A lone campaigner for educational reform<\/p>\n
Public School expert Edward C. Mack said the poet William Cowper was a lone voice in campaigning for reform in eighteenth century English schools[1. Public Schools and British Opinion 1780 \u2013 1860, 1938.]. This may surprise poetry lovers who have not yet discovered Cowper\u2019s writings on education. Cowper\u2019s most neglected long poem Tirocinium or a Review of Schools, for instance, deals in detail with educational reform. Parents thinking of home-schooling their children as a legal alternative might care to consult Cowper who denounced the school system of his day as barbaric and developed ideas of education most acceptable to Christian parents. First a few words about Cowper\u2019s own education.<\/p>\n
Christian parents, the Bible and Pilgrim\u2019s Progress<\/p>\n
Cowper was born on 31 November 1731 (Old Style) in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire. His parents were of noble blood but the poet remembered them more for their Christian testimony rather than their genetic heritage.<\/p>\n
Cowper was taught to read and write at home before starting school at the age of four or five. His first \u2018book\u2019 was a sheet of paper with the Lord\u2019s Prayer printed on it, protected by a thin covering of transparent horn. He then progressed to John Bunyan\u2019s \u2018Pilgrim\u2019s Progress\u2019. Of Bunyan\u2019s \u2018Pilgrim\u2019 Cowper wrote in Tirocinium:<\/p>\n
\u201cIngenious dreamer, in whose well-told tale
\nSweet fiction and sweet truth alike prevail;
\nWhose hum\u2019rous vein, strong sense and simple style,
\nMay teach the gayest, make the gravest smile;
\nWitty and well-employ\u2019d, and, like thy Lord,
\nSpeaking in parables his slighted word;\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\nCowper tells contemporary educators who sneered at the name of Bunyan:<\/p>\n
\u201cRevere the man, whose PILGRIM marks the road,
\nAnd guides the PROGRESS of the soul to God.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\nLife at the local Dame School<\/p>\n
Cowper\u2019s first school was the local Dame School to which the family\u2019s gardener took him daily. When Cowper was only six years of age, his mother died after a difficult birth. Though Cowper\u2019s father wanted to keep his son under his direct care, the local school had run into difficulties, so Dr Cowper boarded his son in a friend\u2019s school in the village of Markyate Street on the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire border. William Pitman, the Headmaster, was a well-known Classical scholar and an Evangelical. Cowper however complained that he merely learnt \u201cto draw in Latin and Greek trammels\u201d with no time to \u201cskip and frisk about\u201d. At Markyate Street, Cowper had a most distressing time which, however, drove him to prayer and an assurance that God was with him. A fifteen-year-old pupil bullied Cowper so mercilessly that he became frightened to look the rogue in the face and could only stare at the buckles of his shoes when confronted with him. One day when Cowper was hiding in an empty classroom, frightened to go outside because the school bully might be waiting for him, a word from the Psalmist came to him, \u201cI will not fear what man can do unto me.\u201d At once the boy\u2019s sorrow left him and he left the classroom in high spirits. \u201cIt was His gift\u201d, Cowper later wrote in his Memoirs, \u201cin whom I trusted\u201d. The bullying ceased.<\/p>\n
A gentleman boarder at Westminster<\/p>\n
The following year, Cowper developed eye trouble so his father boarded him with a married couple who were oculists and home-school teachers. Cowper was unhappy there as the couple were unbelievers. Aged ten, according to family tradition, Cowper was sent as a Gentleman boarder to Westminster. Supervision was slack and Cowper had time to explore the Thames, read, write poetry and play cricket and football at which he excelled. At Westminster, Cowper caught the smallpox but this, he tells us, turned out for the good as the specks on his eyes disappeared and he could again read without eyestrain. His favourite author became Milton whose Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained thrilled him so much that he could soon quote huge portions off by heart. Cowper with his friend Dick Sutton, also studied Homer\u2019s Greek verse from cover to cover. The only sound teaching Cowper had at Westminster was the preparation for Confirmation which the Headmaster, Dr. Nicholl gave. As a result of this, Cowper started to pray regularly.<\/p>\n
More liberty than was good for them<\/p>\n
Discipline was non-existent at Westminster. One day, for instance, teacher Vinnie Bourne had his wig set alight by young Lord March who then boxed Bourne\u2019s ears in his pretended efforts to put out the flames. Cowper was especially fond of Bourne, who was a Latin poet of merit, and he later translated Bourne\u2019s works giving them a Christian turn. Cowper, however, complained that Bourne was slovenly and lazy and made the boys as bad as himself. Chaotic as life at Westminster was, there were days of glory for Cowper. He became House Captain and one of the top three in his final year. His Greek work was passed from form to form by masters for everyone to admire and he received silver coins for his prowess in languages.<\/p>\n
