Education

How our ancestors were educated

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Farndales and education

Alfred Farndale’s memories of school at the turn of the twentieth century: “I remember going to school at Charltons near Tidkinhow. We then went to Standard 1 at Boosbeck. We stayed there until we were 14. It was a two mile walk each day. The headmaster was Mr Ranson. I remember Jim, my elder brother catching me fishing and playing truant. He just said "Get in" (he was in a pony and trap) and he took me to a day’s marketing at Stokesley. I remember the second masters name was Ackroyd. I got a fork through my leg and he sucked it out. We were always inspected as we arrived at school. We had to walk past the Bainbridge place and people used to say that he had more sheep on the moor than he was allowed. I remember William looking after me at mother's funeral. I was crying and very upset.”

Rosamund Farndale (FAR00920), born 1931 (later Rosamund Martin and Rosamund Kwalker Pomevie) from Northumberland became a headmistress in Hampstead, London.

In a talk between Alfred Farndale and his son, Martin on 29 July 1982, Alfred Farndale (FAR00683) recalled, "I remember going to school at Charltons near Tidkinhow. We then went to Standard 1 at Boosbeck. We stayed there until we were 14. It was a two mile walk each day. The headmaster was Mr Ranson. I remember Jim, my elder brother catching me fishing and playing truant. He just said "Get in" (he was in a pony and trap) and he took me to a days marketing at Stokesley. I remember the second masters name was Ackroyd. I got a fork through my leg and he sucked it out. We were always inspected as we arrived at school. …”

His son Martin Farndale (FAR00911) recalled: Every day Anne and I, and later Geoffrey as well, were driven into Northallerton, which was five miles away, to school and we were collected in the evening. School was a very new adventure and not easy going for me. Mrs Lord was a hard but far task master, insisting on high standards. Much was learnt by heart – poems, hymns and tables. Mr Lordtaught history ad geography and these quickly became my favourite subjects. On Friday afternoons the school walked in a long crocodile to the village of Romanby, there to sit and watch lantern slides given by a Mr and Mrs Linton about their travels to the Holy Land and Egypt. These were wonderful, hazy black and a browny colour and white, but they opened up the idea of travel and excitement. They also taught us a great deal and left a deep impression on me. It was at Wensley House school that I made my first friends. Richard Sawfell was the son of the county surveyor whose mother knew my mother before they were both married. David Ramsden was the son of a farmer near Northallerton. Jack Errington came with his mother during the school holidays to stay with his Grandmother in Thornton-Le-Moor.

Eighteenth century education

Charity schools

In the early eighteenth century many charity schools were founded to teach poorer children. Before this schools were mainly for the middle and upper classes.

Some charity schools provided board and lodging. Most were small schools such as the Postgate School in Great Ayton, which is today a museum in Great Ayton. Charity schools gave the poor their only chance of schooling. James Cook may never have gone on to achieve as he did without the opportunity to break away from his farming background. Some contemporaries objected to the education of the poor arguing that “The ore a shepherd and ploughman know of the world, the less fitted he’ll be to go through the fatigue and hardship of it with cheerfulness and equanimity.”

The curriculum

Most of the teaching in charity schools was one to one. The teacher would listen to a child recite or read, or test by questions and answers, while other children got on with their work. The main purpose of charity schools was religious education so pupils were taught to read so that they could read the Bible and prayer books. Those who stayed on at school may have learnt to write.

Children had to spend many hours at their copybooks, copying out letters or words written for them at the top of the page by the teacher.

They were also taught the basics of arithmetic.

An eighteenth century engraving of a charity schoolroom

Reading

Reading and writing were taught separately and reading came first. Books were scarce, learning to read started at an oral skill, an exercise in memory. Children had to say aloud letters and syllables, and also spell long and complicated words before they learnt to read stories from books.

They started off with a hornbook, and then went on to the spelling book which contained long lists of words with one syllable, then two syllables etc. All these had to be mastered first.

Only when pupils were considered to be ready, were they allowed to read passages from the Bible or another book that was often used was Aesop’s Fables.

Hornbooks

The education of girls

In the eighteenth century, literacy in England amongst women was lower than for men. If they went to school at all, girls tended to leave as soon as they could read. At home they learnt household skills from their mothers and gradndothers. These ight include cokking and preserving food, needlework, knitting and spinning flax as Ayton was a local centre of the linen industry.

