The Early Quakers as Advocates of Educational Reform

THE EARLY QUAKERS AS ADVOCATES OF EDUCATIONAL REFORM By Richard L. Greaves* The germinative decades of the seventeenth century, so fruitful in political, social, religious, and philosphical conceptions, witnessed also the development of a far-reaching movement for the reform of educational practices and theories. Although its impact reached from the European continent to the colonies of New England, its focal point was England in the tumultuous decades between 1640 and 1660. There the broad utilitarian philosphy enunciated by Lord Chancellor Francis Bacon at the turn of the century had permeated the sphere of educational thought through the writings of men like Jan Comenius, John Dury, Samuel Hartlib, and William Petty. Even the classicallyoriented program of education outlined by John Milton in his tract Of Education (1644) was not wholly uninfluenced by the Baconian tradition. Among the Baconian tradition's most devoted adherents were leading English sectaries of the Commonwealth and Protectorate period. One such was the mystically-inclined Yorkshire preacher John Webster (1610-1682), a one-time schoolmaster whose Academiarum Examen, or tL· Examination of Academies (London, 1654) was a probing critique of English higher education; it stressed the necessity of utilitarian studies, especially in the scientific and mathematical subjects. Another was the Antmomian-inclmed minister William Dell (d. 1669), rector of Yelden, Bedfordshire, and Master of Caius College, Cambridge. The Digger leader Gerrard Winstanley, who joined the Quaker movement in the years after the failure of his communal experiment on St. George's Hill, Surrey (1649-1650),1 placed a distinct emphasis on a utilitarian, secular, and scienceoriented program of education in his plan for a communist commonwealth , published as The Law of Freedom in a Platform, or True * Assistant Professor of History, Eastern Washington State College. 1 See Richard T. Vann, "The Later Life of Gerrard Winstanley," Journal of tL· History of Ideas, XXVI (Jan.-Mar., 1965), 133-136. For Winstanley's views on educational reform, see Richard L. Greaves, "Gerrard Winstanley and Educational Reform in Puritan England," to be published in the British Journal of Educational Studies in 1969. 22 Quakers as Advocates of Educational Reform 23 Magistracy Restored (1652). The reform of contemporary medical education and practice was the principal theme of the writings of two other men with sectarian religious leanings, the Bermuda-born alchemist George Starkey (d. 1665), author of Natures Explication and Helmont's Vindication (London, 1657), and the alchemist Noah Biggs (fl. 1651), whose critique was entitled Mataeotechnia Medicinae Praxeos (London, 1651). The early Quaker writers hesitated not at all in lending their support to these persistent cries for the reform of such a fundamental aspect of society, and in so doing helped to stir among their fellow Friends an awareness of and a concern for an educational system which would more adequately meet the needs of that society. That aspect of education which was of predominant concern to the Quakers related to religious education in the schools, and in particular to instruction in divinity in the universities. Like most other sectaries their position with respect to the obtaining of religious knowledge barred the use of rational means and posited a thoroughgoing reliance on the revelatory work of the Spirit alone. In a passage the essence of which is echoed throughout Quaker literature James Nayler wrote: "The wisdom of God ... is a hidden mysterie . . . the knowledge of this mystery is the free gift of God, given onely to them who fear and love him, given without all naturall helps whatsoever . . . ."2 The logical corollary of such an epistemology with respect to education is the exclusion of religious instruction, which is precisely the position the early Quakers took. George Fox, convinced that human learning was earthly, natural, and completely incapable of revealing divine truth, categorically and caustically condemned those who went to Oxford or Cambridge to study divinity and to pore over ancient tomes and treatises in the vain hope of discovering the mind of God.3 "Where Wisdom from below prevails," wrote Thomas Lawson in pointing out the futility of such attempts, "there is a sound, a talk of Divinity, but 'tis cast out of the Region of their Hearts."4 Rather than pursuing university programs in divinity, men seeking religious...