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1 Introduction N o t e s 1 Introduction 1 . G. McCulloch (2007), Cyril Norwood and the Ideal of Secondary Education, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 125–6. See also chapter 5 below, p. 102. 2 . Mother tongue, mathematics, science, a foreign language, history, and geog- raphy feature in the British Coalition government’s Schools White Paper of November 2010 as the proposed content of a new “English Baccalaureate,” which is to be taken at 16, and which focuses secondary schools’ attention on these so-called core areas. 3 . See P. Gumbel (2010), On ach ève bien les é coliers, Paris: Grasset, for a critique of the French educational system on these lines. I am grateful to Jenny Brain for telling me about this book. 4 . I come back to some of these later in the book. See chapter 6 , p. 114. 5 . Students went up to university several years younger than the typical under- graduate today. Ramus was proud of the fact that the boys at his Collège de Presles in Paris reached MA standard by 15. See chapter 2 , p. 24. 6 . I use the term “post-Ramist” here and elsewhere in this book to refer to the pedagogical movement that grew out of Ramus’s own project, and that included the work of Keckermann, Alsted, Comenius, and their associates. 7 . See chapter 4 , p. 58. 8 . In line with a remark quoted by Charles Webster, p. 38. 9 . The Unitarian tutor Gilbert Wakefield (1756–1801) denounced the acad- emies for their attempts to make students digest “the whole Encyclopaedia in three years” to the neglect of classics (H. McLachlan [1931] English Education Under the Test Acts: Being the History of Nonconformist Academies 1660–1820, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 33). See chapter 4 , p. 54. 1 0 . S e e p . 5 5 . 11 . There is evidence, however, of a minor revival of religiously based justifica- tions in the 1960s. See chapter 6 , pp. 117–9. 12 . In his two 1990 writings, D. Hamilton draws on his 1989, Towards a Theory of Schooling, London: Falmer, 43–9, in which he discusses the origin of the term “curriculum.” 164 NOTES 2 1550–1630 1 . I am not claiming that these are the only seeds. 2 . This was published as a slight, compact 3” by 5” volume, made up of a concise account of the subject matter, a series of Ramist maps connected with differ- ent chapters of the exposition, and an appendix based around questions and answers that provided a quick way of revising the material and testing what one had learnt. 3 . The distinction between theoretical and practical knowledge was and would continue to be especially significant for Calvinist curriculum makers in the post-Ramist tradition—including Keckermann and Alsted—for whom both kinds of achievement were important for religious reasons (see p. 32). 4 . Ames’s works were among those studied, as we shall see, at early Dissenting Academies like Sheriffhales, Rathmell, and Newington Green II (H. McLachlan [1931], English Education Under the Test Acts: Being the History of Nonconformist Academies 1660–1820, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 79). See chapter 3 , notes 15 and 18. 5 . For further details, see T. McCrie (1846), “Andrew Melville” in Lives of the Scottish Reformers by Thomas M’Crie, William Veitch, James Wallace, James Ure, Xenia (Ohio): The Board of the Calvinistic Book Concern, 226. 6. Texts studied at Aberdeen included Ramus’s dialectic and Alsted’s compendia of arithmetic and geometry in year 2, Keckermann and Alsted on economics and politics in year 3; Alsted’s compendium on mathematics (which included the subjects mentioned on p. 34 under natural philosophy; see H. Hotson [2007], Commonplace Learning: Ramism and Its German Manifestations, 1543– 1630, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 193); and Keckermann on metaphysics. From Fasti Aberdonenses (1854), Selections from the Records of the University and King’s College Of Aberdeen, 1494–1854, Aberdeen, 230–1. (I am grateful to Howard Hotson for this reference). The names of these texts indicate not only the endurance of the study of Ramus himself, but also close acquaintance with the Ramist tradition as it had developed through Keckermann and Alsted. 7 . See chapter 5 , p. 68. 3 1630–1700 1 . In line with his remark about the “privatisation of the study of logic,” M. Feingold (1997), “The Humanities” in Tyacke, N. (ed.), The History of the University of Oxford, Vol IV, ch. 5, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 294, tells us that a primary objective of tutors was to “compile a list of approved authors from which students could select their texts.” Among these, “some were more popular than others—notably Robert Sanderson and Francis Burgersdijk.” It is perhaps no coincidence that these were both followers of Keckermann (for Sanderson, Calvinist fellow of Lincoln College Oxford after 1608 and his Logicae Artis NOTES 165 Compendium 1618, see Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (1998), London: Routledge, 717. Left to choose for themselves, Oxford undergraduates, sup- ported