Hi Mike, At 19:27 10/10/02 -0600, you wrote: >Hi Keith, >This was, of course, the period of Britain's decline :-) >Mike
You will have your fun! We have to be careful about dates here. Here is the period (the 1830s-40s) in the words of Adrian Desmond and James Moore: "England is tumbling towards anarchy, with countryside unrest and riots. The gutter press are fizzing, fire bombs flying. The shout on the streets is for revolution. . . . a million socialists are castigating marriage, capitalism and the fat, corrupt Established Church." At the same time, according to Engels, the working man had "the most extravagant expectations of prosperity." By the time of the Reform Bill of 1867, Socialism had been re-established as strongly as ever before in English history, the London Trades Council had been formed, and street corner oratory was disturbing the peace of bishops in their palaces. And now, so help us, the working man was actually educating himself!!!!! By the 1870s the authorities had had enough. The working man was now relatively peaceful but he was also trying to better himself! If the working man was going to continue to want his children to be educated then somehow it all had to be deflected into safe channels in some way. As the historian A. L. Morton put it: " . . the workers were [now] showing a disturbing tendency to educate themselves, and there was no guarantee that this self-education would not develop along subversive lines." And the best way to prevent all that was to start free state schools and attract children away from the Church Schools and the many other charitable schools that were actually threatening to start sending working class children to new universities. So that's what the authorities did from 1870 and onwards. While Germany and others countries (particularly America) were expanding their school systems, building technical and engineering schools and widening the curriculum, England simplified the curriculum, confining it to the basic three R's only* and, by dint of teachers spending a lot of their time marching children backwards and forwards in the "playgrounds" like army platoons, produced biddable factory work forces or household servants for the middle and upper classes. (*Even so, the standard of reading, writing and arithmetic learned by Victorian children of 10 or 11 years of age was higher than now achieved in state schools.) So, after a period of unparalleled economic expansion from about 1840 - 1880, in which almost everybody benefited -- the working man as much as anybody -- the upper classes moved the goal posts and re-established its control by means of a new meritocratic civil service (the entrance examinations of which had nothing to do with engineering or chemistry or science, of course, but only of the "best" subjects, such as Latin, Greek, and Ancient History), dethroned Manchester and reinstated London as the main centre of influence, invented 99% of the ceremonials of government (children are taught today that these ceremonials are "centuries old"!!), expanded the British Empire, and generally started to despise industry which had made the country so financially powerful. Because America did not despise industry it came through both World Wars financially and economically stronger than it went into them, whereas England was bankrupted both times. America still doesn't despise industry, but tomorrow's world will depend upon skills which are far more advanced than those required in traditional industry, and unfortunately (from most accounts I'm reading on the Net) America now has the English Disease of IDDSS (increasingly dumbed down state schools). This is why China is probably going to wipe the floor with America in the next couple of decades unless a revolution can occur in the classroom. Keith >> (*Everything that I've read recently about the growth of private schools in >> China -- and of the excitement and dedication of the pupils towards >> learning -- is strongly reminiscent of mid-19th century England before the >> dead hand of the state fell upon schools and universities. At that time, >> mechanics and miners' institutes teaching everything from classical Greek >> to Engineering were springing up in every city and many small towns, new >> municipal universites were starting (e.g. Birmingham), most parents were >> paying for their children to go to school, public lectures on science were >> vastly oversubscribed, private and municipal libraries were springing up >> everywhere, etc. It was chaotic but vastly exciting. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------- Keith Hudson,6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England Tel:01225 312622/444881; Fax:01225 447727; E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ________________________________________________________________________
