Hadow (1923)

Notes on the text
Preliminary pages Membership, Analysis, Preface, Introduction
Chapter 1 History of the curriculum in secondary schools
Chapter 2 The curriculum at present in use
Chapter 3 Differences between boys and girls
Chapter 4 General review of the evidence and conclusions
Appendix I List of witnesses
Appendix II List of publications
Appendix III Coeducational day schools
Appendix IV Music and art exams
Appendix V Dr JG Adami: memorandum
Appendix VI School timetables

London: HM Stationery Office

Chapter 1 History of the curriculum in secondary schools
[pages 1 - 44]

Introductory

1. The differences which still exist between the curriculum generally adopted for boys and that adopted for girls are the result of a long historical evolution, and we have accordingly given an account of the main stages in the development. We have taken first the history of schools for boys. Here we begin with a short description of the old literary education in vogue at the public schools and grammar schools of the early part of the 19th century. We then show how the curriculum of the old endowed schools was slowly expanded, owing to the competition of the private schools and the widespread feeling that the classical culture by itself no longer afforded an adequate preparation for modern life. The proprietary schools and other institutions of public school rank, founded in considerable numbers from about 1820 onwards, represent to some extent a fusion of the better elements which characterised the education given in the grammar schools and that provided in the private schools. They recognised the claims of the old learning while at the same time adding to it serious instruction in mathematics, in modern studies, and in certain branches of natural science. The modification of the classical tradition in the old endowed schools was accelerated by the grammar school Act of 1840, which provided a procedure for revising the original trusts, and by the ever increasing demands of academic and professional examinations. The Public Schools Commission (1861-4) revealed clearly the defects and shortcomings of the old tradition; and we have accordingly summarised the more important recommendations of their Report so far as it deals with curriculum. A brief account follows of the curricula in use in the private schools, which were established in large numbers during the 18th century to meet the needs of parents who were dissatisfied with the narrowness of the old curriculum, and desired to obtain for their sons a practical education which would fit them for commerce, industry and engineering. We conclude our account of the development of the boys' curriculum with a summary of the recommendations of the Schools Inquiry Commission (1864-68) so far as it relates to curricula. We then describe the development of schools for girls, dealing first with the period up to about 1860, during which, on the whole, the prevailing tradition of girls' education was that it should be completely different from that of boys, and should consist mainly of 'accomplishments', that is to say, a slight proficiency in music, languages and literature, drawing, painting and needlework. A short account is then given of the movement for the higher education of women, and more especially of the views of its more prominent advocates. It seems clear that the leaders of the movement, instead of merely seeking to improve girls' education by the better teaching of the traditional accomplishments, deliberately aimed at substituting for them the subjects of the boys' curriculum. The tradition of girls' higher education that has come down to us from the reform movement of the middle of the last century [19th century] thus appears to be based on the view that girls' courses should, on the whole, be modelled on the curriculum for boys' schools; and the old conception that music, art and needlework should form part of a girl's training has only survived in an attenuated form. Thus the boys' curriculum - which, even in the [eighteen] sixties, was beginning to be widened by the inclusion of new subjects - was adopted, almost unaltered; and the girls' schools, which were also expected to teach their pupils music, drawing and needlework, were confronted from the beginning with the problem of the congestion of studies. Another influence was also at work. It is difficult to overestimate the effect of the Cambridge Local and other external examinations on the evolution of the curriculum in girls' schools. The practical effect of preparing and presenting girls for examinations, which had been arranged by male examiners primarily to suit the requirements of boys' schools, still further accentuated the tendency to assimilate the girls' curriculum to that in use in boys' schools. The preparation of girls for these external examinations is also partly responsible for the rapid growth of an academic tradition in girls' education, which is apt to ignore the needs of the large number of pupils who are likely to marry and found homes at an early age. We next summarise the considerations, humanistic, vocational, and economic, which appear to have influenced the leaders of the movement for the higher education of women. In its inception this was a middle class movement. It was not till the rise, in the [eighteen] eighties and nineties, of the higher grade schools which developed, after 1902, into the present municipal and county secondary schools, that secondary education for girls was placed on a broader social basis. Educationally a similar broadening has also taken place. Many county and municipal secondary schools, while continuing the good tradition of teaching arithmetic, which characterises the best elementary schools, are progressing in the direction of giving to mathematics and physical science a more important place in girls' education than they have hitherto occupied in girls' schools of the older type. We conclude the chapter with a summary of the steps taken by the Board of Education since 1902 in administering the state grants payable to secondary schools, especially in their bearing on differentiation of curriculum between boys and girls.

A. The history of the curriculum for boys' schools

The development of the conventional curriculum in grammar schools up to about 1825

2. For some hundreds of years before the middle of the 18th century the typical school in England was the grammar school. The aim of the grammar school was, before all else, to give some form of instruction in Latin, (1) which, up to the first half of the 18th century, was still to a great extent the language of theology, law, science, and diplomacy in Western Europe. The teaching of 'the liberal science or art of grammar', which is described in Bishop Oldham's Statutes for Manchester Grammar School (1525) as 'the ground and fountain of all the other liberal arts and sciences', (2) was regarded as the distinguishing mark of higher education. This is shown by the fact that in some instances an English school for the 'pettys' was established side by side with the grammar school. Archbishop Harsnett erected in 1629 two school houses at Chigwell that the 'children and youth of Chigwell and other adjoining parishes should be in one of the said schools taught to read, write, cypher and cast accounts, and learn their accidence; and in the other schoolhouse to be instructed in the Latin and Greek tongues.' (3) The classical revival of the 16th century in its effect on schools increased the number of classical authors read by displacing certain Latin Christian writers (4) formerly in favour and by giving a certain amount of support to the introduction of Greek. The Reformation movement, by its insistence on biblical study, helped to strengthen the position of Greek and in a few instances also established Hebrew (5) on the list of school studies. In essentials, however, the grammar school curriculum up to the beginning of the 19th century represented that education in rhetoric, described by Quintilian, (6) which the church had inherited from the Roman Empire. Its primary object was to train the pupil to express himself in Latin. This explains the survival of the Latin theme in some schools such as Eton down to the early years of the nineteenth century. By their persistent adherence to this narrow literary tradition the grammar schools to a great extent missed the real advantages of the humanistic renaissance, as represented by scholars like Erasmus, which had made possible a more adequate appreciation of literature and of the ancient civilisations. The schools in general were content with the stereotyped Latinity of Cicero, and in several grammar schools the statutes required the headmasters to devote special attention to Cicero's works. (7) At Hawkshead Grammar School (1585) the founder directed 'that the chiefest scholars shall make orations, epistles and verses in Latin and Greek for their exercises.' Requirements like these, which are more or less typical, explain the almost exclusive attention devoted to classical grammar, composition and even versification. (8) Henry Wotton in his essay Of the Education of Children (1672) defends the conventional curriculum, explaining that a child's instruction should begin with Latin, passing on to Greek and Hebrew, as in these three languages were to be found 'both the perfection of learning as well as philology and philosophy and the principal streams and rivers thereof.' (9)

The 17th and 18th centuries were marked by great advances in science and by the development of rich vernacular literatures in the countries of western Europe, and many protests were raised in various quarters against the narrowness of the traditional curriculum. Nevertheless the endowed schools, both local and non-local, supported by the conservatism of the old universities, successfully resisted all attempts at reform. In 1805 Lord Eldon, accepting Dr Johnson's definition of a grammar school as a school in which the learned languages are grammatically taught, ruled in the Court of Chancery that it was illegal for the governors of Leeds Grammar School to expend the endowment funds in teaching modern and commercial subjects. (10) His judgement was upheld by subsequent decisions, and this state of affairs continued till the passing of the Grammar School Act of 1840. (11) Even before that date, however, some of the old local foundations, under the pressure of public opinion, had enlarged their curriculum; and a way was frequently found for charging fees for the non-classical subjects. For example, Newcastle-on-Tyne Free Grammar School in 1838 taught, in addition to classics, 'French, writing, English Grammar and Composition, history and Chronology, geography and the use of the globes, practical and mental arithmetic, Euclid, Algebra, Trigonometry, Analytical Geometry and Mechanics, etc.' French was taught without extra charge, and the fees for instruction in the other branches of learning mentioned above were at the rate of £1 a quarter. (12) One contemporary writer estimated that in 1818 there were in England 500 grammar schools, and that in 120 of them more than 10,000 boys were 'pursuing every variety of study now in use in England.' (13)

The curriculum in use in the public schools and the more efficient grammar schools at the beginning of the 19th century

3. The theory underlying the old grammar school course is well expressed in a book on 'Liberal Education' (14) by Vicesimus Knox, Head Master of Tonbridge School from 1778 to 1812. Knox favoured the 'established manner' in education, and regarded Latin and Greek as the indispensable basis of all sound culture, but he thought it desirable, when this foundation had been laid, to include modern studies. Classical teaching should consist chiefly of the grammar of the two languages and the writing of prose and verse in both. To this should be added the elements of geography and history, French, some mathematics, and such accomplishments as music, drawing, and fencing, though Knox himself approved more of 'dancing and the learning of the military exercises which is now very common.' He expected his boys to read English and easy Latin books in their spare time.

The curriculum of the fifth and sixth forms at Eton under Dr Keate (1809-1830) may be taken as representing the type of education given in the more efficient endowed schools in the early decades of the 19th century. (15) It consisted of reading portions of Greek and Latin authors, mostly poets, and of three compositions a week - an original Latin theme; a set of Latin elegiacs; and, for the sixth form, a set of Greek iambics, and, for the fifth, a set of Latin lyrics. No Greek prose writers were read, except Lucian and a selection from the 'Scriptores Graeci'. Some boys in the fifth took geography and algebra as extras. This scheme of work was severely criticised in the Edinburgh Review for 1830 (16) on the ground that it was merely linguistic. It was urged that hardly any author was read consecutively and no systematic background of ancient history and geography was provided: that in fact attention was directed from the really important lessons of history to 'grammatical and metrical trifling'; and that almost no attention was paid to non-classical subjects except a few despised 'extras' such as French and elementary mathematics.

Thus the classics, with some smattering of divinity, geography and history, often taught through the medium of Latin, maintained an almost complete monopoly in the public schools and in many grammar schools until after the passing of the Grammar School Act in 1840. (17) At Eton, Rugby, Shrewsbury, and some other schools, French, arithmetic, writing and drawing were taught on half holidays by 'masters of accomplishments'.

4. One of the most progressive of the endowed schools in the early part of the 19th century was Shrewsbury, which was carefully reorganised under Dr Samuel Butler, Headmaster from 1798 to 1836. The curriculum was still mainly classical, but more attention was devoted to Greek than was usual in most schools. English, geography, algebra, Euclid and English history formed part of the ordinary work of the fifth and sixth forms. The boys were left free for a considerable amount of private reading, to which Butler attached much importance. He also introduced promotion by merit and periodical school examinations for the upper forms, in which an English theme formed an important part. (18) The pressure of public opinion (19) on the old schools is shown by the fact that Butler's successor, Dr BH Kennedy, made French a part of school 'business' in 1836, appointed a German master in 1837, and in 1839 added mathematics to the regular school curriculum.

