Education Victorian Style

EDUCATION

VICTORIAN STYLE

Education was an extremely controversial issue in the Victorian Era. Some thought that education belonged in the church others believed that the responsibility of teaching the youth of England rested with the state. Then there were the people who did not want any kind of modern schooling at all for it would take away a form of very cheap labor. Victorians had a lot to learn but not many people could agree on what to learn or who to learn it from. And, while they were addressing these issues, society had to answer the question as to who could attend school. Should girls be allowed to attend, or just boys? Should workers’ kids be allowed to go to school or not? How about the poor, should there be charity for their children to go to school and should they go to the same schools as the rich kids? All of these questions needed to be answered, however, it remains a mystery as to whether they ever were.

Education before 1870 was kept in the church and what was known as ragged schools. These were schools for very poor children and they were established as a result of necessity when it became apparent that such children were often excluded from existing schools because of their ragged clothing and appearance. Charles Dickens saw ragged schools as very unsatisfactory and quite jury-rigged: "at best, a slight and ineffectual palliative of an enormous evil. . .And what they can do, is so little, relatively to the gigantic proportions of the monster with which they have to grapple, that if their existence were to be accepted as a sufficient cause for leaving ill alone, we should hold it far better that they had never been."

Ragged schools were taught by volunteers who would teach the students the necessities to survive life in England. These schools were connected by the Ragged School Union which was very much like the modern day school board. They were forerunners of schools created by the 1870 Education Act. The 1870 Education Act divided the country into twenty-five hundred school districts and gave the districts the right to choose their own curriculum. It also gave women the right to vote for the people on the school board.

During this era which was symbolized by the reign of British monarch Queen Victoria, difficulties escalated for women because of the vision most of society shared of the "ideal women." Like those of children, the legal rights of married women were virtually non-existent. They could not vote or sue or even own property. The role of women was to have children and tend to the house. The only jobs women could hold outside the home were as teachers and nurses. Due to this attitude towards women, society felt education of women need not be of the same extended, quality and commercial character as that of men. The only things women were supposed to know were those things necessary to bring up their children and to keep house. Women who wanted to study such subjects as law, physics, engineering, or science were mocked, ridiculed and dismissed. People thought it was unnecessary for women to attend university. It was even said that studying could make them ill as it was against their nature. Women were considered "ornaments of society" and were to be subordinate to their husbands. Obedience was all that was required of them.

In its evaluation of the education of girls, the Taunton Commission found grossly untrained teachers, too little discipline, defective instruction. It found that girls were usually ahead of boys until around the age of 12, when girls learning stalled. Improvement in girl's education was only achieved when girls began to seek economic independence. The focus of this educational change was found in the governess system.

In 1844, the Mechanics Institute for daughters of tradesmen, clerks, and shopkeepers set up a school in Liverpool with the intention of teaching vocal music, drawing, natural philosophy, and chemistry. In practice it actually went beyond this proposed curriculum, offering English grammar, geography, history, arithmetic, writing, drawing, and needlework. Some of the better schools for girls were religious. Many Quaker schools taught boys and girls in parallel. The Unitarians believed that education was personal and private and. They wanted women to develop their powers through the best education possible.

After 1862, for women, instruction in needlework was a condition for grants, and often replaced arithmetic. But by the late 1870's this emphasis on feminine pursuits began to be seen as wasteful, and that women needed to focus more on the intellectual pursuits and financial welfare of their families. In 1878 Samuel Smiles wrote that "to instruct woman is to instruct man. . .To enlarge her mental freedom is to extend and secure that