A range of concerns in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in England and beyond, led policy-makers, educational theorists, classroom teachers, churches, secularist organisations, scientists, and a range of social reformers to focus on the elementary school as an agent of moral reform. The effects of economic and social changes including urbanisation and industrialisation, new knowledge and ideas, the weakening of old traditions and beliefs all convinced contemporaries of the important role the school had to play.1 Moral reform through the school, they believed, would mould the citizens of the future. Despite a common conviction of the socialising potential of the elementary school, however, there was no one idea about how this potential could be realised, or indeed a single clear notion of what citizenship was. Contemporaries disagreed on the basis of the values to be taught in elementary schools: was it to be a Christian morality, or a ‘human’ or social morality, without reference to God? They also differed on pedagogy — were moral values to be taught via direct moral instruction, or ‘caught’, imbibed indirectly through the social relationships of the school community, or absorbed from the content of other parts of the curriculum or activities such as organised games? Schools were, of course, not the only organisations involved in transmitting values to the young. Socialisation also occurred in the home, in the church, in organised youth movements, and — to the alarm of reformers — on the street.2

Citizenship, Moral Education and the English Elementary School

(1976). The 1918 education act: Origins, aims and development. British Journal of Educational Studies: Vol. 24, No. 1, pp. 66-85.

The 1918 education act: Origins, aims and development

an adjunct of the church, and the schoolmaster was an ecclesiastical officer." (i) It was the mission of the Church to teach, and only by doing so could it widen its authority or, indeed, perpetuate itself. Its influence gradually spread throughout the country, and many of its servants had the necessary leisure to give instruction not only in all that concerned religious doctrine but in reading, the study of Latin, and whatever was necessary to ensure that the missionary, liturgical, and administrative needs of the Church were met. By a natural process the study of Latin would in suitable circumstances lead on to the study of secular works, to which a knowledge of Latin provided the key. Of course there were fields of education outside the scope of the Church, but in a relatively uncomplicated society such acquirements as skill in arms, the social graces of aristocratic life, or knowledge of crafts could be learned from their practitioners. King Alfred, who had

Religion, the State, and Education in England

Frederick James gould and the transformation of moral education.

Opposition to the 1902 Education Act

The Religious Issue in the State Schools of England and Wales 1902-1914

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The Religious Issue in the State Schools of England and Wales 1902-1914