Butler's work as a reformer of the traditional public school curriculum was further developed at Rugby by Dr Arnold. (20) Regarding the formation of moral principles and habits as the most important part of education, he assigned a leading place to history and other forms of instruction calculated to develop character. Under the system which had been established at Rugby by 1835, the boys were taught in three divisions - classical, mathematical, and French. The sixth form remained the same in personnel for all studies. Classics formed the centre of the curriculum, but were supplemented by instruction in French and mathematics (including arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and trigonometry), which were taught by the classical form masters. The curriculum also included English, German, ancient history, and modern European history. The teaching of ancient history was partly based on a first hand study of Greek and Roman historians; and the French reading in the sixth form included some of the historical works of Guizot and Mignet. (21)

Arnold introduced into the school teaching of classics the new conceptions, historical, philosophical, and aesthetic, which contemporary continental scholars such as Niebuhr had formed in regard to the civilisation and literature of the Ancient World, His main object was not so much to give the boys useful information as to aid them in gaining it later on for themselves and in turning it to account when gained. The place assigned to historical teaching by Arnold reflects his own predilections, but he was undoubtedly influenced by contemporary changes in secondary school education in the more progressive continental states, such as Prussia.

His successor, Dr Tait, (22) appointed a special teacher of modern languages to whom the classical form masters might transfer their pupils; and when the Public Schools Commission reported in 1864, almost all the French teaching at Rugby was conducted by two modern language masters. Tait's arrangements in regard to mathematical teaching also illustrate the development of the curriculum at the more progressive public schools. Instead of requiring all classical masters to teach mathematics, he appointed two special mathematical teachers for the whole school. Physics, under the title of 'natural philosophy', became a subject of instruction at Rugby in 1849, and a laboratory for that purpose was erected in 1859. (23)

The reforms in classical teaching introduced by Butler and Arnold spread somewhat slowly, except in the larger schools, and the Report of the Schools Inquiry Commission (1868) shows that even at that time the teaching in a large number of endowed schools was of a kind that benefited only those 'who, by superior talents or inordinately long continuance at school, eventually emerged from the darkness over-hanging their elementary training'. (24)

The position of mathematics in endowed secondary schools up to about 1840

5. The relative neglect of mathematics in most endowed schools in the earlier part of the 19th century is shown by the fact that up to about 1840 the teaching of this subject was as a rule relegated to writing masters. At Winchester, for example, elementary mathematics were taught by the writing master till 1834, when a mathematical specialist was appointed. (25)

There were, however, a certain number of endowed schools in which considerable attention was paid to mathematics. Christ's Hospital, for example, had possessed an efficient mathematical department since the second half of the 17th century; (26) and the statutes of certain schools in or near seaport towns expressly provided for the teaching of the 'art of navigation and other mathematics'. (27) From the beginning of the 19th century the requirements for the Honours Degree at Cambridge, (28) which obliged every candidate to take mathematics first, gradually raised the standard of mathematical teaching in many smaller grammar schools. Mathematical teaching appears to have improved rapidly after about 1840, and the Public School Commission found that the subject was fairly well established at the nine great public schools in 1864.

The curriculum in use in the new proprietary and other schools of the public school type

6. The movement for the modernising of studies was strengthened by the foundation of a number of proprietary (29) colleges and other schools of public school rank, such as Mill Hill (1807), King's College School (1829), University College School (1830), Cheltenham (1841), Liverpool College (1842), Marlborough (1843), Rossall (1844), Wellington (1853), and Clifton (1862). Most of these schools provided from the first a broader curriculum than the old endowed schools. The curriculum in use in 1821 at Mill Hill School (founded as a grammar school for Nonconformists) throws an interesting light on the educational tendencies of the period. In addition to classics the boys were taught French by a Frenchman, and devoted a considerable amount of time to mathematics, including Euclid, trigonometry and algebra. Courses of lectures (30) on natural and experimental philosophy were provided, and drawing was taught by 'an artist of respectability'. Ancient and modern geography, history, English reading and elocution formed an integral part of the curriculum. (31) Similarly the course at University College School in 1841 included Latin, history, geography, French, English, arithmetic, bookkeeping and elementary mathematics. Greek was taught only in the higher forms. The course for the fifth form included natural philosophy, and the sixth form studied experimental philosophy and mechanics. (32)

Among these newer schools special mention should be made of Cheltenham College, which from the first had a Modern (or Military and Civil) Department intended primarily to prepare boys for the entrance examinations for Woolwich and Sandhurst, for appointments in government offices, for engineering or for commercial life. The main study was mathematics, and while Latin was to a certain extent maintained, Greek was entirely omitted, natural science was introduced, and greater stress was laid on modern languages, The lower forms were carefully grounded in Latin, English, history and elementary mathematics. The subjects taught comprised mathematics, Latin, English, history, geography, French, German, Hindustani, physical science, drawing, fortification and surveying. (33)

The views of the Public Schools Commission (1864) on the curriculum

7. The Report of the Public Schools Commission (1864) throws a flood of light on contemporary views regarding the curriculum for boys. The Commissioners were of opinion that the course of study provided at the nine great public schools was sound and valuable in its main elements, Greek and Latin, but was lacking in breadth and flexibility. (34) The position which different studies held in a school was determined by several considerations - their admission into or exclusion from the school course; the time allocated to them; the value assigned to them in examinations, and in promotion within the school; and the like. At all nine schools arithmetic and mathematics were taught: in all except Eton instruction was given in one modern language, either French or German; and at Rugby and Charterhouse instruction was given in both. Natural science was taught at Rugby to boys who chose to study it instead of modern languages. There was a lecturer in chemistry at Charterhouse, and lectures in science were given at some of the other schools, though attendance at them was virtually optional. The Commissioners pointed out that natural science was 'thus practically excluded from the education of the higher classes in England; a plain defect and a great practical evil.' drawing might be learned as an extra, and some instruction in music might generally be obtained in the same way. The Commissioners, who appear to have taken the Prussian Gymnasium as their model, still regarded classics as the principal study, but they held that the main object for which boys learned Greek and Latin was to teach them to use their own language. They recommended that, in addition to classics and religious teaching, all boys should receive instruction in arithmetic and mathematics; in at least one modern language, which should be either French or German; in some one branch at least of natural science; and in either drawing or music. Boys should also acquire a good general knowledge of geography and ancient history, some acquaintance with modern history, and a command of pure grammatical English. Mathematics should include the elements of geometry, algebra and plane trigonometry; more advanced students should also study elementary applied mathematics, and especially the elements of mechanics. Natural science should, where practicable, include two main branches, one comprising chemistry and physics and the other comparative physiology and natural history both animal and vegetable.

The recommendations regarding the teaching of natural science were apparently taken direct from the arrangements then in force for the teaching of 'naturkunde' in the Prussian gymnasia, which assigned one hour a week out of 28 to that subject, (35) and it is evident that the Commissioners believed that two kinds of natural science, the physico-chemical and the biological, could be profitably handled in the very short time allotted to them. Similarly geography was regarded as ancillary to history as it was in the German gymnasien. The paragraphs dealing with the teaching of history are especially instructive, and the Commissioners rightly observe that the proper degree and method of teaching history or of requiring it to be taught at school were matters not settled by general practice. (36)

At Rugby, Marlborough and Wellington, which had followed the tradition of Arnold, the reading of modern history was combined with that of French. The underlying idea was apparently to experiment with Guizot and other French or German historical writers with the object of discovering whether they might not serve as a modern equivalent for Arnold's lessons on Thucydides and Tacitus. (37)

The Commissioners pronounced strongly against attempts to divide the old public schools into classical and modern sides as had been done in several of the newer schools such as Cheltenham and Marlborough. (38)

Thring's ideas on the school course, and his indirect influence on the evolution of the curriculum in public schools

8. The curriculum devised for Uppingham by Edward Thring, Head Master from 1853 to 1887, is of considerable interest on account of its recognition of the importance of the teaching of English and of aesthetic subjects, especially music and art. The ordinary school subjects, classics, English composition, on which great stress was laid, English grammar, scripture, history and geography, were taken in the morning; in the afternoon came music and various optional subjects of which every boy had to take one or two, such as French, German, chemistry, carpentry, turning and drawing. Thring was one of the first head masters to assign to music a prominent place in the school by making attendance at singing classes and music lessons compulsory and subject to the same discipline as any regular school subject. He also attached great importance to systematic physical exercises and to hobbies; the Uppingham gymnasium, opened in 1859, was the first of its kind in any English public school, as were also the workshops, laboratories, school garden, and aviary. He believed in classics, but his point of view was intermediate between the old-fashioned scholarship of the Porsonian tradition and Dr Arnold's method, in which emphasis was laid on the thought of the authors. He regarded all teaching of the history of the English language as mere cramming, and, like the Public School Commissioners, he did not believe in modern sides, thinking it would be wiser to establish separate schools with a scientific bias on the lines of the German Realschulen. (39) It was partly owing to the indirect influence of Thring's methods that school activities outside the classroom developed so rapidly after 1868. The older schools had already systematic organised games, school magazines and debating societies, and these spread rapidly to the smaller schools. In the same way systematic gymnastics were introduced on the Uppingham model into most schools. School plays, concerts, natural history societies and other out of school activities were developed somewhat later.

The evolution of the curriculum of private schools up to 1868

9. Even in the 17th century the upper classes were dissatisfied with the narrowness of the old classical curriculum, and frequently entrusted the education of their sons to private tutors, afterwards sending them to the knightly or courtly academies (40) (in France, and other continental states), which gave instruction not only in horsemanship and the use of arms, but also in modern languages, history and geography, and in the application of mathematics to military and civil engineering. Milton, Cowley, Locke, Defoe and many minor writers urged in vain that academies of similar type should be established in England. (41) The celebrated controversy in France and England between the supporters of ancient and those of modern learning at the end of the 17th century was symptomatic of the change that was gradually taking place in conceptions of curriculum; and the demand for 'useful studies' which became so insistent in the early decades of the 19th century (42) may already be traced in Locke's treatise Some thoughts concerning education (1693).

The policy of ecclesiastical uniformity adopted after the Restoration compelled many youths to seek on the Continent a training foreign both in aims and in means, and their views on education on their return to England must have indirectly added to the widespread dissatisfaction with the traditional curriculum, which became still more acute after the Industrial Revolution. During the 18th century the endowed schools remained impervious to new ideas. Discipline was harsh, morality lax, and the staffing frequently insufficient. These defects, combined with the contempt of the school authorities for outside opinion and the tenacious adherence to ancient custom, stimulated the growth of a body of public opinion hostile to the traditional curriculum.

The Nonconconformist academies, established in considerable numbers from about 1662, though primarily intended for the education of ministers, received many lay pupils. (43) They often provided a remarkably wide curriculum (including, in addition to Greek and Latin, mathematics, modern languages and a certain amount of natural science, chiefly physics), and were influenced indirectly by educational developments in Holland, Scotland, and the Protestant cantons of Switzerland.

When Protestant Nonconformists were allowed to follow the teaching profession, (44) a great number of new private schools, partly modelled on the older academies, were established, especially in the towns, to meet the needs of merchants and manufacturers who demanded a more practical education for their sons than that provided in the endowed schools. These private schools had many faults and weaknesses, but they were more receptive to new ideas and more ready to experiment than the old foundations, and subsequent reforms in the curriculum can be traced largely to their influence.

