Debates About Elementary Education in English Periodicals, 1833-1880

Complex Twists of Becoming: Debates about Elementary Education in English Periodicals, 1833-1880. Edwin Patrick Powell A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies University of Essex Submitted: October, 2019. 1 Acknowledgements I am delighted to express my gratitude to Professor Susan Oliver who has been an outstanding supervisor throughout the doctoral process. Supervision sessions were always enlightening, challenging and stimulating. I have undoubtedly benefitted from Susan’s passion for literature and her comprehensive knowledge of periodical culture. Susan was always generous with her time and assiduous in providing instructive critiques and sustained encouragement. Professor Pam Cox and Dr James Canton were part of the supervisory team whose perceptive comments and stimulating questions were important in directing my attention to alternative interpretations of literary-historical contexts. I am most grateful to Pam and James for their contribution to the excellent support given to me. I am most appreciative of the assistance given to me by the staff at the Albert Sloman Library, University of Essex and by Deanna McCarthy, the Senior Student Administrator in the Department of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies. I wish to thank the staff at the British Library where I spent many enjoyable and productive hours poring over periodicals. I am grateful to Curator Franki Kubicki at the Charles Dickens Museum who drew my attention to manuscripts in Dickens’s own hand which I had the privilege of studying. The staff at the Church of England Records Office were most helpful in organising access to important religious periodicals. Baron Petre of Writtle provided me with Monsignor Lord William Joseph Petre’s papers on education, and the Rev. Dr Stewart Foster discussed his PhD thesis on Monsignor Petre with me. My copy editor, Catherine Doran, has been scrupulous in her attention to detail. I am most grateful for the assistance given to me by these individuals and organisations. My wife, Anna, has been constant in her support throughout these three years. She has shown commendable tolerance in the face of monologues about aspects of my research when enthusiasm got the better of me. Every person, institution and organisation have been instrumental in enabling me to pursue this wonderful and deeply satisfying research journey. 2 Abstract Complex Twists of Becoming: Debates about Elementary Education in English Periodicals, 1833-1880. This thesis investigates the tension between traditional and progressive educational ideas and practices expressed in fictionalised representations and non-fiction discourses in English periodicals from 1833 to 1880. The nature and purpose of elementary education featured prominently and constantly in periodicals throughout the nineteenth-century. However, relatively little scholarly consideration has been given to the important role of periodicals as a medium for exploring educational issues in Victorian England. My thesis aims to contribute to filling that gap. By drawing on different kinds of periodicals, ranging from the major quarterly reviews to specialist journals aimed at teachers, I show how we can extend our understanding of the social and cultural history of elementary education for working-class and middle-class children. Periodicals, whose reach and influence extended across the spectrum of English society, created a new cultural space for debates about elementary education in the public and private spheres. My research demonstrates how and why debates about elementary education were shaped and developed into a coherent and meaningful movement by the periodical press from 1833 to 1880. I argue that competing religious preferences progressed the extension of elementary education for working-class children but resisted ‘progressive’ or ‘liberal’ models of early education. Exceptionally, Methodism was socially progressive, promoting gender equality in education and an aspirational culture where knowledge acquisition was concerned. I show that periodicals were eminently influential in promoting and facilitating household education and domestic pedagogies as an alternative to formal, institutionalised versions. I hope that this investigation of periodical culture and elementary education will initiate further enquiries on the subject. 3 Table of Contents Complex Twists of Becoming: Debates about Elementary Education in English Periodicals, 1833-1880. Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................................................ 1 Abstract ................................................................................................................................................................... 2 Table of Contents ................................................................................................................................................. 3 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................................... 4 Chapter One: Schools, Pedagogy and Teachers ................................................................................... 30 Chapter Two: Religion and Elementary Education ........................................................................... 96 Chapter Three: Elementary Education Beyond the Schoolroom ............................................... 162 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................................... 223 Bibliography ..................................................................................................................................................... 239 4 Introduction This thesis investigates the tension between traditional and progressive educational ideas and practices expressed in fictionalised representations and discourses in periodicals in Victorian England from 1833 to 1880. By analysing texts produced, reproduced, circulated and read by an English reading audience in specific historical conditions, I argue that we can extend our understanding of the social and cultural history of elementary education. The importance of investigating the relationship between the periodical press and education has been highlighted by Janice Schroeder who argues that Within Victorian periodical studies, education in its various dimensions has received relatively little focused attention. The Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism, for example, contains no topic entries on education or schooling, and the entry on the professions and journalism contains scant mention of the teachers’ press.1 The significance of periodical culture is well-documented in an extensive body of scholarship that extends from the Regency period to the late nineteenth-century in Britain.2 These texts have tended to focus on a variety of topics that featured in the periodical press; specifically, though not exclusively, art, the practice of literary criticism, law, medicine, music, sport, agriculture, theatre, temperance, Victorian occupations and commerce. In Joanne Shattock’s most recent edited collection on Journalism and the Periodical Press in Nineteenth-Century England, some twenty leading scholars have written on a variety of subjects but not specifically on elementary education.3 Evidence from 1 Janice Schroeder, Victorian Education and the Periodical Press, Victorian Periodicals Review, Johns Hopkins University Press, v. 50, no.4 (Winter 2017): 679-685, 10.1353/vpr.2017.0049, 679. http:// www.muse.jhu.edu (accessed April 11, 2019,1. 2 For example, Richard D. Altick, The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800-1900 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1998). Kevin Gilmartin, Print Politics-The press and radical opposition in early nineteenth century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Jon P. Klancher, The Making of English Reading Audiences, 1790-1832 (Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1996). Mark Schoenfield, British Periodicals and Romantic Identity: The “Literary Lower Empire” (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). Joanne Shattock and Michael Wolff, eds. The Victorian Periodical Press: Samplings and Soundings (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1982). J. Don Vann and Rosemary T.VanArsdel, eds. Victorian Periodicals and Victorian Society (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995). 3 Joanne Shattock, ed. Journalism and the Periodical Press in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). The contributors to this important book represent some of the leading scholars on the periodical press. Twenty two chapters cover an eclectic mix of topics including ‘Illustration - Graphic Satire, Caricature, Comic Illustration and the Radical Press, 1820-1845,’‘Periodical Poetry,’ ‘The Press and the Law’ and ‘Dickens and the Middle-Class Weekly.’ There is not a specific category in this text that investigates the periodical press and elementary education. Given that this is one of the most recent scholarly works on periodicals, the argument is 5 secondary sources on the Victorian periodical press tends to confirm Schroeder’s position on the “relatively little focused attention” given to the relationship between periodicals and education.4 Periodicals provide access points through which educational issues

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