INTERNATIONAL STANDING CONFERENCE FOR THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION – ISCHE XXIV – PARIS 2002
From: Malcolm Tozer To: ische24@inrp.fr
FILE: PERS/TOZERPARIS02
Abstract for the conference theme: • • • Secondary Education: Institutional, Cultural and Social History; Schools and school communities as subjects of study; Sociology and anthropology of pupils: school status, social position, gender.
Provisional title:
“A PERFECT PATTERN OF MANLY POWER”; COMING TO MANHOOD AT AN ENGLISH VICTORIAN PUBLIC SCHOOL
Dr Malcolm Tozer Headmaster Wellow House School Nottinghamshire NG22 0EA, England Correspondence address: Merrins Farm Mansfield Road Farnsfield Nottinghamshire NG22 8HG, England Telephone – work 0044-1623-861054 Telephone – home 0044-1623-882854 Fax – 0044-1623-836665 Email – malcolm-tozer@merrins-farm.fsnet.co.uk
-1-
INTERNATIONAL STANDING CONFERENCE FOR THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION – ISCHE XXIV – PARIS 2002 An education true to the mid-Victorian ideal of manliness was the central purpose at Uppingham School during Edward Thring’s headmastership. In the years between 1853 and 1887 Thring raised a small rural boys’ grammar school in the English midlands, with its few pupils and a purely local reputation, to a 300-strong public boarding school of national renown. The theory and practice of a distinctive and innovative schooling at Uppingham became much admired, both at home and abroad. Thring’s “great educational experiment” was founded on homely boarding arrangements in purpose-built accommodation and on a range of teaching buildings to accommodate the full and broad curriculum. All this was Thring’s “Almighty Wall”. The “machinery” of the school demanded that the classes and the boarding houses should be small, that the curriculum should embrace both traditional and modern subjects, and that the teachers should be carefully matched to their pupils’ ages and abilities. Thring believed that every boy should be encouraged to do something well, and so the curriculum extended beyond the contemporary expectations of divinity, classics and mathematics. English literature and science, music and carpentry, fencing and art – all these, and much more, were on the timetable. Sport had an important part to play, and a broad programme of physical education was carefully devised to promote the needs of a training in manliness. Gymnastics developed strength and suppleness, athletics inculcated the “racer’s spirit”, life-saving practice was taught in swimming, the knocks and bruises experienced in games toughened character, and country pursuits developed a love for and a communion with nature. Thring’s boys heard of the meaning of what their headmaster termed “True Life” in divinity lessons and through regular attendance at chapel services, and they learnt too of the role that Uppingham would play in its inculcation. Nearly half of Thring’s 400 manuscript sermons held in the school’s archives are devoted to this theme. These sermons were neither intellectual nor theological, nor did Thring speak down to the boys; rather, each was read as a parable, as a guide to manly living. The climax of an Uppingham education in manliness came as each boy prepared to confirm his Christian baptismal vows to seek adult membership of the Church of England. Every year Thring would speak separately to the younger boys in the school, to the boys who were candidates just before their confirmation, and finally to all the communicants. An examination of the rich archive material held at the school on Thring’s notes for these confirmation classes reveals the contemporary gender expectations for adolescent boys from upper- and middle-class families at a critical period in British domestic and imperial history. (438 words)
-2-
INTERNATIONAL STANDING CONFERENCE FOR THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION – ISCHE XXIV – PARIS 2002 Malcolm Tozer 29 December 2001
-3-