This work is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights and duplication or sale of all or part is not permitted, except that material may be duplicated by you for research, private study, criticism/review or educational purposes. Electronic or print copies are for your own personal, non- commercial use and shall not be passed to any other individual. No quotation may be published without proper acknowledgement. For any other use, or to quote extensively from the work, permission must be obtained from the copyright holder/s. Resistanceto change: A study of influences affecting the curriculum in selectedClarendon Schools in the mid-Victorian period B. Stancer University of Keele PAGE NUMBERING AS ORIGINAL Resistance to change: a study of influences affecting the curriculum in selected Clarendon Schools in the mid. -Victorian period. Brenda Stancer Ph. D Thesis 1978 Acknowledgements This thesis would not have been completed without the encouragement, constructive criticism and advice of Dr. Marjorie Cruickshank, whose high academic standards acted as a stimulus throughout the research. In addition I should like to thank the staff of the Temple Library, Rugby School for their help, and also Mr. Lawson of the Shrewsbury School Library for his great assistance and interest. Finally, I should like to express my gratitude to my parents, Evelyn and Geoffrey Downes, and also to Cathy, Caroline and to John, for their considerable patience and encouragement. Brenda Stancer December, 1978 Abstract This thesis is concerned with an examination of the influences which affected the curricula of certain Clarendon schools during the mid-Victorian period. The emphasis initially is on the development of the schools and the Christian classical tradition of education up to the time of the Clarendon Commission. The evidence of the Commission is examined in some detail with the object of determining the extent to which modern subjects had gained a place in the curriculum. The conclusion of this part of the thesis is that despite individual differences the schools generally failed to modernise their curricula to any appreciable extent and several factors are considered in an attempt to account for this. The decision-making processes within the schools are examined in conjunction with the backgrounds and attitudes of the decision- makers. In addition an attempt is made to assess the nature and extent of the influence exerted on the schools by the ancient universities and by the Established Church. A later chapter concentrates on the new proprietary schools and the differences between their curricula and those of the Clarendon schools. Educational demands made by parents are also considered, as well as those made by the old and new professions favoured as future careers by public school boys. The final chapters of the thesis examine the curriculum changes which took place after the Clarendon Commission until the end of the century and attempt to assess the importance of the factors promoting curriculum change and those which inhibited it. Introduction Speaking at the 1974 Headmasters' Conference, Professor Steiner of Geneva University commented on the failure of the English education system to develop a scientific-technological alternative to the Christian classical tradition of education. Other countries had developed such alternatives but in England, even in the 1970s, there was no genuine counterpart to 1'Ecole Polytechnique or M. I. T. (1) Corelli Barnett, pursuing a similar theme, suggests that the failure to produce a style of education more in keeping with the needs of an industrial technological society has had serious consequences for Britain. While other nations developed both the essential skills for continuous technical advance and the requisite mental outlook, we did neither. We neglected and even scorned systematic training and research. During our Victorian heyday, Barnett argues, middle and upper class education was devoted to turning out Christian gentlemen. The Arnoldian public school, with its emphasis on the classics and its academicism, was complemented by Victorian Oxbridge, imitated by the grammar schools, and hardly conducive to industrial success. Barnett argues that for at least a century Britain has suffered from having a national elite which has had little understanding of industrial operations and which is positively hostile towards industrialism in general. The bias continues to the present, running deep through British society. It is even reflected in the new universities by students' preference for the arts over science and technology and their aversion to careers in industry. Thus, Barnett argues that 'the English disease' i. e. the pervasive inferiority of performance as an industrial society, can at least in part be explained by 'the values, aims and effectiveness of our education system' legacy heavily where the of the past still weighs upon us. He also argues 2 'undervalue despise industry it best that to - or - and to starve of the of the national talent is among the most persistent and pernicious of (2) British attitudes inherited from that era'. This thesis will examine the Christian classical tradition of education in the Clarendon public schools and its relationship with the so-called 'modern' in An be subjects - particular natural science. attempt will made to determine why the Christian classical tradition retained its pre-eminence despite the considerable pressures which existed for change. The period covered will extend from around 1760 to the end of the nineteenth century. These decades saw the emergence of Britain asthe first industrial society and later the growing threat of the 'follower' Germany, France, Britain's dominance. countries - etc. - to position of Industrialisation in the follower countries produced new traditions of education in tune with the scientific and technological advances which were taking place. Within this period considerable emphasis will be placed on the years immediately before and after the Clarendon Commission Enquiry of 1864. This was the time when the classical tradition of education was most under attack, when unfavourable comparisons were constantly being made with other European countries and when curricular changes of a dramatic nature seemed just around the corner. It is therefore the period when the pressures for change and the forces for reaction, both within and outside the schools, were most sharply in conflict and can therefore be most clearly identified. The Clarendon schools are the nine 'great' schools investigated by the Clarendon Commission which was set up in 1861 'to inquire into the revenues and management of certain colleges and schools and the studies pursued and instruction given therein'. The schools thus singled out were Eton, Harrow, Westminster, Shrewsbury, Rugby, Charterhouse, 3 Winchester, St. Paul's and Merchant Taylors and were regarded as in some sense special because they had all, at certain stages in their histories, achieved reputations as national institutions educating essentially the sons of the gentry and aristocracy. These schools - together Oxford Cambridge with and - represented the stronghold of the Christian classical tradition of education throughout the period to be covered. It is one of the contentions of this thesis that the Clarendon schools exerted an influence on English society in general and on education in particular which was out of all proportion to their size. Their importance was widely recognised by contemporaries and indeed by the Commissioners, who believed that the welfare of the Empire itself depended to a considerable degree on the nine schools. The seemingly disproportionate influence of the schools was based primarily on two factors: firstly, that they were widely imitated; and secondly, that they educated many of the future leaders of society. To take the first point, the Clarendon Commission Report suggested that 'Public School Education' had been developed chiefly within the walls of these nine schools and that they had been much imitated by younger (3) institutions. Their curricula, internal organisation and aims were certainly emulated quite openly by the 'new' public schools which in the 1840s and 50s came into being to cater for the growing middle class demand. '... we may fairly take the nine schools... as supplying the general type of that class of schools to which most Englishmen of the higher class either their '(4) send sons or wish to send them. .. commented the Report. Worsley takes the argument a step further and suggests that the influence of the schools extended even outside the private sector. He suggests that 4 because of the 'national vice' - snobbery - 'the ideas and the ideals of the ruling class are imitated up and down society' and as a result the public schools had materially influenced the conduct of secondary education (5) throughout the national system. Possibly the greater reason for the importance of the nine schools stemmed from what Worsley has called 'their social purpose' - namely (6) 'to train an oligarchy of rulers'. It is certainly true that throughout the nineteenth century their alumni filled many of the dominant positions in politics, the Church, the Civil Service and the armed forces. F. A. M. Webster puts it even higher when he argues that ' if a... history of all the public schools is ever written it will be, in reality, the history of England, since the British Empire has been in the main built up by the founders of the schools and the pupils who gained their knowledge and had their (7) characters moulded in those institutions'. The long-standing near monopoly of the products of the schools over certain key positions has been (8) well documented by writers such as Guttsman on the political elite -a work which seems to substantiate the Commissioners' claim that the (9) schools 'have been the chief nurseries of our statesmen' - and by (10) Kelsall in relation to higher civil servants. Eton alone has produced over one third of our Prime Ministers. It is interesting to note that the hold of the schools over key positions has survived political and educational reform until well into the present century.