THE STRUGGLE FOR MORAL EDUCATION IN ENGLISH ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS 1879-1918 SUSANNAH LISBET WRIGHT OXFORD BROOKES UNIVERSITY Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the award of Doctor of Philosophy November 2006 Contents CONTENTS Contents Abstract poi Acknowledgements poll Abbreviations p.iv Introduction pol Chapter One: Moralising the Population: The Context for the Struggle for Moral Education 1879-1918 p.l S Chapter Two: Pressure Group Propaganda and Government Policy pAS Chapter Three: The Moral Instruction Curriculum: Evidence from Teachers' Handbooks po8S Chapter Four: Moral Education in Birmingham and Leicester: The Local Context po126 Chapter Five: George Dixon, FJ Gould and Moral Instruction in Birmingham and Leicester polSl Chapter Six: Moral Education in Birmingham and Leicester Elementary Schools 1879-1918 po191 Conclusion: The Struggle for Moral Education 1879-1918 and Beyond po233 Appendix: Birmingham and Leicester School Samples po238 Bibliography po241 Abstract ABSTRACT This thesis examines moral education in English elementary schools from 1879 to 1918. It investigates why there was widespread interest in character formation in the elementary school at this time but not support for one particular sort of programme. It investigates how moral education was perceived, approached, and implemented by the education department, the general public, School Board and Education Committee members, and teachers in schools, offering a comprehensive and detailed investigation into these issues. Much of the study focuses on one distinctive approach to moral education in this period - secular moral instruction. A range of sources are interrogated, allowing access to the different, but sometimes overlapping, perspectives of policy-makers, educationalists, the organisations and individuals who promoted moral education (particularly the Moral Instruction League, George Dixon and FJ Gould), authors of teaching material, and inspectors and head teachers in schools. Chapters One to Three have an England-wide focus. Chapters Four to Six discuss local studies of Birmingham and Leicester which allow a detailed analysis of educational policy-making, activism and practice in schools. This thesis concludes that moral educators were energetic, skilful at promotion, and engaged in innovative curriculum development. Nevertheless, they faced a range of ideological, political and practical barriers and were ultimately unable to translate generalised interest in character formation and the moralising function of the elementary school into widespread support for their programmes of moral education, or to ensure that statements of interest were translated into effective activity in schools. The issues they grappled with are being worked through still in relation to moral education and citizenship in English schools: the struggle for moral education continues today. Acknowledgements ACKNO~EDGEMENTS I would like to thank all my friends for helping to see me through to the end of this thesis. Particular thanks to Kerry Davies and Simon Baalham for conversation, encouragement, and jogging, Jo Hazell, Alis Oancea, Stephanie Sturdy and Stephanie Wilde for sociable cups of tea - and a break from the thesis - at work, and Camilla Leach for chats and taking on more than her share of our joint History of Education Society duties in the last few months. I would also like to thank my supervisors Steve King and John Stewart for their invaluable advice at different stages of the thesis, and especially my Director of Studies, David Nash, for inspiration, wisdom and encouragement to have confidence in my ideas throughout, and reading hundreds of thousands of words of drafts. Carol Beadle, Harriet Irvine and Jill Organ have helped me navigate the paperwork and procedures associated with writing and submitting the thesis. Outside Oxford Brookes, Richard Aldrich, Jane Buckley, John Gay, Peter Gordon, Ian Grosvenor, and Richard Pring have generously offered their time and wisdom. I am very grateful to them all. I have used many archives and libraries in the course of my research, and would like to thank the staff at the British Library (St Pancras and Colindale), the British Library of Political and Economic Science, Brunei University Library, Deansgate Library, the library and archive collections at the Institute of Education, London, the Labour History Archive and Study Centre, the Public Record Office, University of Strathclyde Archives and Wisconsin Historical Society Archives. Particular thanks to the staff at Oxford Brookes Library and the Bodleian Library who have dealt professionally and helpfully with my often complicated requests, and to the staff at Birmingham City Archives (especially Sian Roberts), Birmingham Local Studies