Evangelical Religion and Popular Education

A Modern Interpretation

John McLeish

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781317229353
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Historia de la educación

Under the influence of the evangelical movement in the 18th and early 19th centuries education, in one form or another, was brought to a vast number of people in England and Wales. Originally published in 1969, it is this phenomenon that forms the subject of Dr McLeish's book.

The two central figures are Griffith Jones and Hannah More and the movements are seen almost entirely through their work. Dr McLeish examines the nature and aims of the schools which were established; their economics and organisation; their progress and achievement; the social background in which they flourished.

In the second part of his book Dr McLeish attempts a bold synthesis. He analyses these data in light of four essentially modern social theories – Marxist dialectics, the functionalist anthropology of Malinowski, Freudian psychoanalysis, and the sociology of Talcott Parsons. The author does not pretend to provide all the answers. What he suggests is a way of looking at history that is open-minded and eclectic and vitalizing in the perspectives which it offers.

PART I

The Historical Background

Prefatory note to Part I

This book deals with the Evangelical movement as it developed in Wales in the eighteenth century and in England in the early nineteenth century. Special attention is devoted to the work of teaching the illiterate peasantry to read – this being an important by-product of the religious movement. The two key figures in England and Wales were, of course, Griffith Jones and Hannah More, and the movements are seen almost entirely through their work. The author’s intention is to throw light on the actual events, the motivations, doctrines and activities of the Evangelical Christians involved, and also on the reaction by their opponents, especially in the religious sphere. The two movements were linked historically in terms of antecedents – there is little evidence of any direct causal relationship, however.

The first part of the book is expository, setting out the historical record of the provision of charity schools by the Evangelicals, so far as this can be derived from contemporary sources. This was the main common element in the activities of these two branches of the movement, apart from their purely religious contribution. The provision of charity schools was indeed the main activity through which their special religious and social conceptions were spread amongst the mass of the people.

1 Evangelism and Mass Literacy in Wales

The pioneer of the campaign for the elimination of mass illiteracy in Britain was the Reverend Griffith Jones (1683-1761)¹ of Llanddowror parish in the county of Carmarthen. He was a Welshman, a minister of the Established (Anglican) Church in his native country. Although he was effectively the pioneer of adult education, he was not first in the field. There had been earlier, but isolated, and abortive attempts to deal with the problem before he initiated his forty years’ campaign in 1737, using as his main instrument the ‘circulating school’. To quote a few early instances: in 1711 the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge put out a circular to interested persons recommending the establishment of evening schools for adults.² At this time ‘bardic’ schools existed in Wales where a few peasants received a certain kind of education.³ There were adult schools in Scotland from about 1709, carried on as ‘charity schools’.⁴ Currie Martin even suggests, without producing the evidence, that ‘the teaching of adults to read has been a universal accompaniment of the growth of culture, civilization, and especially Christianity, at every period’.⁵ As a Welsh correspondent of the S.P.C.K., Griffith Jones was aware of these sporadic activities: he was certainly influenced, if only indirectly, by them. But, unlike the unknown innovators referred to, he is unique in leaving a continuous printed record in which he describes the stages, the aims, and the difficulties of the literacy movement. These reports were issued annually for twenty-four years under the title of the Welch Piety.⁶ It is this fact, and the continuity of his efforts, which give him a unique place in the hearts of his compatriots and in the history of adult education.

His schools were not adult schools in the formal sense. His method was to organize catechetical schools: these were normally mixed schools for adults and children. The fact that many of the evening classes contained only adults was purely accidental. It had nothing to do with the recognition that adults have special educational needs, nor of the undesirability of instructing adults and children in the same group. The schools were organized in the evening simply because most adults could not attend during the day because of their working commitment. The principle that adults and children should not be educated in literacy together was recognized only in 1811, when the Reverend Thomas Charles of Bala established schools for adult scholars only.