Victorian education

In early Victorian Britain, many children did not go to school, which had not yet become compulsory. Children from poorer families often worked. Poorer families often relied on their children to bring in extra money that they needed to survive. Girls, whether rich or poor, tended not to go to school in early Victorian times. With the exception of a small number of very wealthy girls who attended boarding school, most girls either worked if they were poor or if they were wealthy were taught by a governess at home.

The Victorian governments made gradual steps towards a more robust schooling system in Britain. In 1839, the first groups of school inspectors were employed.

Families living in the big cities around Britain found it particularly difficult to send their children to school because of the fees they would have to pay as well as losing the income that their children would bring in if they were working.

In the mid-1840s, the idea of Ragged Schools, a type of volunteer-led school, spread to London. They were the only possibility of education for those families who had been turned away from other charitable or church schools and who couldn’t pay for their children to learn. Children who went to Ragged Schools tended to be poor and commonly came from families where parents were abusive or drunks. Some pupils were orphans and some pupils’ parents were in prison so they had taken to sleeping on the streets. The Ragged Schools gave free meals and clothing to their pupils and taught them a trade such as shoemaking or domestic skills.

In 1846 the government began to help pay for teacher training too, which would serve to help more teachers get the training they needed to successfully teach this generation of young people who were to, one day, lead the country to new heights

By the 1860s, more than 40,000 of London’s poorest children were taught at Ragged Schools and by 1861, there were lots more schools available for children to attend, generally set up by individuals or organisations, but most of them not free. Although there were no schools fully funded by the government yet, parliament was allocating more money than ever for education in the 1860s. The annual funding for schools at this time was more than £800,000. In 1862, parliament also made it compulsory for head teachers to keep daily and weekly records of what happened at their school in a log book. This was a good way to check that progress and attendance were being monitored. Head teachers were being made more responsible for the students under their care. However, with no laws still to make children attend, progress was difficult and was not helped by a continued lack of teaching resources and staff.

In 1857 Hughes’ Tom Brown’s Schooldays immortalised Dr Thomas Arnold’s Rugby School of the 1830s. A focus in public schools emerged of the relative autonomy of boys, training for adult life. Grammar schools were cheaper and non boarding, and publicly funded Board schools copied their ethos. There was an emphasis on games, toughness, independence and a code of silence which tolerated bullying.

Stories for children were spawned by Thom Brown, such as Kipling’s Stalky and Co in 1899.

The Education Act 1870 initiated a national system of Elementary Schools, run by elected School Boards. This was opposed by non conformists as it gave financial support to Anglican and Catholic schools. It was criticised for its narrow curricula, but working class parents were generally enthusiastic. Most remembered their teachers positively. Teaching included the 3Rs and English literature.

Literacy rose steadily from the 1830s and very sharply from the 850s (55%) to the 1890s (about 90%).

(Robert Tombs, The English and their History, 2023, 514 to 515).

Lark Rise, Flora Thomson, Chapter II, A Hamlet Childhood: There were not many books in the house, although in this respect the family was better off than its neighbours; for, in addition to 'Father's books', mostly unreadable as yet, and Mother's Bible and Pilgrim's Progress, there were a few children's books which the Johnstones had turned out from their nursery when they left the neighbourhood. So, in time, she was able to read Grimms' Fairy Tales, Gulliver's Travels, The Daisy Chain, and Mrs. Molesworth's Cuckoo Clock and Carrots.

'Schools be the places for teaching, and you'll likely get wrong for him doing it when governess finds out.'

But that happy time of discovery did not last. A woman, the frequent absences from school of whose child had brought the dreaded Attendance Officer to her door, informed him of the end house scandal, and he went there and threatened Laura's mother with all manner of penalties if Laura was not in school at nine o'clock the next Monday morning.