Though fun, games and hours of leisure predominated at Westminster, chiefly through private study, Cowper was able to leave Westminster with a thorough grounding in Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Philosophy, Literature, Mathematics, History, Geography and Science. Indeed, Cowper took with him from Westminster a great thirst and capacity for learning which caused him to become one of the best-read men of his day. Cowper, however, always said that he could always express his deepest thoughts in poetry rather than prose. It took Cowper thirty-six years before he decided to publish \u2018Tirocinium\u2019 on the shadowy side of public school life.<\/p>\n
Cowper\u2019s \u2018grown-up\u2019 experience of education<\/p>\n
How Cowper became a lawyer and an author of satirical prose; how he was President of the Thursday Club which attracted radicals such as John Wilkes and artists such as Hogarth; how he had a tragic love affair, became mentally ill and was finally converted are facts available in over fifty biographies. Most lack, however, information concerning Cowper\u2019s continued interest in education. In his letters, he discusses well over seventy contemporary books on educational themes, character building, the reformation of manners and the Christian way of life. He studied all the Ancients on education and found Xenaphon particularly helpful. He studied Rousseau\u2019s educational reforms with a mixture of amusement and disgust, finding his prot\u00e9g\u00e9 \u2018Emil\u2019 nothing put a stuck-up prig. Rousseau\u2019s ignorance of a child\u2019s mind caused Cowper to vent his humorous criticism on the Frenchman\u2019s naivety. Rousseau taught that it was deceitful to tell children fairy tales and stories about talking animals. Cowper asked what child was ever deceived by such stories against the evidence of his senses and responded with his fable Pairing Time Anticipated which starts:<\/p>\n
\u201cI shall not ask Jean Jaques Rousseau,
\nIf birds confabulate or no;
\n\u2018Tis clear that they were always able
\nTo hold discourse, at least in fable;
\nAnd ev\u2019n the child who knows no better,
\nThan to interpret by the letter,
\nA story of a cock and bull,
\nMust have a most uncommon skull.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\nCowper enjoyed reading literary critic Professor Hugh Blair, and Dr James Beattie, the moralist but he could not accept their evolutionary theory of language. They maintained that early man was speechless but after learning to grunt developed the complicated languages of modern times. Cowper rejected this theory as contrary to observation and Scripture, teaching that the older the languages, the more highly inflected they are and modern languages have devolved from them. Homer, for instance was one of the greatest poets ever, yet later poetry does not reach his greatness. Modern literature is a mere imitated and simplified form of the Ancients and has produced no new genres.[2. See, for instance, Cowper\u2019s letter to Hayley, June 27, 1792.]\n
Cowper\u2019s experience as a home teacher<\/p>\n
Cowper searched for his own \u2018Emil\u2019 to teach but as he had no family, the task was difficult. His first attempt failed. In 1764 he found a seven or eight-year-old alcoholic boy, Richard Coleman living with His drunkard father. Cowper rescued the boy and instructed him. Although Cowper looked after Coleman until well into manhood, he remained addicted to alcohol and a host of other malpractices and proved a great burden on Cowper\u2019s patience and pocket. Cowper\u2019s other three prot\u00e9g\u00e9s were brilliant successes. John Unwin was the son of his close friend William Unwin for whom Cowper wrote \u2018Tirocinium\u2019. William became a school governor and home-schooled his own children on Cowper\u2019s methods. Next came Samuel Rose who became a famous lawyer. Cowper\u2019s third \u2018Emil\u2019 was John Johnson, a young relative who became a Doctor of Theology and tenderly cared for his tutor in his old age.<\/p>\n
Cowper aids Unwin on educating his children<\/p>\n
In September, 1780 Unwin solicited Cowper\u2019s help in educating his son. The poet sent him a series of instructions, the first being:<\/p>\n
1. John must master English first.
\n2. Latin and Greek (i.e. foreign languages) must not be forced on John too soon. Schoolboys of 5-7 can often read and compose Greek lines on Aesop but not write simple English letters.
\n3. Do not be too hard on the child. Give him time and show him patience with his lessons.
\n4. Make sure he has plenty of time for play.
\n5. For the first two years John should be taught reading and writing, mathematics and geography. This should not be passively introduced but via inter-active lessons, learning games, puzzles, map-reading and other visual aids.