Library, and the Record Office for Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland for their friendliness, support, and invaluable knowledge of their collections on my many visits. I would like to thank everyone who has very kindly given their time to read and comment on drafts of my work: Richard Aldrich, Anne Bloomfield, Kerry Davies, Jo Hazell, Henry ii Acknowledgements McGuinness, Alison Waller, Ruth Watts, Stephanie Wilde, Elisabeth Wright, Malcolm Wright. I promise bottles of wine once I am finished. Finally I would like to thank my parents Elisabeth and Malcolm Wright and my sister Judith Wright for their constant encouragement. Especially I would like to thank my partner, Henry McGuinness, for living with me, and with the joys and frustrations that have come with this thesis, for six years, and for his love and support throughout. My Grandad did not live to see this finished, but has always supported and inspired me. This thesis Asdedicated to him. iii Abbreviations ABBREVIATIONS BCA Birmingham City Archives BEC Birmingham Education Committee BLPES British Library of Political and Economic Science BLSL Birmingham Local Studies Library BSB Birmingham School Board CMEL Civic and Moral Education League HMI Her Majesty's Inspector/His Majesty's Inspector HMSO His Majesty's Stationery Office/Her Majesty's Stationery Office ILP Independent Labour Party LEC Leicester Education Committee LSB Leicester School Board LSS Leicester Secular Society MELQ Moral Education League Quarterly MIL Moral Instruction League MILQ Moral Instruction League Quarterly NA National Archives NEL National Education League RlLR Record Office for Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland WCAA Working Class Autobiographical Archive WHSA Wisconsin Historical Society Archive iv Introduction INTRODUCTION The question of moral education is the heart of the modem educational problem. If this is neglected, education is a peril. Economic and social changes, the inrush of new knowledge and new ideas, the weakening of ancient traditions, the shifting of old landmarks of custom and belief, have thrown upon the schools a responsibility beyond precedent and expectation. I So wrote Michael Sadler, previously employed at the Board of Education, and one of the country's eminent educationalists, in his introduction to the report of the international inquiry into moral instruction he chaired from 1906 to 1908. As this comment indicates, moral education in English elementary schools was clearly a matter of national interest around the tum of the twentieth century. It was the subject of a major international congress in 1908, enshrined in the education codes of 1904 and 1906, and addressed in examination questions for trainee teachers. Yetin 1914 the educationalist Eva White wrote about the "parrot cry of character-training". Educationalists, she argued, all claimed that character formation was important, but there was no substance behind these claims. Her comment points to a lack of commitment not only to her favoured method of moral instruction but to any particular method. It also probably implies a lack of activity behind all the talk about moral education. This activity and debate were stimulated by a deep, and widespread, concern about the moral condition of society. Politicians, churchmen, social reformers and others felt that social stability had been eroded by the intellectual and political developments of the second half of the nineteenth century (such as Darwinian thought and the rise of socialism), the breakdown of family and community ties attributed to urban and industrial problems, and the apparent decline of organised religion. The press and literature revealed fears about delinquent youth. The decades around 1900 also witnessed concerns about physical and moral degeneracy, influenced by eugenicist theories of racial deterioration, and amplified by the spectre of political and economic competition from other countries. The role of the state was also changing, at both the national and the local level, leading to alterations in the nature of the relationship between state and citizen, and in what was required of the individual as a citizen. 1 M. Sadler, Introduction, in M.E. Sadler (ed.), Moral Instruction and Training in Schools. Report of an Infemationsllnquiry. Volume I, london: longmans, Green & Co., 1908, xiii-xlix, pp.xxi-xxii. 1 Introduction F ears of the consequences of these developments led many politicians, churchmen and social reformers to put their faith in the school as the institution that would moralise the rising generation and improve the state of the nation in the future. The churches, equating morality with Christianity, concentrated their efforts on religious instruction. However, non-believers (and even some Christians) sought a purely