Lark Rise, Flora Thomson, Chapter XI, School: School began at nine o'clock, but the hamlet children set out on their mile-and-a-half walk there as soon as possible after their seven o'clock breakfast, partly because they liked plenty of time to play on the road and partly because their mothers wanted them out of the way before house-cleaning began. Up the long, straight road they straggled, in twos and threes and in gangs, their flat, rush dinner-baskets over their shoulders and their shabby little coats on their arms against rain. In cold weather some of them carried two hot potatoes which had been in the oven, or in the ashes, all night, to warm their hands on the way and to serve as a light lunch on arrival. They were strong, lusty children, let loose from control; and there was plenty of shouting, quarrelling, and often fighting among them. In more peaceful moments they would squat in the dust of the road and play marbles, or sit on a stone heap and play dibs with pebbles, or climb into the hedges after birds' nests or blackberries, or to pull long trails of bryony to wreathe round their hats. In winter they would slide on the ice on the puddles, or make snowballs—soft ones for their friends, and hard ones with a stone inside for their enemies. After the first mile or so the dinner-baskets would be raided; or they would creep through the bars of the padlocked field gates for turnips to pare with the teeth and munch, or for handfuls of green pea shucks, or ears of wheat, to rub out the sweet, milky grain between the hands and devour. In spring they ate the young green from the hawthorn hedges, which they called 'bread and cheese', and sorrel leaves from the wayside, which they called 'sour grass', and in autumn there was an abundance of haws and blackberries and sloes and crabapples for them to feast upon. There was always something to eat, and they ate, not so much because they were hungry as from habit and relish of the wild food. At that early hour there was little traffic upon the road. Sometimes, in winter, the children would hear the pounding of galloping hoofs and a string of hunters, blanketed up to the ears and ridden and led by grooms, would loom up out of the mist and thunder past on the grass verges. At other times the steady tramp and jingle of the teams going afield would approach, and, as they passed, fathers would pretend to flick their offspring with whips, saying, 'There! that's for that time you deserved it an' didn't get it'; while elder brothers, themselves at school only a few months before, would look patronizingly down from the horses' backs and call: 'Get out o' th' way, you kids!' Going home in the afternoon there was more to be seen. A farmer's gig, on the way home from market, would stir up the dust; or the miller's van or the brewer's dray, drawn by four immense, hairy-legged, satin-backed carthorses. More exciting was the rare sight of Squire Harrison's four-in-hand, with ladies in bright, summer dresses, like a garden of flowers, on the top of the coach, and Squire himself, pink-cheeked and white-hatted, handling the four greys. When the four-in-hand passed, the children drew back and saluted, the Squire would gravely touch the brim of his hat with his whip, and the ladies would lean from their high seats to smile on the curtseying children. A more familiar sight was the lady on a white horse who rode slowly on the same grass verge in the same direction every Monday and Thursday. It was whispered among the children that she was engaged to a farmer living at a distance, and that they met half-way between their two homes. If so, it must have been a long engagement, for she rode past at exactly the same hour twice a week throughout Laura's schooldays, her face getting whiter and her figure getting fuller and her old white horse also putting on weight. It has been said that every child is born a little savage and has to be civilized. The process of civilization had not gone very far with some of the hamlet children; although one civilization had them in hand at home and another at school, they were able to throw off both on the road between the two places and revert to a state of Nature.

Fordlow National School was a small grey one-storied building, standing at the cross-roads at the entrance to the village. The one large classroom which served all purposes was well lighted with several windows, including the large one which filled the end of the building which faced the road. Beside, and joined on to the school, was a tiny two-roomed cottage for the schoolmistress, and beyond that a playground with birch trees and turf, bald in places, the whole being enclosed within pointed, white-painted palings.

The average attendance was about forty-five.

Every morning, when school had assembled, and Governess, with her starched apron and bobbing curls appeared in the doorway, there was a great rustling and scraping of curtseying and pulling of forelocks. 'Good morning, children,' 'Good morning, ma'am,' were the formal, old-fashioned greetings.

Reading, writing, and arithmetic were the principal subjects, with a Scripture lesson every morning, and needlework every afternoon for the girls.

Every morning at ten o'clock the Rector arrived to take the older children for Scripture. He was a parson of the old school; a commanding figure, tall and stout, with white hair, ruddy cheeks and an aristocratically beaked nose, and he was as far as possible removed by birth, education, and worldly circumstances from the lambs of his flock. He spoke to them from a great height, physical, mental, and spiritual.

His lesson consisted of Bible reading, turn and turn about round the class, of reciting from memory the names of the kings of Israel and repeating the Church Catechism.

The writing lesson consisted of the copying of copperplate maxims.

History was not taught formally.

There were no geography readers.

Those children who read fluently, and there were several of them in every class, read in a monotonous sing-song, without expression, and apparently without interest.

It must be remembered that in those days a boy of eleven was nearing the end of his school life.

Miss Holmes carried her cane about with her. A poor method of enforcing discipline, according to modern educational ideas; but it served. It may be that she and her like all over the country at that time were breaking up the ground that other, later comers to the field, with a knowledge of child psychology and with tradition and experiment behind them, might sow the good seed.

'Oh, Laura! What a dunce you are!' Miss Holmes used to say every time she examined it.