Dr Thomas Arnold, writing in 1832, describes the English or Commercial Schools at which a large proportion of the sons of farmers and tradesmen received their education. 'In some instances they are Foundation Schools, but more commonly they are private undertakings entered upon by individuals as a means of profit for themselves and their families. The pupils receive instruction in arithmetic, history, geography, English grammar and composition ... the rudiments of physical science are also taught in them, and with a view to his particular business in life he learns land surveying if he is to be brought up to agricultural pursuits, or bookkeeping if he is intended for trade.' (45)

The foundation of the College of Preceptors in 1846 for the promotion of middle class education, and more especially the training and certification of teachers, is a significant indication of the growth of numbers and professional solidarity among teachers of privately owned schools.

Some interesting developments may be observed in the schools (46) established in the early part of the nineteenth century by the Society of Friends. Special care was devoted to the study of the mother tongue, much attention being paid to oral reading and composition, and the pupils were frequently set to write accounts of lectures, excursions, and other episodes of school life. Considerable attention was also devoted to geography, elementary natural science, natural history and manual work.

It would appear from the Reports of the Assistant Commissioners, published in the volumes of the Schools Inquiry Commission (1868), and from other sources, that there were two main types of private schools in the last [nineteenth] century. On the one hand there were the schools conducted purely as commercial undertakings, which provided what the proprietors thought the public demanded, and cared little for educational ideals. Many schools of this type were nominally secondary schools, but were giving only elementary education. On the other hand there were the schools conducted by educational idealists and pioneers who were keenly interested in educational experiments. Many schools of this type had a short life owing to lack of capital. The great mass of schools was intermediate between these types. (47) One of the most famous of private schools was that at Hazelwood, near Birmingham, kept by the Hill family, which lasted from 1819 to 1833. The curriculum is described in a work published anonymously in 1822. (48) In order to teach the boys the arts of self-government and self-education, the school polity included a Legislature, Judiciary, and Executive, thus affording one of the earliest experiments in the teaching of practical civics. (49) The youngest pupils, who were taught in a separate classroom, were kept together for all subjects, while the remainder were classified and reclassified for each branch of study. The course in the eight classes included 'orthography, parsing, penmanship, history, geography, arithmetic, mensuration, trigonometry, geometry, algebra, Latin, Greek and French.' The first geography class consisted of members of the highest French class, and was taught by the French master in French, 'improvement in French being quite as much the object as the acquisition of geographical knowledge', (50) Gymnastics and swimming were systematically taught, and boys whose inclinations were practical were encouraged to take up such subjects as printing at the school press, drawing, etching, painting, map making, surveying, making mathematical diagrams, modelling animals, making machines, music, and reporting debates and trials before the school jury. Many of the arrangements show the influence of Pestalozzi. Mapping, for example, was practised out of doors in association with surveying. There was a weekly conference of the teachers, dealing with instruction rather than government, 'which was left to the Committee, consisting of the Principal, 10 resident teachers, and 14 boys, elected by their fellows.' (51)

The Schools Inquiry Commission of 1868 pointed out that, despite their faults, the private schools were open to all that was new, and, unlike the endowed schools, could adapt themselves with ease to every demand of the day. The instruction in the private schools, when compared with that given in the grammar schools, had a distinctly more modern cast. (52) Sir Joshua Fitch reported, in 1866, that in Yorkshire 'almost all the educational enterprise of the last few years has originated with private teachers.' (53)

The influence of external examinations on the curriculum of secondary schools of different types from about 1850

10. Apart from the pressure exerted by parents, the curriculum of many boys' schools, both endowed and private, was after about 1850 largely determined by the requirements of various external examinations, such as the London Matriculation Examination, the examinations for the Indian Civil Service, first held in 1855, the Oxford Local Examinations, instituted in 1857, the Cambridge Local Examinations, first held in 1858, and the Examinations of the College of Preceptors. (54)

The West of England Examinations, held at Exeter in 1857, which led to the establishment of the Oxford Local Examinations in the following year, were designed for boys educated with a view to employment in agriculture, arts, manufactures and commerce who were not going to the University and would as a rule leave school at 16. The report on the Exeter Examination (1857) (55) contains much information regarding contemporary education in private schools and small grammar schools. The only good work done was in Latin; many boys failed in elementary subjects; mathematics needed to be more thoroughly taught and more entirely assimilated; the special technical papers set on the application of knowledge to industry were found to be useless. The value of art and music in the education of boys is emphatically expressed in the documents recording these early examinations on the ground that they formed a part of a sound general education.

Despite the disadvantages of the examination system it should be pointed out that English literature and modern studies were fostered by being included in the programmes drawn up for the examination of boys and girls in secondary schools by the universities and the College of Preceptors. The London Matriculation Examination, for instance, which greatly influenced the curricula of schools, public and private, required candidates to offer Latin, mathematics, English with English history and modern geography, two branches of natural science, Greek (which was required down to 1874), and either French or German.

Contemporary criticisms of the curriculum

11. (a) Herbert Spencer's Essay on Education (1859). Herbert Spencer attacked the existing curriculum in a series of articles written between 1854 and 1859 and issued in book form in 1859. This work, which was very widely read, did much indirectly to undermine confidence in the old educational tradition. The section dealing with curriculum is largely a restatement of the utilitarian point of view. He comes to the conclusion that knowledge of the various branches of natural science is of the greatest value, and his section on curriculum accordingly resolves itself into an elaborate special plea for making the teaching of natural science the staple of formal education. In another part of the book he strongly advocates systematic physical training.

(b) Essays on a Liberal Education (1867). The volume of Essays on a Liberal Education, published in 1867 under the editorship of Dean Farrar, at that time assistant master at Harrow, reflects very clearly the widespread dissatisfaction with the conventional curriculum. Professor Henry Sidgwick, in an essay on the theory of classical education, dismisses as sophistical many of the ordinary arguments adduced in favour of the classics, urging that the Greek and Latin authors are fine educational instruments just because their work is literary, but that for this reason it is also reasonable to employ for like purposes the literature of modern tongues. He points out that, even if it be admitted that knowledge of the processes and results of physical science does not by itself constitute culture, nevertheless it is of such great importance that the intellectual man who has been trained without it must feel at every turn his inability to comprehend thoroughly the present phase of the progress of humanity. As regards natural science and English he writes: 'I think that a course of instruction in our own language and literature and a course of instruction in natural science ought to form recognised and substantive parts of our school system. I think also more stress ought to be laid on the study of French. While advocating these new elements I feel most strongly the great peril of overburdening the minds of youth to their intellectual and physical detriment or both.' He favours the reformed methods in teaching Greek and Latin, and in particular the disuse of verse composition.

Canon JM Wilson, at that time science Master at Rugby, in his Essay on science Teaching, expressed the view that a study of two unlike branches of natural science was a necessary part of any complete education, and emphasised the habits of accurate observation, exact reasoning, and power to judge evidence which could be developed by good scientific teaching. Mathematics did not altogether serve the same purpose. In discussing the question of the choice of two branches of natural science for study, he pointed out that geology and chemistry adapted themselves too readily to mere cramming. Botany and physics were free from this defect; but it was difficult to say what they might become with bad text books and bad teachers. (56)

(c) Huxley's views on Secondary Education. The leading advocate of the claims of natural science in the sixties and seventies was Professor TH Huxley, who, in his Essays, urged the claims of science to be included in any complete scheme of secondary education. His views exercised a great influence on the development of public opinion in regard to scientific teaching. It is very difficult to summarise them satisfactorily. It may, however, be said that he fully recognises the claims of the humanities. He criticises the contemporary teaching of classics on the ground that it was not properly a study of man and of literature, but of language and style. The true humanities were literature, history, philosophy, and social science; the classics, at their best, served as an introduction to these, and, at their worst, were mere grammatical verbiage. Huxley outlines a curriculum which should consist of natural science, the theory of morals and of political and social life, history and geography of the motherland, English literature and translations of the greatest foreign writers, English composition, drawing, and either music or painting. (57)

The Schools Inquiry Commission (1864-1868)

12. The Report of the Schools Inquiry Commission (1868) contains much valuable information regarding the curriculum in use at that time in the old endowed schools, 782 in number. Of these only 209, or about 27 per cent, were really classical schools; 183 Schools, or about 23 per cent, were semi-classical, and taught only the rudiments of Greek or no Greek at all; 340, or about 43 per cent, did not teach either Greek or Latin, and seldom gave any effective instruction even in mathematics, French, or natural science. The majority, in fact, of these 340 Schools gave an education no wider than that of an ordinary elementary school.

Only between eighty and ninety of the endowed schools in England were sending students regularly to universities; and of these only forty sent as many as three every year. In the grammar schools 'which really taught classics the teaching was generally poor, and in many cases it seemed as if the main function of classical teaching was to furnish a plea for the neglect of all other useful learning. English and natural science were rarely taught systematically or regarded by head masters as a serious part of the school course. The inferiority of the non-classical schools described in the Report is especially noteworthy, and was doubtless partly due to the fact that few of those who were anxious for reform had any clear idea of what the non-classical school should do.

The Commissioners considered that three grades (58) of secondary schools were required:

(a) First-grade schools with a leaving age of 18 or 19, closely connected with the universities, which would teach Greek as well as Latin.

(6) Second-grade schools with a leaving age of 16 or 17, which would teach two modern languages besides Latin and would make Latin an important subject. The idea of this type of school was largely derived from the Prussian Realschulen of the first grade. (59)

(c) Third-grade schools with a leaving age of 14 or 15 which would teach the elements of French and Latin. These schools would now be regarded as elementary, but the Commissioners treated them as secondary because the Elementary School Code of 1860 had practically fixed the leaving age for elementary schools at 12. They represented a type intermediate between the primary and the secondary schools, such as the Prussian Burgerschulen and the Sekundarschulen of Zurich. It is noticeable that Latin is still treated as a constituent element in the curriculum even of third-grade schools. (60)

The Chairman of the Endowed Schools Commission, set up by the Endowed Schools Act of 1869, informed the Royal Commissioners on Scientific Instruction in 1871 that 'In all the endowed schools, whether for boys or girls, we propose to require, as a specific and indispensable part of the course, at least one branch of physical science; and in a few, intended for the more special encouragement of what may be called modern subjects, we suggest, without absolutely requiring, more extensive teaching of science.' (62)

The recommendations of the Devonshire Commission (1876) in regard to science teaching in secondary schools

13. The Sixth Report of the Royal Commission on Scientific Instruction and the Advancement of science, published in 1875, deals with secondary schools. The Report recommends (i) that in all public and endowed schools a substantial portion of the time allotted to study should, throughout the school course, be devoted to natural science, and that not less than 6 hours a week on the average should be assigned to this purpose; (ii) that in all general school examinations not less than one sixth of the marks should be allocated to natural science, and that in any leaving examination the same proportion of marks should be maintained. (63) It is significant that the Report omits to define precisely the character of the scientific teaching to be given. Contemporary scientists were unanimous in urging that natural science should be taught, but apparently they had never attempted to determine what specific sciences. (64) The Commissioners, therefore, merely record their opinion that school laboratories should be constructed to supply accommodation for practical work in physics as well as in chemistry, and that many persons of experience in education had arrived at the conclusion that chemistry is not so well fitted for the practical instruction of young pupils as physics. (65)

The condition of the boys' curriculum about 1868

14. It should be noted that the gradual expansion of the traditional course by the inclusion of new subjects such as mathematics, science, modern languages, and English subjects, had been carried out at the cost of overcrowding, and the sacrifice of leisure and free time for the older pupils. This disadvantage was partly obscured by the fact that many of the better equipped schools established modern sides, in which more attention was devoted to mathematics, elementary science, and modern languages, though Latin was still retained as the central point of the literary side of the curriculum. The development of organised games and other outdoor activities in boys' schools, and the increasing attention devoted to physical drill and gymnastics, further curtailed the available free time of the individual boy in the public schools and the more efficient grammar schools and proprietary schools. A few years later any free time that still remained was further encroached upon by the development of school societies and other corporate out of school activities. Thus the boys' curriculum was already becoming rather heavy at the period (1860-1875) when it was adopted with some minor modifications as the model for courses in the new girls' schools.