\n6. Latin and Greek may be started on at eight or nine years of age, thus beginning a seven years\u2019 course. Natural sciences should be added including theology, philosophy, physics and astronomy
\n7. William\u2019s aim should be to prepare John for university entrance at between fifteen and seventeen years of age.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nCowper\u2019s demands for a systematic teaching of English before foreign languages, lenient discipline, learning by playing, the use of visual aids and instruction according to abilities were new. Teaching arithmetic, science and geography was still a rarity at the time.<\/p>\n
Cowper organised his reforming ideas into verse around 1781. The result was Tirocinium which Cowper sent to the printer\u2019s along with The Task and John Gilpin. Tirocinium was the word used by the Romans to describe a soldier\u2019s initial training and had come to be used for the training of boys at school.<\/p>\n
The aims of education<\/p>\n
Cowper starts his treatise by asserting that English schooling has neither a basis nor a goal. Man has been created by God, the High King of Heaven, as the Earth\u2019s steward, so education must start on this premise and seek to make man worthy and capable of his task. Thus Cowper teaches:<\/p>\n
That we are bound to cast the minds of youth
\nBetimes into the mould of heav\u2019nly truth,
\nThat, taught of God they may indeed be wise,
\nNor, ignorantly wand\u2019ring, miss the skies.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\nHe argues that as Adam\u2019s fallen offspring are lost to their true calling, education has three goals. To teach the pupil his high calling; to show that he has sinned and fallen short of God\u2019s glory and with this his own; and to lead the pupil back to his rejected Lord. Thus the future-orientated task of the school is to see that boys:<\/p>\n
\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026learn with wonder how this world began,
\nWho made, who marr\u2019d, and who has ransom\u2019d man:
\nPoints which, unless the scripture made them plain,
\nThe wisest heads might agitate in vain.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nIn other words, schools need a textbook equal to the curriculum\u2019s task and this can only be the Scriptures first and foremost.<\/p>\n
Education is wrong which neglects Christian culture<\/p>\n
Cowper claims contemporary schools teach much \u2018mythologic stuff\u2019, but little of God\u2019s plan of creation and new-creation. Realising he would face hefty criticism, Cowper explains that he does not condemn information concerning heathen religions, but the neglect of the pupil\u2019s own culture which makes him ignorant of the gospel.<\/p>\n
Education is wrong which neglects family life<\/p>\n
School education, Cowper argues, is an artificial substitute for the natural family. Classrooms and dormitories full of boys of the same age is an unnatural social form. They need parental care and loving and experienced examples? Small boys soon learn the pranks and tricks of older adolescents. Thus their aims in life become merely raiding local gardens, taking part in escapades against the town youths, getting drunk and visiting harlots. Thus Cowper asks parents:<\/p>\n
\u201cWould you your son should be a sot or dunce,
\nLascivious, headstrong; or all these at once;
\nThat, in good time, the stripling\u2019s finish\u2019d taste
\nFor loose expense and fashionable waste
\nShould prove your ruin and his own at last;?
\nIf so, they should send their boys to a \u2018mob\u2019 school!<\/p><\/blockquote>\nCowper now addresses parents\u2019 negligence in looking after their children. He remarks that upper-class fathers spend hours a day training their horses and dogs, rather than commit them to strangers\u2019 hands. Yet they send their sons off to a badly administered \u2018menagery\u2019 to receive a far inferior dressage than their own colts and pups.<\/p>\n
Education is wrong which ruins one socially<\/p>\n
Cowper realises that many parents do not send their sons to public schools to gain \u201csmall skill in Latin and still less in Greek\u201d but to hob-nob with sons of the right people. Indeed, \u201cThe parson knows enough who knows a duke\u201d says Cowper sarcastically. Those were the days when the eldest son inherited land and titles, the rest had to be content with finding a living as a clergyman or take up some administrative office in the growing colonies.<\/p>\n
The spirit of rivalry was said to help boys exercise their fullest potentialities. Cowper claims rather that envy, hatred, jealousy and pride become the dominant factors in competing for honours at school. What use is success to a man when he has ruined his character gaining it? And what about the hurt failures experience on the way?<\/p>\n
Cowper condemns the myth that public schools fit boys out to live a sociable adult life and play their parts in a mixed society. How can one train boys for society by isolating them from it during the transformative years of their lives? He told Unwin in 1780 that public schools make the bold bolder but the shy shyer and it was this argument that convinced Unwin not to send his son John to a public school.<\/p>\n
Education must be interesting and useful<\/p>\n