Lark Rise, Flora Thomson, Chapter XII, Her Majesty’s Inspector: Her Majesty's Inspector of Schools came once a year on a date of which previous notice had been given.

Her Majesty's Inspector was an elderly clergyman, a little man with an immense paunch and tiny grey eyes like gimlets. He had the reputation of being 'strict', but that was a mild way of describing his autocratic demeanour and scathing judgement. His voice was an exasperated roar and his criticism was a blend of outraged learning and sarcasm. Fortunately, nine out of ten of his examinees were proof against the latter. He looked at the rows of children as if he hated them and at the mistress as if he despised her. The Assistant Inspector was also a clergyman, but younger, and, in comparison, almost human. Black eyes and very red lips shone through the bushiness of the whiskers which almost covered his face. The children in the lower classes, which he examined, were considered fortunate.

What kind of a man the Inspector really was it is impossible to say. He may have been a great scholar, a good parish priest, and a good friend and neighbour to people of his own class. One thing, however, is certain, he did not care for or understand children, at least not national school children.

Education in Great Ayton

By the late 1860s, lots more voluntary schools had been opened. Many working-class children now went to school for some of their childhood. Even though some children still did not attend school, this was now a minority. It became clear was that more schools were needed. There was still an unacceptable amount of illiteracy in Britain and those children who lived in the urban slums and more remote areas still weren’t able to access a school. Britain was going through an amazing, prosperous period of industrialisation and the British Empire was growing. There was a serious need to educate all the British people to help drive Britain forward and be able to show off its citizens to the World. These young people were the future of Great Britain, the then capital of the World. The days were gone in which it was acceptable to worry that by letting poorer children go to school to learn they would become unhappy with their social standing.

In 1870, the government passed an Education Act to deal with the education of Britain’s young generation. It had been decided that it was crucial for the future of the country and its citizens that education be provided throughout the nation. Every child was to be given a place at school and school buildings had to be of a reasonable quality. Head teachers now had to be qualified too. Schools throughout the nation were inspected and checked to make sure that the education they were offering met the new standards. New rules now meant that school boards could make school compulsory for children between five and ten years old and later thirteen.

Over the next ten years, new schools were set up in areas where there had been none before making education accessible for everyone. School boards were set up to manage and build these.

The next big step towards education becoming compulsory came in 1880 with the Elementary Education Act. Ten years had passed during which school boards had been given the choice over whether to make children go to school. Now, the government had taken the decision out of their hands: these new laws meant that every child had to attend school.

One of the most important Education Acts to be passed towards the end of the century was the 1891 Elementary Education Act. This established new rules declaring that elementary education was to be free for all and not just for those in severe poverty.

What school was like

Unlike school today, as a Victorian child you could expect to be cold at school as there may not have been a fire to heat your room or school hall. If there was, you may have been sat so far away that the warmth didn’t reach you! Having most probably walked to school, you might spend much of your time in wet, cold clothes from your journey in depending on the time of year and you would certainly be tired – sometimes, children would have to walk a long way to school! When you got there, you would fully expect to be inspected by your teacher and would have to be smartly turned out. Respect for your teacher was very important and you would bow or curtsy to them during registration.

Lessons would be in the three ‘R’s: Reading, writing and arithmetic. Sometimes, schools would teach geography, history and ‘drill’, the Victorian equivalent of PE. You probably wouldn’t have had your own books; instead, they would be shared among the whole class and kept by the teacher on his or her desk, which would be at the front of the room. Depending on which school you went to, you may or may not have a break time! During lessons, you would be expected to pay attention and work to a high standard. If you made a mistake, such as a wrong spelling or even writing with your left hand, punishments would either be painful or humiliating and might be either a sharp rap across the knuckles with a cane or being sent to the corner to wear the dunce’s cap – often with your face to the wall in shame. If you accidentally fell asleep in class, you could expect to receive a nasty snap of the master’s ruler or perhaps even being woken up with some very cold water

Twentieth century education

The Education Act 1944 (The Butler Act) established tripartite education system of grammar schools, secondary modern schools and technical schools. The change was led by the Tory, R A Butler. It set up a new Ministry of Education with hundreds of small Local Education Authorities,. The new model was based on three types of state secondary education – grammar, technical and ‘secondary modern’, driven by a single aptitude test, the eleven plus, at age 11, which were intended to work together with the types of school often located together. It never worked as intended and in practice left a divide between grammar and secondary modern schools.

There is an In Our Time podcast on the history of education which examines whether its modern purpose is to teach us the nature of reality, or to give us the tools to deal with it.