B. History of the curriculum for girls' schools

The conventional course of instruction for girls up to about 1860

15. The aim of girls' education in England down to the 18th century differed little from the simple course described by St Jerome in the fourth century, consisting of religious instruction, reading, writing, grammar, and spinning. (66) Such is the educational background envisaged in William Law's Serious Call published in 1728, where Matilda's daughters, whose chief anxiety was to appear genteel, read only the Bible and devotional literature. In the 18th century French, Italian, music and drawing were added to this course of instruction. (67) It is true that in some upper class families a more liberal tradition prevailed, but it must be remembered that Lady Jane Grey and the Princess Elizabeth in the 16th century, and the daughters of Colonel Hutchinson and John Evelyn in the 17th, were educated at home by domestic tutors and not in schools. The French or Italian, and the music and dancing, of this domestic upbringing were included in the teaching given in the boarding schools of the 18th and early 19th century, where they figured as 'extras' or accomplishments, with deplorable effects upon girls' schooling generally. English, reading, writing, keeping accounts, drawing, plain and fine needlework, dancing, and French made up the course in most schools of this type. Special attention was paid to speaking and writing English; and text books such as Enfield's Speaker (1774) and Lindley Murray's English Grammar (1795) were widely used. Music and Italian were added in the more ambitious schools.

Sydney Smith, writing early in the 19th century, says: 'The system of female education as it now stands aims only at embellishing a few years of life which are, in themselves, so full of grace and happiness that they hardly want it, and then leaves the rest a miserable prey to idle insignificance.' (68) At the beginning of the Victorian era the education of women was usually at a low ebb, being scanty, superficial and incoherent. Many girls were instructed by ill-trained private governesses; and the numerous private schools for girls, which were for the most part boarding schools, were probably even worse than those described in 1868 in the report of the Schools Inquiry Commission, where the ordinary course of instruction for girls is characterised as being very narrow and unscientific. There was general indifference on the part of parents to the mental cultivation of their daughters and serious learning was widely regarded as a positive defect in women. (69)

Miss Emily Davies, writing about 1865, says: 'The ideal presented to a young girl is to be amiable, inoffensive, always ready to give pleasure and to be pleased.'

Miss Cobbe in her Autobiography describes one of the fashionable girls' schools in Brighton about 1850. The fees were £500 a year, and the work continued all through the day. During the one hour's walk in the open air French, German, and Italian verbs were recited. For the remainder of the day the girls were reading or reciting one of these languages or practising accomplishments. The main aim was social display. Music, dancing and calisthenics [strengthening and beautifying exercises] counted highest in the scale of subjects, writing and arithmetic lowest. The pupils were allowed to speak English only after 6 in the evening. Miss Anne Clough in Macmillan's Magazine for October 1866 gives the following description of the curriculum in ordinary girls' schools for the lower middle class: 'A few dry facts are taught, but the life and spirit are too often left out and there is a monotony in girls' education which is very dulling to the intellect.' (70)

The ideas current in regard to girls' education may be judged from the fact that Miss Beale, when appointed as mistress in the Clergy Daughters' School at Casterton in 1857, was expected to teach scripture, mathematics, geography, English literature and composition, French, German, Latin, and Italian. (71)

In general it may safely be said that the traditional education for girls up to about 1845 accentuated the differences between the sexes. (72)

The new movement for the higher education of women which we now pass on to describe tended to assimilate the education of the two sexes.

The movement for the higher education of women

16. The movement for the better education of girls and women may be said to have begun in 1843 with the foundation of the Governesses' Benevolent Institution, which was designed to provide a system of examinations and certificates for governesses. This led directly to the establishment of lectures for them, and so to the foundation of Queen's College, Harley Street, in 1848. It is clear from the early history of Queen's College that the leaders of the movement, such as the Revd FD Maurice, took over the boys' curriculum which had been evolved during long years, and which they had themselves received and accordingly endeavoured to hand it on to the women whom they taught at Queen's College.

In a volume of introductory lectures delivered at Queen's College and published in London in 1849, the list of subjects is given as English, French, German, Latin, Italian, history, geography, natural philosophy, methods of teaching, theology, vocal music, harmony, fine arts, and mathematics. Each subject was taught by a specialist, who explained its purpose and principles.

Miss Beale and Miss Buss studied at Queen's College, and their ideas on girls' secondary education must have been largely moulded by the curriculum there, and by that in vogue at Bedford College for Women, founded in 1849, and designed to stand in the same relation to University College, as that in which Queen's College stood to King's College. Two girls' schools were founded in the fifties, which long served as models for secondary boarding schools and day schools respectively - the Ladies' College at Cheltenham, established in 1853, and reorganised by Miss Beale in 1858; and the North London Collegiate School, founded as a private school by Miss Buss in 1850, and reorganised as a public school under a trust in 1870. As these two ladies were pioneers of secondary education for women, and laid the foundations on which the existing curriculum in various types of girls' secondary schools is largely founded, it is important to understand their precise views on the proper curriculum of a girls' secondary school. Miss Buss, in giving evidence before the Schools Inquiry Commission in 1865, said she did not think that a girls' education should differ essentially from that of a boy in the same rank of life with regard to the subjects which were to be taught, though it was rather difficult to ascertain what was the proper education for a boy. In reply to a question whether she believed there was such a distinction between the mental powers of the two sexes as to require any wide distinction between a good education given to a girl and that given to a boy, she replied, 'I am sure girls can learn anything they are taught in an interesting manner and for which they have a motive to work.' (73) In a letter to a lady in New Zealand written in November, 1868, Miss Buss says, 'The routine of English has been considerably improved by the extension to girls' schools of the Cambridge Local Examinations (from 1865 onwards). It is impossible, I think, to overrate the good already done in girls' schools by these examinations.' (74) She considered that a second language was one of the necessary branches of education. 'It is almost impossible to teach English well unless another language is studied with it, and that other language should be Latin or French or German.' She herself had taught French, allowing no option, and, in the higher classes, Latin, with little or no option. She gives her views on the whole curriculum as follows:

'After my many years of work, if I were now to found a school for what might be called the middle section (and, indeed, the upper section also) of the middle class, I should include all I have mentioned, viz: English thoroughly, with elementary science in courses such as I have alluded to, French, Latin, bold outline drawing, careful part-singing, plain needlework, and thorough arithmetic, with geometry and algebra in the higher classes. I would rigidly and entirely omit all arrangements for teaching instrumental music, which I believe to be the bane of girls' schools, in the time wasted and the expense entailed. I have omitted, I see, harmony, by which I mean the laws of musical construction, an interesting, and, in an educational point of view, a most useful subject for mental training. Instrumental music - the piano chiefly - might fairly be left to a private teacher, as might dancing also. No school ought to omit physical training - that is, calisthenics or something equivalent.' (75)

17. The Cheltenham College for Young Ladies was opened in November, 1853. The original prospectus, a facsimile of which is appended to Miss Raikes' Life of Miss Beale, describes the regular course of study as including holy scripture and the liturgy of the Church of England, the principles of grammar and the elements of Latin, arithmetic, calisthenic exercises, drawing, French, geography, history, music, and needlework. German, Italian and dancing might be taken as extras. Miss Beale, who was appointed Principal in 1858, gave detailed information regarding the curriculum in her evidence before the Schools Inquiry Commission in 1866. French was taught throughout the school, and German was begun about the middle of the course. Latin was only taught in exceptional cases, as Miss Beale considered that two languages were as much as could in ordinary cases be done well, and that German could take the place of Latin inasmuch as it had a complicated grammar. (76) The average duration of studies was about four hours a day, and the studies were varied so as to take light and heavy lessons in alternation. On the whole Miss Beale approved of teaching modern languages rather than classics, as she held that in the present state of education it would be hard to force women into a new channel suddenly. She attached great importance to the study of English literature, and gave unusual prominence to history teaching. Elementary mathematics were very carefully taught at the Ladies' College. In Euclid the girls were allowed to use a book for enunciations only. In arithmetic no books were used. Physical science consisted of physical geography and very elementary mechanics. Hydrostatics and botany were taught, and elementary courses of lectures were given on astronomy, optics, and electricity. When asked for opinion in regard to the admission of girls to the university degrees Miss Beale replied as follows: 'It seems to me that our opinions are so divided at present as to the modifications that will be introduced into boys' education, that I should regret to see anything done hastily to assimilate girls' education to that which perhaps may be altered for boys; but at the same time I think it is good for boys and girls to have similar tastes, that their minds may not be entirely bent in different ways so that in after life they should understand and be interested in the same things.' (77) In regard to mathematics Miss Beale said that she did not think that the mathematical powers of women enabled them to go generally so far in the higher branches as boys. In a written memorandum appended to her evidence she states, 'For some years I pursued classical and mathematical studies with my brothers, going through the course of studies at Merchant Taylors'.' She preferred the system by which French was taught first, and no other foreign language taken until considerable familiarity had been gained with French. Next German was taken. The classics formed indeed a key to modern tongues, but, on the other hand, modern languages led up to Latin and Greek, and therefore she believed this system was equally logical and answered better with girls. (78) On the whole Miss Beale in her actual practice was much under the influence of the tradition of boys' public schools in regard to curriculum, and she attached special importance to the study of the humanities - 'language and literature, history and art, ethics, religion and philosophy'.

Thus the theory of the emancipation of women seemed to work out on a theory of imitation. Basing their policy on the belief that girls could equal boys, at least in intellectual matters, if favourable conditions were afforded, the leaders of the movement implicitly assumed that what had been done for and by boys was in general suitable for both sexes. On the other hand Miss Beale retained the old world 'accomplishments' in her school and recognised the importance of art. It is well known that she corresponded with Ruskin and sought his advice in regard to art teaching.