After showing the \u2018work to the clock\u2019 deficiencies of most teachers, he argues that most fathers would make better teachers and then their sons would have a \u201cfather, and friend, and tutor, all in one\u201d and lessons all the more interesting and useful. Cowper now presents a curriculum for fathers \u2018blest with any brains\u2019 which can be used to \u2018combat atheists with in modern days\u2019. Sadly, most of today\u2019s fathers have so little education that they cannot coach their children through nature study, science, theology, astronomy, the deeds of ancient times, sport, healthy hobbies, health and cleanliness. Cowper gives tips of how it, nevertheless, might be done.<\/p>\n
Learning by imitation and experience<\/p>\n
In his home-school curriculum, Cowper combines the best of the public school activities with his own reforms. British schooling had not changed since the Renaissance where the emphasis was on dead languages and pagan literature. Since the Reformation, however, Christians such as Durie, Hartlib, Comenius, Hervey and Romaine had emphasised the importance of science, history and geography. Cowper, himself, worked diligently with his microscope and specimen box and was a keen botanist. Cowper stresses that science is a handmaid of God and can be used to show God\u2019s glory in creation. He teaches that learning by example, learning by imitation and learning by experiencing are more valuable than learning by rote. Sport should not be left out as exercise of the body is essential for the correct functioning of the heart and head.<\/p>\n
Cowper advises parents with little time or ability<\/p>\n
Cowper has hitherto addressed Gentlemen of leisure who lived off their estates and fortunes. He now turns to fathers who have no time or ability to instruct their children. They should seek out private tutors willing to coach one or two boys. This person should be neatly, though plainly dressed. He should be articulate but not a chatter-box, prone to laugh but equally prone to be serious when the occasion demands. He should be no jester but able to discourse lively with rhetorical skill. He should have the ease of a Frenchman rather than the stiffness of an Englishman. He should be a man of letters and morals and many parts. Cowper only lists one \u2018should not\u2019, he should not be patronised and treated as a servant. He should be regarded as the treasure he is and an important member of the family and take part in their family life. Facing the question, \u2018Where are such \u2018super-tutors\u2019 to be found? Cowper argued that a good man, given the right encouragement, is like a gas \u2013 able to fill any form he is put in. He also believed in the law of supply and demand, writing that if schools were abolished, there would be more available home-teachers.<\/p>\n
Cowper now turns to neglecting parents whom he likens to ostriches saying,<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ostrich, silliest of the feather\u2019d kind,
\nAnd form\u2019d of God without a parent\u2019s mind,
\nCommits her eggs, incautious, to the dust,
\nForgetful that the foot may crush the trust;\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\nThis is the obscene mouthed heavy drinking glutton whose table-talk is all of vice planned or already committed. His card-playing wife goes from one late evening party to another, spending the day in bed. Cowper begs these parents to board their sons out with some trusty clergyman and spare them the double plight of being influenced by their wicked family background and being corrupted in a public school.<\/p>\n
The social group Cowper had most in mind for his educational experiment were the<\/p>\n
. . . . tenants of life\u2019s middle state,
\nSecurely placed between the small and great,\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nHe felt the Middle Class were the backbone of England and devotes the next hundred lines to them. Abuses of the public school system are heaped one on another as Cowper factually but very emotionally lays before these parents their Christian duty to their sons. In his final argument he uses the simile of the shepherd and the hireling asking their parents if they would pay good money to a careless hireling to keep their flocks when they know he will spend his time sleeping and let the lambs run away.<\/p>\n
Cowper led educational thought in his day<\/p>\n
Few if any have used the same caustic, scathing, critical language against the public school system. John Sargeaunt, the Westminster historian, scoffs at the Christian faith and romanticises the corruption of youth. He accuses Cowper of dishonesty in outlining the educational weaknesses of the public schools but his list of the evils of neglected youth he condoles as boys being boys are far worse than Cowper\u2019s.[3. See Sargeaunt\u2019s lecture on Cowper given at Westminster on 25th April 1904. Published by \u2019The Cowper Society\u2019. Also his \u2018Annals of Westminster School\u2019, Methuen, 1898.].<\/p>\n
Applying Cowper\u2019s criticisms to today\u2019s schools<\/p>\n
Nowadays public school curricula have been reformed to include many of the methods Cowper recommended. Today\u2019s Westminster, especially, is a world apart from Cowper\u2019s Westminster. So, what would Cowper think of the largely state owned and controlled educational systems which have supplanted public schools?<\/p>\n
Modern reading methods need correcting<\/p>\n
