Posing a challenge to more traditional approaches to the history of education, this interdisciplinary collection examines the complex web of beliefs and methods by which culture was transmitted to young people in the long eighteenth century. Expanding the definition of education exposes the shaky ground on which some historical assumptions rest. For example, studying conventional pedagogical texts and practices used for girls' home education alongside evidence gleaned from women's diaries and letters suggests domestic settings were the loci for far more rigorous intellectual training than has previously been acknowledged. Contributors cast a wide net, engaging with debates between private and public education, the educational agenda of Hannah More, women schoolteachers, the role of diplomats in educating boys embarked on the Grand Tour, English Jesuit education, eighteenth-century print culture and education in Ireland, the role of the print trades in the use of teaching aids in early nineteenth-century infant school classrooms, and the rhetoric and reality of children's book use. Taken together, the essays are an inspiring foray into the rich variety of educational activities in Britain, the multitude of cultural and social contexts in which young people were educated, and the extent of the differences between principle and practice throughout the period.
Author(s): Jill Shefrin, Mary Hilton
Series: Studies in Childhood, 1700 to the Present
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2009
Language: English
Pages: 254
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Contents
Notes on Contributors
Introduction
1 'Oh Miserable and Most Ruinous Measure': The Debate between Private and Public Education in Britain, 1760-1800
2 Evangelicalism and Enlightenment: The Educational Agenda of Hannah More
3 Marketing Religious Identity: Female Educators, Methodist Culture, and Eighteenth-Century Childhood
4 Learning and Virtue: English Grammar and the Eighteenth-Century Girls' School
5 'Familiar Conversation': The Role of the 'Familiar Format' in Education in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century England
6 Hosting the Grand Tour: Civility, Enlightenment and Culture, c. 1740-1790
7 'Superior to the Rudest Shocks of Adversity': English Jesuit Education and Culture in the Long Eighteenth Century, 1688-1832
8 Colonizing the Mind: The Use of English Writers in the Education of the Irish Poor, c. 1750-1850
9 'Adapted for and Used in Infants' Schools, Nurseries, &c.': Booksellers and the Infant School Market
10 Delightful Instruction? Assessing Children's Use of Educational Books in the Long Eighteenth Century
Bibliography
Index