18. A small committee of ladies interested in education, formed in 1862 with Miss Emily Davies as secretary, had secured the concession in 1863 that girls should be allowed unofficially to take the papers of the Cambridge Local Examinations. In 1865 the practice was given an official trial for three years, and in 1868 it was accepted permanently. It thus came about that the Cambridge Local and similar external examinations exercised an important influence on the development of the curriculum in girls' schools in the latter part of the century. Miss Davies in her evidence before the Schools Inquiry Commission in 1865 stated that the subjects most taken by girls for examination were religious knowledge, English and French, but that the senior students also took up every subject that might be taken by boys except Greek and applied mathematics. Thus almost from the beginning preparation for examinations was a salient feature of the new schools for girls (i) because the admission of girls and women to public examinations came at the crucial moment of reform; (ii) because preparation for examinations was the actual cause of the foundation of certain educational institutions for women, for example, Queen's College and Newnham College; (iii) because in the eyes of the world at large, and also of many pioneers of women's education, the capacity to pass examinations was the sole criterion of the educability of girls; (iv) because examinations seemed to offer a 'motive for girls to study and for their parents to keep them at school.' (79)

The views of the Schools Inquiry Commission (1868) on girls' education

19. The Report of the Schools Inquiry Commission (1868) summarised the existing condition of girls' education as follows:

'It cannot be denied that the picture brought before us of the state of middle class female education is on the whole unfavourable.'

'The general deficiency in girls' education is stated with the utmost confidence, and with entire agreement, with whatever difference of words, by many witnesses of authority. Want of thoroughness and foundation; want of system; slovenliness and showy superficiality; inattention to rudiments; undue time given to accomplishments, and those not taught intelligently or in any systematic manner; want of organisation, (80) - these may sufficiently indicate the character of the complaints we have received, in their most general aspect. It is needless to observe that the same complaints apply to a great extent to boys' education. But on the whole the evidence is clear that, not as they might be but as they are, the girls' schools are inferior in this view to the boys' schools.'

The Commissioners then comment in detail on the character of the instruction given in the various subjects then taught in girls' schools, which were as follows: religious knowledge, physical science, which at that time was nowhere taught systematically, astronomy, which was, needless to say, not well taught, mathematics, which were not much in use and were not carried far, classics, social science or political economy, French, music, needlework, which was reported to occupy too much time and to be too ornamental in character, and physical exercises, which at that time were almost confined to calisthenics. (81)

The Commissioners' views on differentiation of curriculum for boys and girls

It is interesting to note that the question underlying the present reference [of this Hadow Report] was considered in two aspects by the Schools Inquiry Commission. They put the question whether girls have similar though not necessarily equal capacity for intellectual attainments with boys, and secondly, if they had, whether it followed that their training should be the same. 'The state of society and the need for some peculiar culture in their case, may necessitate modifications, and there may of course be important differences in degree if not in kind.' On the first question the Commissioners thought there was weighty evidence to show that the essential capacity for learning was the same, or nearly the same, in the two sexes. This was the universal and undoubted belief throughout the United States; and it was affirmed by many of the best authorities who had given evidence before the Commission. Mr Fearon, for instance, and the teachers whom he had consulted in Scotland, where coeducation then as now prevailed, (82) held that the difference was physical rather than mental, and that as to the mind it amounted to little more than a greater power of endurance in boys. The Commissioners, however, were inclined to believe that there was a practical difference to be observed in degree and in time; that while the foundation, the main and leading elements of instruction, should be the same for both sexes, and ample facilities and encouragement; far more than then existed, should be given to women who might be able and willing to prosecute such fundamental studies to a higher point, the complete assimilation of the education of the sexes, such as prevailed in America, should not be attempted. After this statement of their view of the differences in degree, the Commissioners go on to summarise differences in detail as follows:

'It must be remembered, in dealing practically with the question, that it is only on the whole, and balancing one quality against another, that we can speak of the equal intellectual capacity of the sexes. Many differences, such as the tendency to abstract principles in boys contrasted with the greater readiness to lay hold of facts in girls - the greater quickness to acquire in the latter with the greater retentiveness in the former - the greater eagerness of girls to learn - their acuter susceptibility to praise and blame - their lesser inductive faculty - and others, are dwelt on by our witnesses.' (83)

The causes which appear to have led to the assimilation of the girls' curriculum to that for boys in the period 1850-1870

20. The main causes of the assimilation of the girls' curriculum to that of the boys in the fifties and sixties of the nineteenth century may be summarised under three main heads; humanistic, vocational and economic. All these implied the taking over of the existing system of education for boys as nearly as was possible or convenient, and the degree of processes of assimilation varied according to the character, practice and principles of the pioneers.

(i) Humanistic considerations
The founders of Queen's College, and indeed all the early leaders of the women's movement, constantly emphasised the idea of women's education as liberal and humane. The Assistant Commissioners, who reported on women's education for the Schools Inquiry Commission, 1868, recommended for girls' schools the same subjects as were taught in boys' schools. Bryce, for example, wrote, 'It would be better to lay more stress upon arithmetic, to introduce mathematics everywhere, and Latin where there is a clear prospect of girls being able to spend four hours a week upon it for three years. And as in boys' schools, provision should be made for the teaching of natural history and the elements of some branch of natural science.' He suggested that the elements of logic and political economy should be taught in the higher classes of girls' schools. He concludes, 'The thing most needed to get rid of is that singular idea concerning girls' education by which parents are at present governed, and to make them believe that a girl has an intellect and that it was meant to be used and improved.' In the same way Dr George Butler of Liverpool, writing on the higher education of women in 1867, said, 'Women are the one half of society, and society cannot afford to leave one half of its members imperfectly educated. Nature has given to girls equal capacities with boys for acquiring the greater part of that knowledge which is comprised in our highest education.'

(ii) Vocational considerations
The vocational idea was clearly enunciated at the very beginning of the movement by FD Maurice in his addresses at Queen's College, and by Miss Beale in her addresses to her girls and in her public statements in early days about the aim of the Ladies' College. The idea of the new education was to prepare women for their natural vocation in the world, as mothers of families, as social workers, as the companions of men and as teachers. ED Maurice said: 'Every lady is and must be a teacher of some person or other, of children, sisters, the poor.' He believed that the best preparation for the special vocation of women was to open to them the studies which prepared men to enter on public and professional work. 'By this same discipline in elements and this same study of what is homely and substantial rather than what is elaborate and artificial we can best hope to form real and effectual teachers.' Miss Emily Davies repeatedly alludes to women's vocation for social work: 'Whether as mistresses of households, mothers, teachers, or as labourers in art, science, literature, and notably in the field of philanthropy so largely occupied by women, their work suffers from the want of previous training.' Thus, the pioneers of the movement for women's education had always in view the vocational side, but, as the movement at that time was essentially middle class, they modelled the curriculum for girls on the existing middle class conception of a 'liberal' education for boys. In particular one constantly notices in contemporary statements by the leaders of the women's movement and in the Report of the Schools Inquiry Commission the tendency then so prevalent to advocate the teaching of certain subjects, such as Latin, German and mathematics, which were supposed not to be peculiarly congenial to girls, on the ground that they afforded a good mental discipline and an effective means of training the mental faculties.

(iii) Economic considerations
The aim of education as fitting women to earn a living (84) was strongly emphasised by Miss Buss and in the writings of Miss Emily Davies, who, for example, urged the value of medicine as a profession for women which would of course imply the course of study and of practice necessary for the MB or MD degree, 'not a lower standard of medical skill or easier examinations but that women should be allowed in medical schools of their own to acquire such knowledge as would enable them to pass the examinations and acquire the skill now thought necessary in the case of men.' The same idea of identity of standard is enunciated by Miss Buss, who, as we have shown, encouraged her girls to sit for the Cambridge Local Examinations, and at a later stage, if they showed special ability, to work for the London degrees. Dr Butler of Liverpool, in 1867 urged similar arguments, especially in reference to teaching. The idea constantly recurs in the writings and work of the pioneers of women's education in the [eighteen] sixties that it was necessary to show by identity of curriculum and examinations that women could do as well as men if they were to secure opportunities of earning a living in professional work. It is noticeable that even at the present time there seems to be considerable apprehension among many friends of the women's cause at any suggestion of differentiation in curriculum, lest women should find the doors closed, which have only just begun to open the way to economic independence.

Development of girls' education after 1868. The high schools

21. The serious defects of girls' education in general as described by the Commissioners of 1868 go far to explain how it came about that the pioneers, such as Miss Buss and Miss Beale, infused the ideal of thoroughness and accuracy, and advocated the study of Latin and mathematics to this end. For example, Miss Todd, in her work on The Education of Girls of the Middle Classes (1874), writes, 'mathematics offers peculiar advantages for the correction of the mental errors to which the neglect of real culture has made women liable.' The chapter on girls' education in the Commissioners' Report (1868) produced a profound impression on public opinion. The Endowed Schools Act, 1869, made it possible to apply part of the funds of Educational Trusts to girls' education. (85) In 1869 the Cambridge Higher Local Examination (86) was instituted, and the need of preparing women for it led to the foundation of Newnham College (1871). (87) In 1869 London University established a general examination for women with more advanced special papers. In 1870 girls were admitted to the Oxford Local Examination. In 1871 the National Union for the Improvement of the Education of Women of all Classes was founded, whose chief aims were to promote the foundation of cheap day schools for girls and to raise the status of women teachers by giving them a liberal education and a good training in the art of teaching. To this end the National Union in 1872 formed the girls' Public Day School Company, whose purpose was 'to supply for girls the best education possible, corresponding with the education given to boys in the great public schools.' The Company established, first in London and later in other large towns, a number of excellent schools whose curriculum was largely modelled on that of the North London Collegiate School.

The growing recognition of the claims of natural science, to which public attention was directed by the Report of the Royal Commission on Scientific Instruction (1875), (88) led to the gradual introduction of natural science, especially botany, into girls' schools; and the increasing attention to questions of health and physical development aided the introduction of physical training into these schools. Head mistresses were therefore, even in the [eighteen] seventies, compelled to consider the congestion of studies; and the more liberal education which they themselves had received in the women's colleges, fortified by the professional spirit which from the first marked their activities, enabled them to arrive at a working solution of the problems involved. The curriculum was made more educative and more manageable by the recognition of diversity of aptitudes in the pupils and by a corresponding arrangement of studies, while a common basis of indispensable subjects was retained in the lower part of the school. The high schools were unfettered by the traditions and prejudices which obsessed the older endowed schools, and the mistresses were more receptive to new ideas, more critical and more ready to adapt themselves to changing circumstances. Reforms in curriculum and in methods of teaching were readily accepted. Manual work was introduced at a relatively early date, and mistresses were quicker than masters to recognise the claims of less gifted pupils. The rapid development of girls' education in the seventies is marked by the permission, accorded in 1876, for girls to take the examinations of the Oxford and Cambridge Joint Board, established in 1873. The Maria Grey Training College for women teachers in secondary schools was founded in 1878; London University opened all its examinations and degrees to women in 1878; Cambridge opened its Triposes to them in 1881, and in 1884 Oxford allowed women to sit for examinations in certain of its schools. (89) The earliest Colleges for women at Oxford date from 1879. The new universities from the first made no distinction of sex in respect of teaching, emoluments, or degrees.

