Thring Of Uppingham: Victorian Educator

Nigel Richardson

Description

Edward Thring on Education

Edward Thring (1821-1887), who founded the Headmasters' Conference of prominent schools in Britain in 1869, was the best-known headmaster of his generation.

Formed by a nature-loving childhood in rural Somerset, survival in the notorious Long Chamber at Eton, a fellowship at King's College Cambridge and a harrowing curacy in the slums of Gloucester, he developed the conviction that education was God's work. This in turn led him to a passionate belief in the potential of every child.

From 1853, over 34 years, Thring transformed a small grammar school in Uppingham into a widely-celebrated boarding school with an international clientele. He battled against intransigent governors, growing debts and the encroachment of government control over every type of school. After facing potential disaster from a series of typhoid outbreaks, he relocated his staff and pupils to Borth in Wales, returning only after securing radical improvements in Uppingham's drainage and water supply. Although dismissively labelled "the enthusiast Mr Thring" by the Cambridge philosopher Henry Sidgwick and King of Boys by other critics, his social conscience led to the founding of a mission in London's East End, the first venture of its type.

Through two books, Education and School (1864) and The Theory and Practice of Teaching (1883), Thring provided a blueprint for high-quality boarding schools, a broad curriculum and child-centred teaching methods. This is the first modern biography of this multi-faceted and emotionally complex man.

Sujets

• EDUCATION
• History of education
• General officer
• General

Informations

• Publié par: Legend Press
• Date de parution: 01 mai 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781789551426
• Langue: English

