Contribution to tfje Irttftorp of Ebucation v SECONDARY EDUCATION IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY SECONDARY EDUCATION IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY BY R. L. ARCHER PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION IN THE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF NORTH WALES, CAMBRIDGE AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1921 PREFACE THE period of which we commonly think when we hear - or speak of the nineteenth century began in 1789 and ended in 1918. The landmarks of educational history coin cide very conveniently with those of wider history. The year 1918 might well be chosen as our terminus by reason of the passing of Mr Fishers bill even if it had not been the year of the Armistice. Even if the years from 1789 to 1815 had not witnessed the Napoleonic wars, they might have been chosen as our starting-place because they saw the foundation of the monitorial schools a, nd the re awakening of our ancient universities. The e two discon nected sources of educational energy for a long time dis tributed power over distinct areas it was not till the middle of the century that even a ladder was suggested as a means of ascent from the region served by the one to that served by the other it was not till the Act of 1902 that elementary and higher education were treated as parts of a single whole and it was not till the Act of 1918 that universal education from fourteen to eighteen the years which the children of the wealthy had throughout the nineteenth century spent at a public school was brought into sight. Here thqn the work of the preceding century has reached a definite landmark. The history of twentieth century edu cation will not naturally fall into two divisions. That of the nineteenth century does. In the one story the oiniver sities are the centre fromwhich activity radiated. In one direction it spread to the old public schools and from them to the newer public schools and the grammar schools in a second direction it supplied the driving power for adult education by means of working mens colleges, extension lectures, and finally tutorial classes in a third it was con verted into a demand for modern universities and uni versity colleges, which in their turn required new types vi PREFACE of school, the Welsh county schools and the municipal secondary schools, to prepare their future students. This is the story of which the present volume tries to give an outline. The other story starts with the monitorial schools it shows the elementary leaving-age rising slowly from ten to fourteen, till finally a demand is created for a further education of their pupils. In Wales the Intermediate Edu cation Act of 1889, in England the Act of 1902, link the two systems of influence together. The following pages deal only with England and Wales. Though foreign education exercised considerable influence in this country, the nineteenth century was far more national than the sixteenth. The English Renaissance re presented the effect of a self-conscious civilisation on a people which felt the inferiority of its own culture, whereas in the nineteenth century Englishmen, in consequence of their industrial supremacy, were led to an undue deprecia tion of other nations. English education in Tudor times can only be treated as a branch of the tree whose roots were in It 4y from whatever quarter the seed of our nine teenth century education was brought, it had a life which was all its own. Moreover, the translation of ideas into practice followed quite differentlines in England and abroad In France and Germany educational systems were creatM by the State in England institutions grew up with a minimum of State intervention. Comparative edu cation is a study of the greatest importance, but it is based on the recognition of a difference in educational development in different countries rather than on an attempt to find a unity between them...