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Durham E-Theses Durham E-Theses The history of the teaching of biological subjects including nature study in English schools since 1660 Hudspith, W.H. How to cite: Hudspith, W.H. (1962) The history of the teaching of biological subjects including nature study in English schools since 1660, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/9603/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 I \ W. H. HUDSPITH THE HISTORY OF THE TEACHING OF BIOLOGICAL SUBJECTS INCLUDING NATURE STUDY. IN ENGLISH SCHOOLS SINCE 1660 V M. Ed. THESIS. DURHAM. 1962. The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without his prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. THE HISTORY OF THE TEACHING OF BIOLOGICAL SUBJECTS. INCLUDING NATURE STUDY. IN ENGLISH SCHOOLS SINCE 1660. Pages. 1. Preface 2. Introduction. 1 - 35 3. The Dissenting Academies. - Chapter I. 36 - 57 4. Private Schools. - Chapter II. 58 - 89 5. Proprietary Schools. - Chapter Ill. 90 -109 6. Public Schools. - Chapter IV. 110 -135 7. Grammar Schools. - Chapter V. 136 -179 8. Elementary Schools. - Chapter VI. 180 -240 9. Girls' Schools - Chapter VII. 241 -255 10. Discussion. 256 -306 11. Appendice s. 307 -324 12. Bibliography. 325 -330 PREFACE The literature dealing with historical researches into the different grades and types of schooling that ./ have existed in this country is voluminous; voluminous, too, are the hooks about the history of Science and of the sciences. In considering the more specialised field of science teaching in the schools Foster Watson's 'The Beginnings of the Teaching of Modern Subjects in England' and D. M. Turner's 'History of Science Teaching in England' are general works but there have been pub• lished in the last decade, a number of short articles, as well as one or two theses, which deal with certain aspects of biological subject teaching in schools during the period under review. In particular, Miss Breraner's articles in the 'School Science Review' on Botany, Zoology and Physiology teaching in the Nineteenth Century, E. S. Brown's article in the same journal about Zoology teaching in the century from 1851, and B. S. Cane's article in the 'British Journal of Educational Studies' concerning secondary school work in the scientific and technical subjects have proved valuable. Miss R. M. McDonald has covered Grammar school biology teaching from 1850 in her thesis and the researches of G. W. Thomas and E. L. Greenberg have also been helpful in discussing biological work in the Dissenting Academies and the ii Private Schools respectively. (See Bibliography) This account deals with a larger slice of English schoolteaching history against a changing historical background and an attempt has been made throughout to discuss and to correlate the nomenclature which has been applied to the Sciences and to portions of them during the last three centuries. It is in this light that the material is first considered in the Introduction. INTRODUCTION This work mentions freely words that have been in use for some time to describe and limit small por• tions of science, partitioning that discipline into more or less manageable slices, which reveals how vast the collections of scientific material have become. 'Natural Science', for instance, deals with a number of subjects of which 1 Biology':: is now one. 'Biology' is a relatively modern word covering a group of subjects that are zoological or botanical in content. Thus such sciences as Embryology, Parasitology, Bacteriology and Mycology contain more specific biological data and each has its own terminology and its own particular boundaries, although these parts of Zoology and Botany do overlap, in subject-matter, within the parent disciplines. Such subdivisions of a science are therefore not mutually exclusive and, although a specialist or expert in any one of them might not lay claim to expertise in another, he would find common ground with his fellow scientists in that particular thought-process which is called 'scientific reasoning' and which is only applied common- sense. All of the sciences have grown out of the study of the material and phenomena of Nature and natural things, and the methods used in investigating the facts of each of them are similar. Further, since science is geared to the business of living and is concerned with ex• plaining the facts about a material world, all specialist scientists must be able to communicate with a mass audience. Thus another thread runs through the fabric of science; it is a thread of simplicity. Scientific discovery is always empirical and therefore must be explicable in simple terms, since science is not only the concern of scientists but of all men in their everyday dealings with life. It is this interrelationship between the simple and the complex that is important in considering the growth of individual sciences. It is reflected in the history of the development of the modern scientific subjects and is especially well revealed in the collection of material now dealt with as 'Nature Study' in schools. This desig• nation was once given to a study of all natural phenomena, whatever their form; in the beginning it represented all the science there was. It was this study of Nature to which Aristotle devoted much of his thought and observation and of which Juan Luis Vives, in the sixteenth century, wrote in a purely literal sense. In the twentieth century, modern usage has given to Nature Study a special nuance of meaning by which the term is held to cover only some simple account of biological matter for young children and under this heading the account is not commonly associa- vs -3- ted with a full and free flow of scientific jargon and the infusion of scientific reasoning. It might be suggested that Nature Study, when well taught in the 1960's, has some of the intrinsic qualities that it had for Aristotle because the uncluttered minds of children can, by this means, be introduced to the proper use of their senses in appreciating the wonders of the world about them, a point of view which will be more fully discussed later. However, if this be true, the evolution of this essential stage of enquiry (or, perhaps, the return towards it) must be considered. Any absolute link between twentieth century usage and, say, the Aristotelian usage of the term 'Nature Study1 is tenuous but the changes in the terminology applied to the biological sciences throughout those intervening centuries mark a process that is evolutionary, with the concomitant growth, digressions and consolidation that this word implies. The development of the subjects of science is partially reflected in the teaching of them in the schools; even more important, the reasons why these subjects gained admittance to school curricula have to be evaluated. Another term much in use by scientific writers is 'Natural History1, but rarely has it been used in its literal sense of describing the history of Nature so that now it has a narrower connotation by which the more -4- academic studies of the professional zoologist are divorced from those of his amateur colleagues. Here again there has been little consistency and in the e due ac• tional works of the nineteenth century, especially, dif• ferent authors have used this title for different descrip• tive purposes. The usages of all of these names have been continuously modified against a changing background:caused by increases in the amounts of factual knowledge about the universe. With the increasing intricacy of discoveries about natural phenomena the amassed bulk of data created a need to set finjer and finer limits to particular divi• sions of scientific thought, with the result that writers have tended subtly to modify the terminology of their predecessors and this has often caused a restriction in meaning. It is against this background that the terminology used in this work is first considered. I have attempted to trade, albeit very briefly, the broad lines of grov/th of that collection of fact and theory seeking to explain the problems of life and of living things which T. H. Huxley called the 'Life Sciences'. This is followed by an attempt to 'set the educational scene', as it were, in which the biological sciences began to be introduced into the schools, by considering the attitudes towards these subjects of some educational reformers and philosophers. •'A -5- In this latter account I have quoted from writers such as Vives and Conienius, Hartlib and Milton because they were in the van of the ceaseless attempt to change the material content of school learning. Each of these men was in some way concerned with the study of Nature and advocated that it was an essential part of any educa• tive process. It would be reasonable to generalise by saying that their concern sprang from belief in the inti• mate involvement of man with the creations of God.
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