-finced system. But the fees were very low and they were public in the snce that most young children were taught in the early 19th century. They were the only chool that many children received. Dame schools were "schools run by local women which concentrated on rudimentary reading skills" [McNergney and Herbert, pp. 58-59.] These were for profit schools, but te profit was very small. It was one of the fe employment opportunities availablr for eomen at the time. Students
often learned very little in these schools, and many exploited the children, taking the money they were given to teach them but giving very little instruction. There were no requirements set for the women who ran the dame schools; many of them were
barely literate. Dame schools were often unsafe, held in unsanitary cellars. Dame schools most often served as baby-sitting for working mothers. [Musgrave, p. 19.]
Another form of education available to the lower classes was the Sunday School. Sunday
Schools taught students religion and as much literacy as possible for free or for a nominal cost. The Sunday Schools did seem to impart a modicum of knowledge on what was often the only day the children were free from work to learn.
More successful than the dame school was the charity school. The charity school movement produced many schools as the
upper classes saw an opportunity to ensure social discipline (Midwinter 19). The influence of the upper classes led to a
curriculum of religious and moral instruction. By educating the poor, the rich were able to reduce poverty and crime, in turn cleaning up the cities and making them safer. The upper classes ensured their own positions through the instruction of
subordination in the charity schools, for a charity school education included the reinforcement of ideals of class. Students were taught to remain in their proper stations. In Jane Eyre,the Lowood girls were taught to be submissive and humble, bowing to the wills of their "betters".
Charity schools usually incorporated the monitorial system. As public education became available to all classes, the number of prospective students greatly outnumbered the supply of qualified teachers, resulting in terrible education for many lower class children. Neither Sunday Schools nor the dame schools could accommodate the rising number of students. This problem was met by the monitorial system, developed by Joseph Lancaster and Dr. Andrew Bell in the first decade of the nineteenth century. Under the monitorial system, a master teacher taught a few older brighter students and/or assistant teachers some small skill or activity, and they in turn would take a group of children and teach it to them. By having all the children engaged in learning with one group of monitors while the master teacher was working with another group of monitors for the next activity, the children were always kept busy. This method of teaching turned out to be highly effective and efficient for the time it was employed, causing it to be implemented into the schools within a few years of its development.
The purpose of these monitorial charity schools was to teach the basics of the three R's to working class children so that they could read the Bible. Obedience was stressed, and girls were taught to be skilled in needlework. Bell and Lancaster differed slightly in their approach to monitorial teaching. Lancaster's version was simple, with the master teacher working with the senior pupils, who then taught the other children. Bell's model, however, was quite complicated, involving pairs of brighter and slower students and a complicated system of ushers and assistants (Midwinter 28-29). While Jane Eyre doesn't have any instances of pairs of students or of ushers, the great girls who served as monitors as well as the presence of many teachers below Miss Temple suggest that Lowood probably followed Bell's model. Both Lancaster's and Bell's systems of teaching incorporated dictation and students taking turns reading aloud. Lancaster introduced writing alphabetically on a slate, while Bell introduced writing in syllables, separating the syllables with hyphens on the slate (Midwinter 29). Successes and failures, as well as good behavior and bad, were met with rewards and penalties. Successful, well behaved students would be recognized with honors
such as advancement toward the head of the class, while other students might receive harsh, embarrassing punishments for their behavior and failures. Lowood features many examples of this, such as when Jane is forced to stand on a stool in front of everyone and to remain there for hours because she dropped a slate. These are hardly examples of the extreme punishments
which did take place, though. Lancaster was especially known for his severe punishments. He shackled students, tied their
hands to a log behind their back, and was even known to put children in a basket on the school roof.
The monitorial system was the first successful method of teaching a large group of students. Robert Owen's work in infant teaching was also successful as he gave advice to many other teachers and trained many teachers. Owen's work influenced the work of David Stow who published The Training System in 1836, which advocated improved ways of teaching young children, and helped to train new teachers (Musgrave 20). Stow supported the class method of teaching over the monitorial. The class method involved one teacher with a class of students who may be of varying ages. This would allow all the children the opportunity to interact with the teacher directly. The teacher would teach the entire class, incorporating concepts for all the levels of students into her lesson. She could then work individually with students while they worked on an assignment. St. John's school, which Jane teaches in, is an example of a class school. Through the influences of Pestalozzi's theories, the training schools multiplied. Class schools could not teach as large a group of students as monitorial schools could, but as the number of teachers trained caught up with the demand made by the number of students, English education reformed and class schools replaced monitorial schools.
Parliament passed the Grammar School Act (1840). This made it possible to expand the curriculum at the country's grammar schools from the Latin and Greek that for several centutrues had been their viurtually exclusive focus. Grammar schools were permitted to include a wider range of subjects, most notably science and literature. The Act had made it legal to teach these subjects along with side classical languages. The Act did not mandate the expansion of the curriculum, it simmply permitted it. The curriculum was all still a matter or the headmaster to formulate.
In addition to the Grammar School Act, another step in the 1840s was the ragged school. These were charitable schools for not just poor, but destitute largely abndoned children. They were for the urban poor of the country's rising industrial cities. The 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley-Cooper, established the Ragged School Union (1844). This enabled these schools schools to pool their resources. These schools in addition to offering free schooling, wiyhin tyheir limited resources provided clothing and lodging for the poorest children. Some 200 rsgged schools were established in Britain.
There were two primary types of private schools in England during the mid-19th century preo ans public schools. Dame schools were also private, but were not so expensive that they excluded many children. The princpal private school type were the public schhols. Despite the term 'public', these were fee-paying private schools, in most cases boarding schools. Many of the public schools had long historie, some founded as far back as the 16th century. Children of a wide age range attededvthe schools, but they tended to be rough places for younger children. Reconizing this, number of school masters began fopunding prepararory chools for the younger children. This began in the mid-19th century. Gradually the conventopn developed of preprtoy dchools handling boys 7-13 years of age anf the public schools 3-8 years of age. there were variaions from school to school. Colleges were a lkittle different. The English public school traditionally made minimal efforts to supervise the boys and the schools could be rather dismal if not dangerous places, especially for the younger boys. Gradually the outrageous and in many cases dangerous situation at these schools forced the schools to introduce a variety of reforms to control student behavior. The English classic Tom Brown's School Days chronicles the reform process of educator Thomas Arnold at Rugby. One of the reforms was to require standardized uniforms which until the 19th century had been a feature only at charity schools. Boys at first resented these efforts and there was much resistence. Gradually after mid-century the idea of school uniform began to take hold. School uniform garments like peaked caps, boaterrs, and blazers emerged at the the public schools. Especially after mid-century as part of the educational reforms sweeping the public schools, preparatory schools for the younger boys began to proliferate. Many younger boys, however, continued to be educated at home or attend dame schools where uniforms were not required.
Oor information on schoolwear during this period is limited. There were on uniforms at the dame schools and even by the 1860s there ere few state chools. Charity scghiols were some of thge first nglish school to adopt uniforms. Most public schools by the 19th century had uniforms. The best known is Eton College. A good example of what looks like public school boys wearing what looks like Eton suits or what was probably their school uniform is two London teenagers in the 1850. Many of the new preparatory schools that were founded in this period did not have uniforms, but our information on this is very limited.
McNergney and Herbert.
Musgrave.
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