Even in the matter of organizing evening classes, Griffith Jones was anticipated by several philanthropists. For example, an S.P.C.K. minute of 8th March 1700 commends John Pierson and John Reynolds for organizing such a class.⁷ The method of evening instruction which was comparatively rare in Engand was a well-known and common practice in Scotland at this time. The Scots dominie in the circulating charity school seems to have been hard pushed to earn his living:

Unlike the English teachers, his work did not cease when his day pupils were dismissed. Men who combined the offices of teacher and catechist called together the children for Sunday school in the church where they read the scriptures and were publicly catechized by him. Night schools for servants and adults who could not leave their work in the day time were within his province and, on Saturday afternoons, when his pupils enjoyed holiday, he was bidden to visit the old and the sick who could not come to church.⁸

There is a tradition that Griffith Jones heard of the Scottish circulating schools (which in his day were confined to the Highlands) and adapted them to Welsh conditions. It was supposed that he toured Scotland with his patron, Sir John Philipps, in 1716. This tradition, which is based on a fleeting reference in the eulogy of Griffith Jones by William Williams, ‘the sweet singer of Pant-y-Celyn’, is now known to be false. Griffith Jones penetrated the Scottish province only as far as Gretna, and only for a single day, in August 1716. What seems more likely than the Welsh circulating schools being direct imitations of Highland practice is that Jones knew of these through the S.P.C.K. – possibly through his patron and brother-in-law, an enthusiastic supporter of this society for many years.⁹

As a forerunner of Griffith Jones we must also point to the German pietist movement, and in particular to the Reverend A. H. Francke, whose account of ‘the ragged schools’ of Halle (1707) served as a direct inspiration to the Welsh providers. Sir John Philipps knew Francke personally: Griffith Jones corresponded with the translator of Francke’s Pietas Hallensis.

It is clear from these disconnected facts that Griffith Jones contributed no novel idea in the conception of charity schools which moved on from place to place as the need they served was satisfied. What he did contribute was the outstanding zeal and energy which enabled him not only to organize but in considerable measure also to finance instruction for the illiterate Welsh peasant for a quarter of a century. His example inspired others, who would otherwise have held back, to organize adult schools in other places. The idea of charity schools had been accepted for a considerable period in England. But it was commonly believed that only children could benefit from literacy instruction. Consequently, no provision was made for adults. According to Dr Pole, the first historian of the adult school movement, this was because of ‘the rooted prejudice which so generally possessed the public mind – that the aged could not be instructed’.¹⁰

If we examine the specific form of the Welsh charity schools – the ‘ambulatory’ or ‘circulating’ school – we find that it owes something to Scottish practice, as already indicated. Sir Humphrey Mackworth had written to the London S.P.C.K., suggesting ‘itinerant masters’ for Wales on the model of the Highland schools as far back as 1719.¹¹ The use of the vernacular as the medium of instruction had been recommended by patriotic Welshmen for a very much longer period, the first being Stephen Hughes’ protest (1672) against the use of English in the schools of the Welsh Trust.¹² As already noted, evening schools for those who could not attend during the day were well established in Scotland long before Griffith Jones’ time. The content of education in Griffith Jones’ circulating schools was derived from Francke’s account of the ‘ragged schools’ of Halle. Griffith Jones put all these ideas together and conceived the model of the vernacular catechetical school which should circulate from place to place, teaching ‘the deserving poor’ to read and supplying them with cheap bibles and catechisms.

