'A Victorian Class Conflict?' Schoolteaching and the Parson, Priest and Minister, 1837-1902 (review)

The growth of the English educational system in the nineteenth century was extensively explored by historians of education, especially between the 1950s and the 1980s, but despite much discussion of the role of religious bodies in elementary education, there has been no comprehensive examination of the relationships between the local schoolteachers and their clerical managers. John T. Smith's absorbing study not only rectifies this but introduces a welcome comparative element, exploring the situation in the Roman Catholic and Wesleyan communities as well as the more dominant and recorded Anglican. This original approach is fresh not only in its conception but also in its use of sources: Her Majesty's Inspectors (HMI) reports, annual reports of the Committee of Council on Education, school managers' minute books, log books, clergy diaries and writings, plus contemporary journals and some novels, are trawled extensively and perceptively to provide a wealth of personal evidence on all the aspects analysed. The result is a thoroughly interesting book that brings its subject to life.

Smith's investigation covers the Victorian period, going one year further through the 1902 Education Act. It focuses on elementary schools that received grants from the Committee of Council on Education, concentrating on those run by the above three denominations, which had far more elementary schools than any others, the Anglicans having by far the most. Smith explains how the different denominations woke up to the need to educate the poor in their parishes in order to safeguard or increase their own faith and position, the Catholics being particularly stimulated from the 1840s by Irish immigration. Smith's use of HMI reports provides an especially vivid and detailed picture of the way both Anglican clergy and Catholic priests not only took on a vast range of duties in connection with their schools, but also had to work hard to raise money for them, often going short themselves. Anglican clergy had a wealthier constituency but struggled for its support; Catholic priests, conversely, often had no parishioners with any money. Both, however, accepted responsibility for the education of the poor as a significant part of their pastoral duty. Wesleyan ministers, in contrast, mostly did not forge such close relationships with their schools since they constantly moved in the circuit system. Their whole system was more democratic, as Wesleyan schools were created and managed by the class that used them, often leaving teachers to run them as they wished.

These initial differences aside, each religious denomination sought to maintain their hold on working-class education in the face of increasing state regulation and, after the 1870 Education Act, competition from the new Board Schools. Smith shows a complex picture of varying difficulties in the relationships between the respective clergy and the teachers in their schools. In all cases there was a social void between teachers and clergy relating to both the clergy's status and the educational training both clergy and teachers received. Smith's detailed and nuanced analysis weaves through the changing educational, training, and financial status of clergy and teachers in each of the denominations to examine how these impacted their relationships, concluding that it was the "nature of educational training" and not achievement that separated clergy and teachers (124). All three denominations used the new pupil-teacher system of 1846 (not 1839 as Smith says on page 105) and then training colleges to raise teaching standards, although amongst the Catholics it was nuns who mostly did this, running very effective pupil-teacher centres and colleges for girls.

Smith is the first to analyse in detail the extraneous duties demanded of teachers or compare them across denominations. While all teachers were willing to help their churches voluntarily, the imposition of duties—not an issue amongst the Wesleyans—could lead to much resentment. This question of deference varied. Anglican clergy were largely graduates, despite some erosion in the late nineteenth [End Page...