40495
Robert Raikes House, now a pub on Southgate Street in Gloucester, Gloucestershire.
Robert Raikes, an English philanthropist and Anglican layman, is known for his promotion of Sunday schools, which are seen as the precursor to the modern day the English state school system.
He inherited a publishing business from his father, becoming proprietor of the Gloucester Journal in 1757. He then moved the business into Robert Raikes' House in 1758.
Raikes had become interested in prison reform, specifically with the conditions in Gloucester gaol and saw that vice would be better prevented than cured. He saw schooling as the best intervention. The best available time was Sunday as the boys were often working in the factories the other six days.
He used his paper to publicise the schools and bore most of the cost in the early years. The movement began in July 1780 in the home of a Mrs Meredith. Only boys attended, and she heard the lessons of the older boys who coached the younger. Later, girls also attended. Within two years, several schools opened in and around Gloucester. He published an account on 3 November 1783 of Sunday schools in his paper, and later word of the work spread through the Gentleman's Magazine, and in 1784, a letter to the Arminian Magazine.
The original schedule for the schools, as written by Raikes was:
"The children were to come after ten in the morning, and stay till twelve; they were then to go home and return at one; and after reading a lesson, they were to be conducted to Church. After Church, they were to be employed in repeating the catechism till after five, and then dismissed, with an injunction to go home without making a noise."
Criticisms raised included that it would weaken home-based religious education, that it might be a desecration of the Sabbath, and that Christians should not be employed on the Sabbath. Some leading ecclesiastics—among them Bishop Samuel Horsley—opposed them on the grounds that they might become subservient to purposes of political propagandism.
Despite the controversy, the Sunday Schools grew at a phenomenal rate. By 1788 there were 300,000 children attached to local Sunday Schools. By 1831, Sunday schools in Great Britain were teaching weekly 1,250,000 children, approximately 25 percent of the population. By 1910 there were over 5,500,000 in Sunday Schools throughout the UK. As these schools preceded the first state funding of schools for the general public, they are seen as the forerunners of the current English school system.
Information Source:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Raikes
40495
Robert Raikes House, now a pub on Southgate Street in Gloucester, Gloucestershire.
Robert Raikes, an English philanthropist and Anglican layman, is known for his promotion of Sunday schools, which are seen as the precursor to the modern day the English state school system.
He inherited a publishing business from his father, becoming proprietor of the Gloucester Journal in 1757. He then moved the business into Robert Raikes' House in 1758.
Raikes had become interested in prison reform, specifically with the conditions in Gloucester gaol and saw that vice would be better prevented than cured. He saw schooling as the best intervention. The best available time was Sunday as the boys were often working in the factories the other six days.
He used his paper to publicise the schools and bore most of the cost in the early years. The movement began in July 1780 in the home of a Mrs Meredith. Only boys attended, and she heard the lessons of the older boys who coached the younger. Later, girls also attended. Within two years, several schools opened in and around Gloucester. He published an account on 3 November 1783 of Sunday schools in his paper, and later word of the work spread through the Gentleman's Magazine, and in 1784, a letter to the Arminian Magazine.
The original schedule for the schools, as written by Raikes was:
"The children were to come after ten in the morning, and stay till twelve; they were then to go home and return at one; and after reading a lesson, they were to be conducted to Church. After Church, they were to be employed in repeating the catechism till after five, and then dismissed, with an injunction to go home without making a noise."
Criticisms raised included that it would weaken home-based religious education, that it might be a desecration of the Sabbath, and that Christians should not be employed on the Sabbath. Some leading ecclesiastics—among them Bishop Samuel Horsley—opposed them on the grounds that they might become subservient to purposes of political propagandism.
Despite the controversy, the Sunday Schools grew at a phenomenal rate. By 1788 there were 300,000 children attached to local Sunday Schools. By 1831, Sunday schools in Great Britain were teaching weekly 1,250,000 children, approximately 25 percent of the population. By 1910 there were over 5,500,000 in Sunday Schools throughout the UK. As these schools preceded the first state funding of schools for the general public, they are seen as the forerunners of the current English school system.
Information Source:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Raikes