Extrait

THRING OF UPPINGHAM
VICTORIAN EDUCATOR
THRING OF UPPINGHAM
VICTORIAN EDUCATOR
Nigel Richardson
The University of Buckingham Press
First published in Great Britain in 2014 by
The University of Buckingham Press
Yeomanry House
Hunter Street
Buckingham MK18 1EG
Nigel Richardson
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the publisher nor may be circulated in any form of binding or cover other than the one in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available at the British Library
ISBN 978-1-908684-0-59
In memory of Cormac Rigby 1939-2007
If children are precious,
and human lives not to be bought and sold,
and to educate well requires all the knowledge of the trained intellect,
all a good man s patience and a brave man s heart,
believe and act on this belief.
Edward Thring, Education and School (1864)
An archbishop was once asked:
What kind of man was Edward Thring?
The archbishop was about to poke the fire.
He paused, and holding out the poker, said:
Why, he was this kind of man: if he were poking a fire,
he would make you believe that the one thing worth living for
was to know how to poke a fire properly.
From Parkin, G R (ed.), Edward Thring, Headmaster of Uppingham School: Life, Diary and Letters (1898)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
AUTHOR S NOTES
THE THRING FAMILY TREE
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER ONE
ALFORD, ILMINSTER AND ETON
CHAPTER TWO
CAMBRIDGE, GLOUCESTER AND ITALY
CHAPTER THREE
UPPINGHAM 1853: FULL OF HOPE
CHAPTER FOUR
TRUST, MANLINESS AND CONFRONTATION
CHAPTER FIVE
WIDER HORIZONS: NARROWER VISIONS
CHAPTER SIX
HAPPY HOME: CONSTANT STRUGGLE
CHAPTER SEVEN
EDUCATION AND SCHOOL
CHAPTER EIGHT
COMMISSION AND CONFERENCE
CHAPTER NINE
UPPINGHAM S NEW SCHEME
CHAPTER TEN
PRIME OF LIFE
CHAPTER ELEVEN
COLLEAGUE AND MENTOR
CHAPTER TWELVE
BEN PLACE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
PROBLEMS OF SUCCESS
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
TYPHOID
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
BORTH
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHILDREN OF GOD
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
ELDER STATESMAN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
REACHING OUT
CHAPTER NINETEEN
A LIFE OF LETTERS
CHAPTER TWENTY
CELEBRITY AND ANXIETY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
FINAL YEAR
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
RECKONING
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
LEGACY
APPENDIX 1
TIMELINE
APPENDIX 2
HOUSEMASTERS AND THEIR HOUSES DURING THRING S TIME
THRING S PRINTED WORKS
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
ILLUSTRATIONS - 2
ILLUSTRATIONS - 3
ILLUSTRATIONS - 4
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book grew out of a Ph.D. thesis and monograph on Uppingham s typhoid outbreak (1875-7), completed in 2007. I am grateful to many former colleagues and others for their help as it has evolved over the years.
Geoffrey Frowde and the late Bryan Matthews first encouraged me to contemplate it. When it began to take shape five years ago, Stuart Proffitt OU helped me to structure the proposal for its publisher. At Uppingham School Richard Harman (headmaster) and Stephen Taylor (bursar), have given me both moral and practical support.
Three people have given me particular support in bringing this project to fruition. Malcolm Tozer s Ph.D. thesis Manliness: The Evolution of a Victorian Ideal , his book Physical Education at Thring s Uppingham (1976) and his journal articles helped me a great deal. He has been a generous-spirited critic: unstinting with his time in commenting on my first draft; setting the record straight on Thring s views on games and philathleticism, and increasing my knowledge of Thring s curriculum and his preaching. No one could have been more patient and accommodating than Jerry Rudman, the Uppingham School archivist, who played the major role in assembling the illustrations. I have also been highly fortunate in having Christopher Woodhead, of the University of Buckingham Press, as an expert, calm and ever-encouraging editor and mentor.
I am also very grateful to the following: John Thring (descended from Godfrey Thring) and Sue Kalaugher (descended from Charles Thring) over family matters; Sally Rotheray (Ben Place, Ambleside) in my pursuit of the Thrings in the Lake District; Peter Attenborough, David Fotheringham (Highgate School) and Stephen Kern (the Perse School, Cambridge) for advice on classical issues; John Hodgkinson in connection with his ancestor; Peter Colville for perspectives on Uppingham since 1945; Sarah and the late Colin Forsyth for help over local buildings.
There has been valuable advice from further afield: in Canada, from Terry Cook and William Christian with their expertise on Thring s friendship with George Parkin, and Robert Fisher (Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa) who provided information about the Parkin archive; at Glenalmond, from Elaine Mundill in response to my enquiries about John Skrine; at Westminster School, Connecticut, from Douglas Allen as I traced Thring s transatlantic influence; from Christopher Bearman OU who gave me advice on Uppingham s musical significance.
In Cambridge I have been guided by Christine Corton, Peter Cunningham, Kenneth Edwards, Simon Goldhill, Patricia McGuire (King s College archivist), Anne Thomson (Newnham College archivist) and the ever-helpful staff at the Cambridge University Library. Other sources of advice have included: at Eton, Penny Hatfield (archivist); at the University of Buckingham, John Clarke; at the London University Institute of Education, Gary McCulloch; at HMC, successive general secretaries Vivian Anthony, Geoff Lucas and William Richardson, and chairman Tim Hands. I have been fortunate in the patience of staff in record offices in Aberystwyth, Gloucester, Leicester, Northampton and Taunton. Karen Gibson helped me in the early stages by scanning key documents.
I owe particular debts of gratitude too to the late Cormac Rigby, for reasons explained in the introduction, and to my wife, Joy Richardson, who helped me to transcribe many of the documents in the Parkin archive in Ottawa; to assess Thring s legacy to the education of primary-age children, and to refine my text in its later stages. For much of her thirteen-year period as a member of a body which caused Thring so much difficulty, the trustees of Uppingham School, she has also had to live vicariously with Thring and his family.
Nigel Richardson
Harston, Cambridge,
February 2014
AUTHOR S NOTES
Footnotes and sources
Footnotes are explanations of the text rather than a detailed guide to sources. A select bibliography appears at the end of the book. The Uppingham School archive also holds a working draft of the text, annotated with much more extensive footnotes and sources.
Financial figures
For ease of reading, many of the figures quoted are approximate, or are expressed as percentages rather than in numbers of s.
English coinage in Thring s time was divided into pounds ( ), shillings (s) and pence (d): there were 20 shillings to the pound and 12 pence to the shilling - expressed as (e.g.) 12.4s.8d.
Comparing the prices and wages of 130 years ago with those of today is much more complex than it might seem. Price rises vary so much from item to item that attempts to make overall comparisons are almost meaningless. Nevertheless it may be helpful to assume that 1 in Thring s time equates very approximately to between 90 and 100 at today s values (based on figures produced by the Office for National Statistics).
It is also hard even to compare figures between different years within Thring s own time because of incomplete documentation; his frequent shifts of ground about how costs should be categorised, and changes made to various fees and charges - especially during his final decade.
Uppingham: governors and trustees
Thring s employers were known as governors at the time of his arrival in Uppingham, and remained so until the New Scheme for the school was introduced in the early 1870s, at which point they became known trustees . I have designated them accordingly.
Distances
A kilometre is approximately five-eighths of a British mile. As a rough guide, distances quoted in miles should therefore be doubled in any conversion to kilometres.
THE THRING FAMILY TREE
INTRODUCTION
WHEN Edward Thring died in October 1887 the Pall Mall Gazette described him as a man of striking gifts and singular strength and separateness of character: the ablest and most original educationalist since Arnold; a great schoolmaster and a born leader of men . Twelve years after Arnold left Rugby, and only thirty miles away, in 1853 Thring began his 34 years in Uppingham, a little-known market town in England s East Midlands. There he used his singular strength to transform its small three-hundred-year-old grammar school into a large boarding school with a national reputation.
Arnold is still revered as the most influential headmaster of his day, but for over a century Thring s life and legacy have received little attention beyond his immediate locality. This relative obscurity is surprising. Beyond Uppingham Thring challenged the prevailing educational ideas of the post-Arnold generation, becoming the man who most determined the shape of things to come as he set the tone for many of the new or re-founded schools catering for the sons of the expanding middle class. 1 During the 1860s and 70s he fought local and national government over educational and public health matters and he became the founding father of the Headmasters Conference of leading British independent schools (HMC).
Educator might seem a strange word for Thring but his friends used it to describe him: No one was ever more convinced than Thring that he was an honest educator doing God s work . He used it himself to denote the best typ