The curriculum in high schools and endowed schools for girls up to about 1900

The curriculum in use in 1878 at the Manchester High School (founded in 1872) may be taken as typical of a good high school at that period. Girls in the sixth form studied English grammar and literature, French, geography, history, Latin, mathematics, and German (from which a few girls were exempted), and drawing and harmony were taken by most girls. Singing, pianoforte playing, and political economy were each taken by a few pupils. Greek was probably as a rule only studied by those who were going to Oxford or Cambridge, and a custom early grew up in girls' high schools of making German alternative to Latin. There was always also a considerable number of girls who did not take mathematics. At the North London Collegiate School a short intensive course on political economy and the laws of health, with some teaching of domestic economy, was given at a special period of the year. In the teaching of natural science girls' schools up to 1904 were as a rule behind boys' schools, as the ordinary high school had no funds to provide expensive laboratories. Moreover girls at that time had not the same practical reason for studying natural science as boys had, nor did the influence of the grants of the Science and Art Department to the Organised Science Schools affect girls' education in the same way. In some schools, however, such as the North London Collegiate School, and the King Edward VI High School at Birmingham, much time and attention were devoted to science towards the end of the century. Botany was popular in many schools and was considered suitable for girls, the more so as it did not involve any expensive equipment. At the Manchester High School in 1898 chemistry and physics were taught, but not to any great extent, as the head mistress was doubtful of their value and especially of the 'heuristic' method of teaching which was then fashionable. At that time botany and Latin were alternatives in the middle forms of the School, and physical geography was included among the sciences.

The newer boarding schools for girls

22. A fresh phase in the process of assimilating the girls' curriculum to that for boys was marked by the rise of the more modern boarding schools for girls, which reproduced in almost all respects the arrangements in vogue at boys' public schools. The first school of this type, which served as a model for similar schools in England, was St Leonards School, founded at St Andrews in 1877. Though influenced by the example of Cheltenham, it contained from the first some entirely new features. It is not merely a day school with boarding houses attached; the various houses form an integral part of the school, and each house mistress is one of the staff; her work being divided between the school and her house. The playground for outdoor games, which have been from the first a prominent feature of the curriculum, belongs to all pupils alike, day girls and boarders. Lessons are done in the morning, while the afternoon and evening are devoted to preparation. Afternoon work is compulsory like morning school, but it devolves on the girls themselves to see that the work of preparation is properly done. Girls of responsible age are placed in charge of their formrooms, just as they are in charge of the playground. Afternoon preparation takes place in the formrooms of the school, and evening preparation in the schoolrooms of the houses. Thus St Leonards and boarding schools of a similar type in England, while retaining the ordinary subjects of study in girls' schools, have also adopted other subjects from the boys' curriculum as well as the whole public school plan - the house system, the prefects, house games, and colours - and have thus developed a particular kind of tradition and of esprit de corps. The ideals fostered in these schools are being widely spread by mistresses and old pupils who are now teaching in high schools and county municipal schools.

Physical training, games, and craft work in girls' schools

23. In the [eighteen] sixties calisthenics was associated with dancing, which had always formed an element in girls' education. Miss Beale, in giving evidence before the Schools Inquiry Commission, described the arrangements for physical exercises at Cheltenham Ladies' College in 1865 as follows:

' The vigorous exercise which boys get from cricket etc, must be supplied in the case of girls by walking and callisthenic exercises, skipping etc. We have a room specially fitted up with swings etc. It is to be wished that croquet could be abolished; it gives no proper exercise.' (90)

Games did not form part of the original tradition, but were introduced by the younger mistresses from the women's colleges at Cambridge, Oxford, and London from about 1885. Drill was considered a necessary safeguard before girls were allowed to undertake the more vigorous games. As we have already indicated, St Leonards School was one of the first schools to lead in this matter, and its example was followed by Roedean (founded in 1885) and other schools in England. (91)

Towards the end of the last [nineteenth] century housecraft (92) was introduced into the curriculum for older girls in some schools, and improvements in the methods of teaching art and music were introduced. In addition to sewing, which had always formed part of the traditional curriculum, crafts of various kinds, such as embroidery and bookbinding, were introduced in some schools, especially as alternative subjects for so-called backward girls. (93)

The Welsh intermediate schools

24. The system of secondary schools set up in Wales under the Welsh Intermediate Education Act 1889 marks an important phase in the evolution of the curriculum. The Act defined intermediate education as including instruction 'in Latin, Greek, the Welsh and English language and literature, modern languages, mathematics; natural and applied science, or in some of such studies and generally in the higher branches of knowledge.' (94) Many of the new intermediate schools were dual schools, which rapidly evolved into coeducational day schools. Designed to link up the elementary schools with the three Welsh university colleges, they were from the first largely recruited from the elementary schools. (95)

The attitude of the state towards secondary education in England from 1869 to 1899

25. From 1869 to the passing of the Board of Education Act in 1899, state supervision of secondary and quasi-secondary education was exercised by three bodies - the Endowed Schools Commission, established in 1869, whose work was continued after 1874 by the Charity Commission; the Education Department; and the Science and Art Department.

The new schemes prepared for endowed schools for boys and girls by the Endowed Schools Commission (1869 to 1874), and the Charity Commission, (1874 to 1902), frequently contained clauses regarding curriculum and external examinations, and did much to liberalise the courses in such schools (96) and to introduce some measure of differentiation in the curriculum for girls' schools.

Some of the schools set up under the Elementary Education Act of 1870 developed with the support of the Education Department into quasi-secondary schools, known as higher elementary or higher grade schools. (97)

These schools, which as a rule contained girls as well as boys from elementary schools, had many of the good points of the elementary school tradition; but owing to the influence of the Science and Art Department, whose grants they aimed at earning, they were inclined to concentrate unduly on science and quasi-technical subjects, neglecting humane studies ancient and modern. (98)

The pupil teachers' centres for boys and girls, established by many school boards after about 1885, also provided an education which, though necessarily restricted in its purview, was largely secondary in character.

After 1902 many of the higher elementary schools and pupil teacher centres (99) became municipal secondary schools. Their development marks a highly important stage in the history of the girls' curriculum, as they have on the whole attached more weight to scientific and modern studies than the older types of schools for girls. Most of the coeducational day schools at present existing are municipal secondary schools; and indeed the general expansion and democratisation of girls' secondary education has been chiefly brought about since 1902 by the development of these schools, which are provided and maintained by the local education authorities.

The Royal Commission (1895) and the Board of Education Act (1899)

26. The administrative confusion resulting from divided control was largely responsible for the vague and confused popular conceptions of secondary education to which attention was directed in the Report of the Royal Commission on Secondary Education (1895). (100)

The Report contains some notable pronouncements on curriculum. It states that, while the classical languages were being taught more extensively than ever, the secondary schools also found a place for modern languages and literature, and that there was a remarkable growth in the teaching of certain physical sciences and in technical and manual instruction. (101)

In the opinion of the Commission, technical and secondary education did not differ as genus and genus, but as genus and species, an opinion which has not commanded general assent. The question of differentiation of curriculum for the sexes is not explicitly raised, but attention is drawn to two divergent views regarding the secondary education required by girls of the industrial class:

'In one view, practical utility is paramount: the girl is to be trained for domestic duties, as the boy is trained for some definite calling. In the other view, the first aim is a true education of the mind, for girl and boy alike; and the special requirements of the industrial classes should, as far as possible, be subordinated to that aim. It is not incompatible with the recognition of this principle that the girl, like the boy, should receive some special instruction in the subjects demanded by her special circumstances.' (102)

The policy of the Board of Education in regard to differentiation of curriculum since 1902

27. The history of the Board since 1902, as set out in successive Annual Reports and in the Regulations for secondary schools, shows that year by year the effect of parliamentary grants on the schools has been carefully weighed and considered; and, that when grants have been found to disturb the balance of the curriculum by attracting it overmuch, for example, towards natural science, or again towards premature or excessive specialisation, the form of grant or its amount has been varied in order to restore an equilibrium. (103) The general situation of secondary education in 1902 seemed distinctly unpromising. The instruction provided in the smaller endowed schools was still at a low point of efficiency: not only were teaching staffs weak and lacking in adequate qualifications, but in general the curriculum was neither coherent nor liberal. A considerable number of the higher grade or higher elementary schools, (104) taken over by local education authorities from school boards as secondary schools, had become so dominated by natural science as to imperil the wider conception of a liberal education. The public schools and the girls' schools corresponding to them held aloof from the Board and from other schools, and their curricula exercised little or no influence outside their own precincts. In the light of the data collected by their new Secondary Inspectorate, after a series of systematic inspections of schools of different types, the Board in 1904 abolished all grants for individual subjects, merging them in a main single grant for an approved four years' course, covering the period from 12 or 13 to 16 or 17 years of age and they issued new Regulations for secondary schools for 1904-5 which define the term 'secondary school', and describe the aim of the curriculum. These Regulations applied to boys' and girls' schools and to 'mixed' or 'dual' schools. (105)

Regulations also define the aim of the curriculum by requiring that a secondary school must offer at the least a full four year course, providing instruction in a group of subjects so selected as to ensure due breadth and solidity in the education given. These subjects were defined as:

1. The English language and literature, together with geography and history;
2. At least one language other than English;
3. Mathematics and science both theoretical and practical; and
4. Drawing.

28. In the Prefatory Memorandum to the Regulations for 1905-6 the Board pointed out that the circumstances and requirements of girls' schools by the nature of the case differed materially from those of schools for boys. In view of this fact the Board had allowed a greater elasticity in girls' schools in regard to the time to be devoted to particular branches of the curriculum. (107) The question whether the total amount of instruction in girls' schools should normally be about the same as that given in boys' schools, or, if not, what should be the degree of variation, was one on which there was much divergence of opinion. 'As a matter of fact, however, the claims made on a girl's time out of school hours are larger and more various than is the case with boys, and the risk of over-pressure at that age much greater; while at many girls' schools it is not practicable to have the regular afternoon meetings which are a matter of course in a boys' school.' The Board accordingly provided that special attention should be paid to such cases, and that the normal requirements in regard to the amount of time given to various subjects should be relaxed according as the circumstances might indicate. (108) In their Report for 1906-7 the Board explained that in view of the development of their system of inspection of secondary schools, they had decided not only to merge in the general curriculum for the whole school the four year course which had alone in previous years been the basis of grant, but also to abolish the rule under which, in each year of that course, a certain definite minimum of time had to be devoted to certain subjects or groups of subjects. (109) Accordingly the Regulations for 1907, which are substantially the same as those now in force, prescribed that 'the arrangement of work must provide for due continuity of instruction, for an adequate amount of time being given to each subject taken, and for the disallowance of subjects which are not of educational value and of time spent on them which is in itself excessive, is insufficient to admit of effective progress, or is such as to interfere with proper instruction in other subjects.' Further elasticity was given to the organisation of schools by the provision that physical exercises and manual work should be elements duly considered in the whole curriculum instead of being definitely prescribed for certain years; and 'in order to emphasise the importance of practical training for life in the case of girls' a provision was inserted allowing science to be wholly replaced by an approved scheme of instruction in practical housewifery for girls over 15 years of age. (110)

As regards individual subjects, the Board early took into consideration both the actual state of teaching and the lines on which improvement should be sought. From 1904 onwards a special section of the Report has been frequently devoted to some subject of teaching, such as English, geography, science; and circulars on the methods of teaching subjects in secondary schools - English, history, modern languages, Latin, mathematics, music and the like - have been from time to time issued. In this connection may be noted the founding of various associations (largely composed of secondary school teachers) in subjects such as classics, modern languages, science, English, history, and mathematics. All these bodies have at least two aims in common - to secure for their subject its proper place in the curriculum, and to advocate all possible steps for the improvement of its teaching.