SOCIAL CONDITION OF WALES

In the eighteenth century Wales was a land of poverty-stricken peasants. Their labours supported a class of absentee landlords as well as an alien, largely absentee and pluralist clergy. There was a numerically small class of resident native gentry and a few Welsh-speaking ministers of the Established (Anglican) Church.¹³ Clerical writers are pretty well unanimous about the state of the Church. To quote Griffith Jones’ biographer:

There was much indifference, worldliness, incapacity and gross neglect of duty on the part of the majority of the clergy, whilst, as might be expected, the laity were generally sunk in ignorance, superstition, immorality and utter unconcern about spiritual things. The plague had spread among Churchmen and Dissenters alike.¹⁴

Griffith Jones attributed a great deal of the ‘heathenish darkness’ of his day to the fact that very few clergymen were qualified to minister to the religious needs of their congregations because of their ignorance of Welsh.¹⁵ In his View of the State of Religion in the Diocese of St David’s (1721), the Reverend Erasmus Saunders says that many men ordained to the Church knew nothing of the language and had no vocation for the ministry.¹⁶ Of the sixty-two bishops who occupied Welsh sees between 1700 and 1800, three only were Welshmen: the great majority lived in England. According to Johnes, in his study of the causes of dissent in Wales, during a forty-year period in the seventeenth century, in the diocese of St Asaph, there were five Welsh bishops of whom three were distinguished for their learning. In a comparable period in the eighteenth century there were seventeen English bishops of whom one only was distinguished. The English bishops were remarkable only for their fine connections, chronic absenteeism, and a marked propensity to appoint English vicars (45 out of a total of 54). Johnes diagnoses the cause of Dissent as ‘ecclesiastical misgovernment’. This is the view of a devoted and knowledgeable member of the Established Church, writing in 1835.¹⁷ Griffith Jones and other contemporary witnesses refer to the evils of an absentee clergy and the impossibility of instructing the Welsh people in religious matters without a knowledge of the language.¹⁸

The history of popular education in Wales is soon told.¹⁹ In comparison with Scotland with its parish schools Wales was undoubtedly backward: at the same time it was probably in advance of England. Memories persisted of a pre-Conquest period ‘when every parish had its priest, when the Church gave free education to the poor and cared for the aged’,²⁰ when the Welsh peasant showed his devotion to the older faith. There was a tradition of a national literature both epic and lyrical, of a Bardic education similar in didactic method and content to that of classical Greece. There was a cultural history which laid claim to an ancient and remote origin. From early times Christian schools and monasteries had maintained cultural links with the Celtic world as well as with the continent of Europe.²¹

However, dating from the annexation of Wales by the English Crown in the thirteenth century, a steady deterioration of the Celtic cultural tradition had set in. By the eighteenth century the mass of the people had become brutalized. The intellectual culture of the peasants consisted of superstitious tales of fairies and ogres, spectres, giants and sorcerers. They earned a precarious living by the most primitive agricultural methods. They were illiterate and not far removed from paganism.²² In contrast, catering for a different social class in the towns, in this century there were 25 to 30 grammar schools of ancient foundation in Wales, some dating from the thirteenth century.

USE OF THE VERNACULAR

Cromwell had attempted to tackle the problem of popular education in Wales in the revolutionary Act of 1649. By this Act the Welsh Church was disestablished and partially disendowed. From the revenues thus obtained the Commissioners appointed to carry through the Act set up 72 free schools (1653-1660). A Welsh University was also projected. But the Restoration of the Stuarts put an end to these plans and restored the pre-existing state of things.

Under the management of Thomas Gouge (d. 1681), the Welsh Trust between 1672 and 1681 established some 300-400 charity schools in which children were taught to read, write and count.²³ In the same period the Trust established grammar schools in 51 of the principal towns in Wales with over 1,000 children in attendance. The reports of this trust, published in 1937, suggest to an apologist that, ‘It was in Wales that a systematic attempt was first made to provide schools for the poor, by the voluntary subscriptions of individuals’.²⁴

It is paradoxical that this Trust published and distributed the Bible and other Church literature in Welsh but insisted on English as the medium of instruction in the schools. This largely reduced the effect of the charity schools and rendered their efforts nugatory. As a general practic...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Part I: The Historical Background
• Part II: The Evangelicals in the Light of Social Thought
• Glossary
• References
• Bibliography
• Name Index