HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN NEW BRUNSWICK
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gressive, orderly, economical . the advocate of less expensive, more uniform, more modern and more advanced instruction for all, 42 effect any marked change in either the administration or curriculum of English Public and Grammar Schools. Besides these institutions of higher range there was a bewildering variety of elementary schools which , however, met the needs of only a fraction of the lower classes. Some of these schools were supported by endowments , others by church titles, charitable subscriptions or tuition fees. The workhouse schools, or "schools of industry" , represented the only form of education supported in the eighteenth century b y taxation in the form of parish rates. Of a humble type weI � the Dame Schools where old women, in their own k itchens, eked out a l ivelihood by imparting the rudiments of l earning to small children. The private-adventure or "hedge" school w as similar but was kept by a man. In all these schools the education given was of the most elementary kind , and in the church and charity. schools it was largely religious. 43 Toward the c lose of the century several interesting agencies d eveloped which were of particular significance later for North America. One of these was the Sunday School. Partl y inspired by religious and evangelical zeal. but owing something to the humanitarianism represented by Rousseau which was arousing the public conscience to a keener sense of duty toward children , 44 these schools gave "the little heathen of the neighborhood " 45 a limited secular and religious instruction. Yet at first the movement met an opposition that reveals class pre judice and in tolerance. Hannah More' s Sunday Schools in Gloucestershire were violently attacked by the local gentry and farmers, and by the Tory press , as a public danger, as breeding-grounds of political and rel igious sedition, and as hotbeds of Methodism and Jacobinism. 46 In the opening years of the nineteenth century a new school plan attract ed a ttention in England, spread to the continent, and met wi th ready acceptance in the United States. This was based on the system of mutual or monitorial instruction , and seemed to be the answer to the deman d for cheap education.
Two organizations, the "National Society for the Promotion o f Education of the Poor" , and the "British and Foreign School Society" . promoted this system in England, the former a Church of England creation. the latter favored by Dissenters and featuring non -sectarian religious education. As will be seen later, monitorial schools promoted by the National Society pl ayed a prominent part for many years in New Brunswick education. There is little to say about fema le education in the eighteenth century, for female intelligence at that time was not highly esteemed , and there was little provision for the formal education of girls. Reading, writing, a little arith metic, religion. social accomplishments, and the art of housekeeping were thought sufficient to equip any woman for l ife. 47 In church and charity schools 42. 43.
44. 45. 46. 47.
Hughes & Klemm. p. 49 . Cubberley. pp. 239-242. Halevy. p . 461 . Cubberley. p. Halevy. p. 461 . Smith P . • Vol. 2 . p .
337 .
466 .