External examinations

29. The Board's inspections of secondary schools from 1902 onwards disclosed a widespread feeling that examinations were overdone, leading to over-pressure and cramming; that they often set wrong ideals before schools and pupils; and that by their syllabuses and papers they frequently offered a great hindrance to improvements in method. (111) The schools themselves pointed out the restrictive effect of these tests on their methods and curricula, and the difficulties caused by the conflicting requirements of the various examinations, for which they were obliged to prepare their pupils. In 1904 the Board, with a view to remedying this state of affairs, inserted provisions in the Regulations prohibiting the presentation of pupils under 15 years of age without their sanction for any examination other than one for the whole school, or for scholarships; and in 1908 a fresh Regulation was introduced empowering the Board to require any school to submit such part of the school as they might think fit for an examination approved by them. In 1909 the Board referred the question of examinations in secondary schools to the Consultative Committee, whose Report, issued in 1911 (112) substantially confirmed the conclusions at which the Board, in the inspection of the schools, had arrived. The findings of the Committee were mainly two:

(1) That the presentation of young and immature pupils for external examinations was mischievous.
(2) That the various examinations were in need of coordination, and that, for ordinary purposes, each school should be connected with one examining body only.

30. The improvement in the provision of secondary education for girls in England and Wales since 1902 will be seen from the following statistics:

*It will be observed from these statistics that secondary schools did not begin to be placed in large numbers on the Board's Grant List till 1907-8. It should be noted that many girls and boys are receiving an education of a secondary character in schools (more especially in private schools) which are not on the Board's Grant List nor on the list of schools 'recognised as efficient'. It should also be noted that in 1904-5 a large number of boys and girls (5,380 boys and 25,294 girls) were still receiving in Pupil Teachers' Centres an education of a secondary character.

The existing types of secondary school

31. In the system of secondary education now existing in England, three main types of secondary schools may be distinguished.

(a) Since 1902 a large number of county and municipal secondary schools have been established receiving the great majority of their pupils from the public elementary schools. The education given in them is thus linked closely to that given in the public elementary school and most of the pupils enter these schools at the same age, having received the same preliminary training. When these schools were first established, the age of transference from the elementary to the secondary school was often as high as 13; now the free place scholars are transferred at the age of 12 and in some districts at the age of 11. Formerly the great majority of the pupils used to leave at about the age of 16, but now an increasing number remain to the age of 17 or 18, and advanced courses are provided in many of these schools.

(b) The second class may be grouped, as regards boys, under the head of 'public or non-local schools', including some of the great day schools in London and other large towns. A large number of the pupils attending such schools receive their earlier education either in junior departments or in separate preparatory schools, the course of work in which is deliberately set with the object of making it a suitable training in preparation for the schools. Many of these schools, however, also contain boys who have entered them direct from elementary schools.

For girls the place of such schools is taken by the high schools and the girls' endowed schools, and to some extent by the large boarding schools of a semi-public character which have been established during recent years. A certain proportion of the pupils in the girls' day schools have come from elementary schools, but in general there is much greater variety in the previous education of pupils attending these schools than is found in those who enter the county and municipal secondary schools. Many girls' schools of this type have junior departments or preparatory schools, but nevertheless a large proportion of the pupils entering them have either been educated by governesses or in private schools of varying degrees of efficiency, the curriculum of which, in many cases, is not properly linked up with that of the secondary school proper. Owing to these considerations and to the fact that girls enter secondary schools of this type at different ages, ranging from 11 to 14 or 15, there is much greater inequality in the attainments of the younger pupils in such schools than in the corresponding boys' schools.

(c) The aided schools, largely consisting of old grammar schools many of which have been partly or wholly municipalised, are intermediate between these two types and approximate more or less closely to one or the other. While some of their pupils are admitted at the age of 8 or earlier, a varying proportion enter at about the age of 11 or 12 from public elementary schools. The difficulties of organisation are in consequence very great owing to the varying standards of attainments among the junior pupils.

General observations

32. It will be seen from the foregoing account that the girls' curriculum in its existing form is only about sixty years old, whereas the boys' curriculum represents the outcome of centuries of development.

In some respects the absence from girls' schools of old-established tradition has been a distinct advantage to girls' education, but it necessarily involves a corresponding diminution of that process of trial and error, which has furnished schoolmasters with an approximate standard of what is possible, and even with some indication of what is desirable, in the education of boys. While the experimental stage in the history of the modern curriculum may be regarded as tolerably complete in respect of boys, it is far from being so in respect of girls. The experiment has not yet been sufficiently prolonged to allow the formation of a public opinion of any weight. It would, therefore, be easy to make mistakes, if far reaching changes were made on the basis of an experience of girls' schools which has lasted little more than half a century.

In general it will be seen from this historical summary that although the modern conception of secondary education grows out of earlier, and even out of mediaeval ideas, it has undergone such changes in the nineteenth century as constitute a revolution. For the moment it is settled; tomorrow it may again be fluid; but the great national system of secondary schools for boys and for girls stands now at a point where we may profitably ask: Should boys and girls study the same subjects in secondary schools? Should they study all subjects in the same way and up to the same standard? And if any different treatment is desirable, what should the difference be?

Footnotes

(1) Leach Schools of Mediaeval England passim.
Leach English Schools of the Reformation (1546-8) pp. 103-108.
Foster Watson English Grammar Schools pp. 530 foll.
At Bruton Grammar School (1519) all scholars 'as well poor as rich, were to be taught freely grammar after the form of Magdalen College Oxford or St Paul's School London, and not songs, or petite learning or English Reading, but to be made perfect Latin men.' (Schools Inquiry Commission Report (1868) p. 121.)
It was not infrequently enjoined that Latin alone was to be spoken in school, e.g. Marlborough Grammar School (1550), Alton Grammar School (1641). (SIC Report, p. 114.) cf. Greard Education et Instruction (1889), II., p. 13, note 3, Gymnasium at Nimes (1548).

(2) Mumford: Manchester Grammar School p. 474. cf. the Foundation deed of Winchester College (1382) printed in AF Leach's history of Winchester College p. 66, where grammar is described as 'the foundation, gate and source of all the other liberal arts', and the Foundation deed of Wotton-under-Edge Grammar School (1384) quoted in AF Leach's articles in Proceedings of the British Academy for 1913-14 p. 465, and Victoria history of Gloucestershire II, 396, where grammar is described as 'the foundation of all the liberal arts.'
'Grammar' is variously defined in the 16th and 17th Century Trust Deeds and Statutes to mean a study of Latin, or of Greek and Latin, to which Hebrew is occasionally added. However, as the Schools Inquiry Commission pointed out, 'The only grammar that was, or could be, taught at first was Latin.' (SIC Report, p. 118.)
The grammar school was sometimes known as the Latin school. (See AF Leach's memorandum in Report of the Royal Commission on Secondary Education (1895), V. 59.)

(3) SIC Report p. 119.

(4) e.g. the 'Auctours Christian as Lactantius, Prudentius and Proba, etc.' mentioned by Dean Colet in his statutes for St. Paul's School (1518).
(Leach Milton as Schoolboy and Schoolmaster in Proceedings of the British Academy for 1907-8 p. 315.)

(5) Hebrew has formed part of the curriculum at Merchant Taylors' School from its foundation in 1561. (Public Schools Commission, Vol. I., p. 204). See Foster Watson's English Grammar Schools p. 529, for a list of schools which taught Hebrew in the 17th century.

(6) Institutio Oratorio xii. 2 and passim.

(7) At East Retford (1551) 'the more prone natures may spare part of the first year to hear the explication of Tully's Epistles'; at Kirkby Stephen (1566) 'the master shall reade to his schollers - Tully's Offices, De Amicitia, De Senectute.' (SIC Report pp. 119 and 121.)
cf. Bacon's Advancement of Learning (1606), Stebbing's edition III. 284. 'Then did Carr of Cambridge and Ascham, with their lectures and writings, almost deify Cicero and Demosthenes.' cf. also J Sturm of Strasburg (1507 - 1589) de ludis litterarum 104. 'Propositum a nobis est sapientem atque eloquentem pietatem finem esse studiorum.'

(8) cf. the contemporary description of the course of study at the Free School of St Helens (about 1635) in Foster Watson's English Grammar Schools p. 486. At Hexham Free School the statutes (1600) prescribe 'weekly exercises of epistles, themes, orations, verses.' cf. also the description of the course at Winchester about 1645 in the contemporary Latin poem de Collegia Wintoniensi printed in AK Cook About Winchester College pp. 13-29.

(9) Similar views are expressed in Hoole's New Discovery of the old art of teaching school (1660). See Leach's Educational Charters p. 533.

(10) Attorney-General v. Whitley. 11 Vesey 241.

(11) A process for revising charitable foundations in cases of breach of trust was, however, provided by Romilly's Act 1812, 52 George 3, c. 101. See Mumford Manchester Grammar School p. 265.

(12) Report of the Headmaster to a Committee of the Corporation of Newcastle-on-Tyne (1838).

(13) See 'A letter to Henry Brougham ... on the best method of restoring decayed grammar schools', by MA, Queen's College, Oxford (1818).
It is doubtful, however, whether MA's figures are reliable, as there was a tendency at that time to confuse elementary and secondary education. For example. Brougham's Bill of 1820 'For the education of the poor in England and Wales' provided that the proposed new parochial schools should, where possible, be associated with local grammar schools, and that all grammar schools should teach the three R's.

(14) Published in 1787; reprinted in 1812.

(15) The curriculum at Eton under Dr Keate was much the same as the curriculum in use in 1766 as described by Dr Thomas James. (Lyte's history of Eton College (3rd edn.), pp. 315 foll. and pp. 364 foll.).

(16) No. 101, Article 3.

(17) 'The two classical languages, with a little ancient history and geography, held, indeed, until a short time ago, not only a decided predominance, but absolute and exclusive possession of the whole course of study.' (Public Schools Commission Report (1864), p. 13.)

(18) Life and Letters of Samuel Butler I., 196-197.

(19) The unrest in secondary education in the [eighteen] thirties may be seen from the fact that the famous Jesuit Ratio Studiorum (1599) was revised for the first time in 1832.

(20) Headmaster of Rugby, 1828-1842.

(21) Arnold's Miscellaneous Works pp. 344-346.

(22) Afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury (1868-1883).

(23) Sixth Report of Royal Commission on Scientific Instruction (1875) p. 107.

(24) D'Arcy Thompson Day Dreams of a Schoolmaster (1864) p .41.

(25) AK Cook About Winchester College p. 320; and Carlisle's Endowed Grammar Schools (1818), passim. Milton, in his Tractate on Education (1644), recommends that arithmetic and geometry be taught at odd hours, 'even playing as the old manner was'.

(26) EH Pearce Annals of Christ's Hospital (1901), Chapter vi.

(27) e.g. Dartmouth Grammar School (1679), Williamson's School, Rochester (1701), Neale's Mathematical School, Fetter Lane (1705), and Churcher's College, Petersfield (1722).

(28) Oxford too, under the Statute of 1800, required mathematics as well as classics for the BA degree from 1802. After 1807 a separate class list for mathematics was established.