by their tutors, not surprisingly went for clear, accessible, and systematic introductions to the subject produced within a pedagogical tradition that put first students’ needs for an overview of the main features of the subject. In this Ramist/post-Ramist tradition, it had by this time become a point of principle that “the unmediated reading of unsystematic authors—Aristotle and the clas- sics among them—was recommended only once the mind had been prepared by an introductory compendium and a basic grounding had been provided by a more advanced systema.” (H. Hotson [2007], Commonplace Learning: Ramism and Its German Manifestations, 1543–1630, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 281). For Oxford undergraduates not intending to go on to further scholarship, a compendium like Sanderson’s was all they would have needed. Apart from Sanderson and Burgersdijk, other authors in tutors’ lists, as well as in students’ library catalogues and letters, include Ramus, Keckermann, Heereboord, and Alsted (Feingold, “The Humanities,” 294–5). 2 . His favorite shorter one was Burgersdijk’s Logic , which he considered not only “commonly approved and received,” but better than those of Keckermann, Molinus, or Ramus (Feingold, “The Humanities,” 293–4). For a brief sketch of Holdsworth’s outline of studies, see L. A. Cremin (1970), American Education: The Colonial Experience 1607–1783, New York: Harper, 204–5. This is divided into four years of work, with different morning and afternoon studies for each three-months period. Topics covered among other things: logic, ethics, and Roman history (yr I); physics and metaphysics (II); Aristotle’s Organon , Physics, and Ethics (III); astronomy, psychology, meteorology (IV); as well as Latin and some Greek literature throughout. 3 . See also pp. 47–9. 4 . “Thus we may fairly describe Hartlib, Dury and Comenius as the philosophers of the English country party in the 1630s” (H. Trevor-Roper [1967], “Three foreigners: The philosophers of the puritan revolution,” in his Religion, the Reformation and Social Change, London: Macmillan, 258). 5 . S e e a l s o p . 4 7 . 6 . This was a contrast with the prevailing curriculum of the grammar schools, which was based on grammar and rhetoric alone. Modern subjects rarely appeared in the curriculum (F. Watson [1909], The Beginnings of the Teaching of Modern Subjects in England, London: Pitman, xxii, 530). For evidence of the absence of specific subjects, see F. Watson (1902), The Curriculum and Text- Books of English Schools in the First Half of the Seventeenth Century, London: Transactions of the Bibliographical Society (writing p. 173, arithmetic p. 173, foreign languages p. 175, geography p. 179, history p. 180, music p. 180). 7 . The educationalist Sir Fred Clarke has also claimed this. See p. 58. 8 . See chapter 4 , pp. 58–63. 9 . Henry Langley’s Tubney (1660s), Thomas Cole’s Nettlebed (1666), and John Shuttlewood’s Sulby (late 1670s) (For brief biographies of these tutors, see their DNB entries). 166 NOTES 10 . These are as follows. In each case, I have included the founder’s name and the date of foundation: John Woodhouse’s Sheriffhales (1663), Theophilus Gale’s Newington Green (I) (ca. 1666), Samuel Jones’s Brynllwarch (1668), Richard Frankland’s Rathmell (1670), Matthew Warren’s Taunton (1670?), Edward Veal’s Wapping (1670s), Samuel Cradock’s Wickhambrook (1672?), Thomas Doolittle’s Islington (1672), Charles Morton’s Newington Green (II) (by 1675), Francis Tallents and James Owen’s Shrewsbury (1680?/1700), Thomas Brand’s and John Ker’s Bethnal Green (ca. 1685), Timothy Jollie’s Attercliffe (1691), Joseph Hallett’s Exeter (1690), Isaac Chauncy’s Hoxton (1701). 11 . Sheriffhales, Rathmell, Wickhambrook, Newington Green II, Shrewsbury, Bethnal Green, and probably Brynllwarch and Newington Green I. 12 . For the others we have only meager records. These sometimes indicate a four- or five-year course, but without evidence of a very broad curriculum (Taunton, Exeter); and sometimes supply, in addition, positive evidence of low academic standards (Islington, Attercliffe). Of Wapping, we know little more than that it was intended for ministerial students, and that John Wesley’s father, Samuel, read logic and ethics there. I have found no record of the curriculum in the first years of Hoxton under Chauncy, except that it covered four years. 13 . Edward Veal, for instance, suffered prosecution for setting up the academy at Wapping, just mentioned. Other examples are to be found in D. Wykes (2006), “The contribution of the Dissenting Academies to the emergence of Rational Dissent,” in Haakonssen, K. (ed.), Enlightenment and Religion: Rational Dissent in Eighteenth Century Britain, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Even as late as the early 1700s, Dissenting Academies were held in deep suspicion in some quarters. They were, for instance, attacked by Sacheverel for “debauch- ing youth with the corrupted maxims of republicanism” and for their “athe- istical lewd books” (J.
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