Cowper would harshly condemn the way children are prevented from reading early and correctly in today\u2019s schools. Parents are even scolded for teaching their children to read and write before entering school. Cowper would see this as a further neglect of family life and abuse of family privileges and duties and thus a form of child abuse. He would accuse the schools of adopting an evolutionary approach to language learning, drilling in arbitrary sounds, syllables, morphemes and phonetics instead of teaching words in a sense context. This is an unscientific attempt to substitute grunts for language and thought. For Cowper, the best way to learn to read was the \u2018story\u2019 approach, whereby children are confronted with complete sense units such as The Lord\u2019s Prayer or a parable or short Biblical account. Old Lob and Mac and Tosh carried on the \u2018story\u2019 method during the early nineteen-forties, but the post-war period went to extremes in experimenting with impractical systems. Happily, the story method is again being introduced into schools throughout Europe. Learning by meaningless sounds, syllables and phonetic fantasies has failed.<\/p>\n
Viewing children as empty vessels is wrong<\/p>\n
In Cowper\u2019s day there were many learned autodidacts such as John Newton the great preacher, Thomas Scott the commentator, William Carey the missionary and Professor of languages, Captain Cook the mathematician and explorer, John Gill and John Brine the Baptist leaders. Newton learnt mathematics and Latin by writing in the sand during his slavery. Scott taught himself languages whilst working as a grazier, Carey learnt whilst mending shoes and Cook gained his schooling through practical experience. Modern education rules out such learning completely as pupils are seen as vessels to be filled rather than organisms able to nourish themselves given the right means. Fed with seven or eight lessons a day, children cannot find the muse and leisure for independent thinking and growth. Each child is taught to write in the same way, to read in the same way and to take in the very same facts. Often, only when school ends for the day do they begin to think for themselves. Many are then too exhausted to bother or homework destroys their coming to grasp with what they have learnt. School guidance nowadays means absolute control and the pupil has no liberty in dealing with the curriculum forced on him. He must like it but cannot lump it.<\/p>\n
Public education creates pagans<\/p>\n
One day, Cowper discovered a harsh criticism of John Newton in the Monthly Review for modelling his life on the Bible. Cowper wrote at once:<\/p>\n
\u201cThese critics, who to faith no quarter grant,
\nBut call it mere hypocrisy and cant
\nTo make a just acknowledgment of praise,
\nAnd thanks to God for governing our ways,
\nApprove Confucius more, and Zoroaster,
\nThan Christ\u2019s own servant, or that servant\u2019s Master.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\nToday, Christian teachers are refused posts because they will not place Christ on a par with Buddha or Mohammed. Science teachers are penalised for comparing creation with speculative evolution. School curricula in many regions cater for Muslims but ignoring the needs of Christians. Children are taught to criticise Christianity but are reprimanded if they show preferences against other religions.<\/p>\n
Education should put pupils first and \u2018subjects\u2019 second<\/p>\n
Cowper campaigned for a school that put pupils first and \u2018subjects\u2019 second. Forming and recreating boys in God\u2019s image was his aim. A balanced syllabus was a necessity. Nowadays lessons are rarely fact orientated. Geography, History, Scripture, Literature, Poetry and Music are disappearing from our curricula and the three Rs are called fossils of the past. A local trade school teaches illiterate adults two and a half years long how to make a multi-media video film by rote, using extremely expensive equipment which they would never see again outside of school, but they are not taught to read and write. The school does not realise that reading and writing are the basic means of acquiring further knowledge and also imparting it. Nowadays many school-leavers cannot fill in job application forms. The more the pupil absorbs information but is denied the means of expressing what he has learnt, the less useful that person will be either to himself or society and he will know nothing of the meaning of life. Even university examinations today use multiple choice questions and each illiterate candidate marks his cross in a box.<\/p>\n
Cowper would still argue that present day education is groundless, aimless and therefore meaningless. Where is the Minister of Education who is prepared to agree to Cowper\u2019s high views of God and man? Where is the educator who is prepared to accept Cowper\u2019s educational aims \u2013 the rebirth of a child and his integration back into God\u2019s plan for him? Where is the school syllabus that makes any attempt to define mankind and his purpose in life? Should we not rather consider Cowper\u2019s solutions once more?<\/p>\n
George Ella<\/p>\n
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\nGeorge M. Ella is a historian, author and biographer. His writings may be accessed at the online archived, \u201dBiographia Evangelica<\/a>\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n