(29) The term 'proprietary schools' is usually applied to a certain class of schools which are the property of a body of shareholders, but the Schools Inquiry Commission use the expression as meaning schools which were not endowed, nor the property of the master or mistress who taught in them. These proprietary schools principally owed their origin either to the want of schools of a more public character than any private school, even of long standing, could possibly assume, or to the desire of a particular religious denomination to have a school in which religious instruction might be given in complete accordance with their views. (SIC Report p. 310.) cf. Report of Royal Commission on Secondary Education (1895), p. 49.

(30) cf. The weekly mathematical lectures introduced at Harrow in 1807 by Dr George Butler. (Carlisle Endowed Grammar Schools (1818), II., p. 147.)

(31) Brett James history of Mill Hill School p. 66 and p. 56.

(32) From information kindly supplied by the Secretary to the Council of University College School.

(33) SIC Vol. IV, Part I, p. 527, Q. 5457: Public Schools Commission, Vol. II, pp. 546 foll.

(34) This Commission only dealt with nine ancient foundations, viz. Eton, Winchester, Westminster, Charterhouse, St. Paul's. Merchant Taylors', Harrow, Rugby, and Shrewsbury, whereas the Schools Inquiry Commission which sat from 1864 to 1868 dealt with secondary schools as a whole, i.e. all that lay between the nine great public schools and 'the education of boys and girls of the labouring class' which had been dealt with by the Newcastle Commission (1858-1861).

(35) The Prussian gymnasien in the [eighteen] sixties were essentially classical schools. Boys entered at 9 and remained till 19. 'The school is divided into six classes. Latin begins at the bottom, and occupies 10 hours a week out of 28, till the head class, and then 8 hours out of 30. Greek begins two classes from the bottom, and occupies 6 hours a week throughout. German, 2 hours; arithmetic and mathematics, from 3 to 4; French, 3 in the lower classes, 2 in the higher; geography and history, 3 in the higher and 2 in the lower; natural science, 2 in the head class and 1 below. All learn drawing in school hours; singing and gymnastics out of school.' (SIC Report (1868), p. 67.)

(36) PSC Report pp. 11-18 and 28-33.

(37) ditto p. 18, and Vol. II, Appendix, pp. 509-579.

(38) PSC Report pp. 37-39.

(39) Parkin Life of Edward Thring and the evidence given by Thring before the Schools Inquiry Commission in 1865, Vol. V. (ii). Questions 9853 foll.

(40) The theory of this form of education, primarily designed for the governing class, was expounded by Baldassare Castiglione of Mantua in his treatise Il Cortegiano (The Courtier) 1528, which was translated into English by Sir Thomas Hoby in 1561. The first proposal for the establishment of such institutions in England was made by Sir Humphrey Gilbert in 1572. cf. also Bourchenin Academies protestantes (1887) and Adamson Pioneers of Modern Education (1905), chapter 10. Proposals for schools of this type, half academic, half secondary in character should be clearly distinguished from contemporary proposals for the establishment of academies for research only, such as the Solomon's House, described in Bacon's New Atlantis (published in 1627), and Samuel Hartlib's plan for a philosophical college to be called 'Antlantis' in his Memorial for Advancement of Universal Learning (about 1650).

(41) Milton Of Education (1644). Cowley Letter to Robert Boyle (1659). Locke Some thoughts concerning Education (1693). Defoe An Essay upon Projects (1697).

(42) e.g. Bentham's scheme for a Chrestomathic Day School (1816).

(43) Cambridge history of English Literature Vol. IX, p. 392. See also Vol. X, p. 384, for a list of these Academies from 1680 to 1770.

(44) By an Act of Parliament passed in 1779 (19 Geo. III., c. 44). An Act passed in 1791 (31 Geo. III., c. 32, Sections 13-17) extended a like measure of liberty to Roman Catholics. Several of the English Colleges in France were transferred to England after the Revolution. For instance, St Edmund's College, Ware, founded as a private school for Roman Catholics in 1769, received in 1795 the southern half of the students from the English College at Douai, while the northern students from Douai settled at St Cuthbert's, Ushaw. In the same way, the Benedictine Schools at Downside (1792 and 1814) and Ampleforth (1802) represent schools transferred by the Order from France after the Revolution. Several of these schools long retained traces of the French tradition of secondary education. For example, the top forms at Downside were called Rhetoric and Poetry and the boys who had passed the London Matriculation were called 'philosophers'. Dom Birt history of Downside School p. 243. cf. Etablissement de l'exercice public des classes au College de Narbonne (1599), printed in Felibien, Paris, v., p. 800.

(45) Miscellaneous Works p. 231. cf. V Knox's description of these private academies in the Pamphleteer Vol. XIX., p. 425. cf. also the Rev Mr Lancaster's school in Wimbledon at which Schopenhauer was a parlour boarder in 1803 (Schopenhauer's Briefe, p. 59).

(46) Several of these schools were 'dual' schools. The first coeducational school was Rawdon (as from 1883).

(47) Extracts from prospectuses of typical private schools in Yorkshire are quoted in Fitch's Report, SIC, Vol. IX, p. 261.

(48) Plans for the government and liberal instruction of boys in large numbers as practised at Hazelwood School (1822). The second edition (1825) was reviewed by Jeffrey in the Edinburgh Review for that year. See the criticisms on the curriculum at Hazelwood School in WL Sargant's Essays by a Birmingham Manufacturer Vol. II, Essay 3, pp. 186 foll.

(49) This clearly shows the influence of works such as Montesquieu's Esprit des Lois (1748), and Delolme's Constitution of England (1775), which were extensively used in private schools.

(50) A like arrangement was adopted by Arnold at Rugby in 1835, where the 2nd form in the French Division read Gaultier's geography while the Lower Remove read Jussieu's Jardin des plantes. (Arnold Miscellaneous Works pp. 344-345.)

(51) Certain features of the Hills' curriculum, such as the practical teaching of mathematics, appear in later private schools, for example Bainbridge's School at Lincoln, where the boys were taught land surveying with the theodolite.

(52) SIC Report p. 286. See also Dr Wormell's memorandum on contributions of private school teachers to the improvement of educational methods (Royal Commission on Secondary Education (1895), V, 14-15).

(53) Detailed descriptions of the curricula of private schools are given in Bryce's Report on Lancashire, and Fitch's Report on the West Riding. (SIC Vol. IX, pp. 534-601 and 253-277.)

(54) Consultative Committee's Report on Examinations in secondary schools (1911) (Cd. 6004). Chapter I.

(55) Some Account of the Origin and Objects of the New Oxford Examinations by TD Acland (1858), passim.

(56) In another paper, written in 1866, Canon Wilson states that the decided opinion of those who have given most attention to the subject is that experimental physics ought to form the staple of scientific teaching at Schools (Sixth Report of Royal Commission on Scientific Instruction (1875), p. 107).

(57) Collected Essays Vol. III, No. 7.

(58) It is said that the Commissioners derived this idea from the tripartite organisation of Liverpool College with its three distinct schools, upper, middle and commercial. (SIC, IX, 591), and Sir Michael Sadler's Report on Secondary Education in Liverpool (1904), pp., 23 and 40.)

(59) See the description of Prussian Realschulen in the [eighteen] sixties in SIC Report p. 69. The Realschulen of the highest grade (erster Ordnung) instituted in 1859, were later known as Realgymnasien, (Paulsen Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts II, 559-563.)

(60) SIC Report pp. 577 foll.

(61) SIC Report p. 35.

(62) Sixth Report of Royal Commission on Scientific Instruction, 1875 Appendix I.

(63) Sixth Report of Royal Commission on Scientific Instruction, 1875, (C. 1279), p. 10, Section 49.

(64) A few practical teachers had however already formed definite ideas on the subject. See the summary of Canon Wilson's Essay on science Teaching (1867) on p. 18.

(65) Sixth Report of Royal Commission on Scientific Instruction (C. 1279), p. 5, Section 31.

(66) Epistles, 107 and 108, Section 7. Up to the dissolution of the monastic houses, the course in the nunnery schools, quaintly described by Fuller as 'she schools', probably followed the lines indicated by St Jerome. (Fuller Church History (1655), ed. Brewer, 1845, III., 336).

(67) The original trusts (1627) of the Red Maids' School, Bristol, for the maintenance and education of 40 poor women children direct that they are to be 'taught to read English, and to sew or do some other laudable work towards their maintenance.' (SIC, vol. XV, 192.)
Mrs Amye, of Manchester (1638), who had 'the tuition of many children of rank and quality', brought them up 'with reading and all manner of sewing'. At fit seasons she employed 'a scrivener to teach the children to write, and a dancing master to teach them to dance and a musician to learn them music'. Burstall Story of Manchester High School p, 30.
The original scheme for the Godolphin Ladies' School, Salisbury (1707), provides that the 'eight young gentlewomen' are to be taught to dance, work, speak French, cast accounts, and do the business of housewifery in the best manner. (SIC, Vol. XIV, p. 3.)

(68) SIC, IX, 301 (footnote), cf. Edinburgh Review (1810), vol. XXX, art. 3, 'Daughters are kept to occupations in sewing, patching, mantua-making and mending. A century ago the taste was for housewifery, now it is for accomplishments.'

(69) Mrs Gaskell, for example, told Sir Joshua Fitch that she did not consider it desirable for a girl to learn to concentrate her attention on one subject at a time (SIC, IX, 295, footnote). The inferior character of girls' schools in the [eighteen] fifties is shown by the fact that it was found necessary to establish secondary schools to prepare pupils for entrance to Queen's College founded in connection with King's College in 1848, and to Bedford College founded in connection with University College in 1849.

(70) Memoir of Anne J Clough, by BA Clough (1897), pp. 112-113. There were, however, some excellent private schools in the fifties; e.g. the school kept by Miss Sewell and described by her in Laneton Parsonage 1846 - 8, and the school near Northwich (about 1859) described in Collingwood Life of Ruskin II., 48.

(71) Dorothea Beale JE Raikes (1908), Chap. III. This was the school described at an earlier stage by Charlotte Bronte in Jane Eyre (1845).

(72) The Chancery schemes for the Howell School for girls at Llandaff (1853 and 1865) throw an interesting sidelight on contemporary ideas regarding education. The curriculum was to consist of religious instruction, the three R's, English grammar, geography, history, music and drawing, and such other subjects including languages as the governors shall from time to time direct besides needlework, cutting, etc. (SIC, Vol. XX, p. 151). cf. the provisions regarding curriculum in the Charity Commissioners' Schemes in the last two decades of the 19th century, e.g. the Scheme of May 6th, 1886, for the Godolphin School, Salisbury, which provides for instruction in the following subjects: reading and writing; geography and history; English grammar, composition and literature; arithmetic and mathematics; Latin; at least one modern foreign European language; one or more branches of natural science; needlework, domestic economy and the laws of health; drawing, drill, and [this footnote ends thus in the printed version]

(73) SIC, Vol. V, ii., p. 254, Q. 11,470 foll.

(74) She told the Schools Inquiry Commission in 1865 that very much more attention had been paid to arithmetic since the Cambridge Local Examinations had been established (Q. 11,457).

(75) Ridley Life of Frances Mary Buss