Shaping the Day by Glennie Paul; Thrift Nigel; & Nigel Thrift

Author:Glennie, Paul; Thrift, Nigel; & Nigel Thrift
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press USA - OSO
Published: 2009-03-17T16:00:00+00:00

Table 6.11. Teaching hours at boys’ grammar schools

Other seventeenth-century schools set out similar regulations, evincing concern with time and the school day (Table 6.11). Similar specifications were made in rural Shawell, Leicestershire, in 1608 with the foundation of a free school and almshouse by John Elkington’s bequest of 1604. In 1608 John’s brother Edward, the remaining executor, drew up detailed Orders governing the school, which with John Elkington’s will were copied into the Shawell churchwardens’ book. Fifteen Orders covered both academic matters (Grammar scholars must speak Latin) and day-to-day matters (scheduling punishments for breaking school windows, or infringements in prayer or punctuality), beginning with school-hours:

Imprimis it is ordered of every Schollar … shall be every morning at the school before 6 of the clock in the sum’er & 7 of the clock in the winter & There shall reverently uppon their knees use such prayers as are agreeable to the word of god & the Lawes of this Relm befor the School begins as the Schoolm’tr shall approve & prayers likewise evry evening at 5 of the clock in the winter & 6 in sum’er before their departure. 58

Late seventeenth-century Carlisle Cathedral’s Free Grammar School had over forty detailed regulations. 59 The 16th rule required every scholar residing within Carlisle to:

come diligently and constantly to school at 6 a clock in the morning, when the bell rings during the whole summer … from Shrovetide till Michaelmas; and at 7 a clock from Michaelmas till Shrovetide. And not depart from or leave school till 6 a clock at night, either summer or winter, except the master shall think fit.

Rule 17 gave the master discretion over school-hours for boys from outside Carlisle, before rule 18 returned to the daily schedule:

every scholar having said his Morning Part, shall have leave to go to Breakfast at 8 a clock and to stay till 9. And that from 9 they continue till 12 a clock exactly, or near to it, when they are to be dismissed to Dinner. That at one a clock all again shall repair to school and remain there studiously and orderly till six a clock.

Further rules spelled out refinements (attendance at school was not required until 8 o’clock on Ash Wednesday), defined term dates, and required the usher to ‘shut up the school at night punctually and constantly’ besides teaching arithmetic, geography, surveying, gauging, and navigation. These subjects were often an usher’s particular responsibility. Some ushers were clearly extremely capable—Samuel Foster rose from school usher in his home town of Coventry in the 1640s to become Gresham College Professor of Mathematics (Barbor, 1982: 114).

Descriptive accounts of schools closely echo the normative regulations, suggesting that pupils broadly experienced the school-days described in regulations. Tamworth Grammar School was described in 1693 by the tutor who accompanied George Hastings, heir to the Earl of Huntingdon, from 1690 to 1692 at Eton, and then at Tamworth for one year, before proceeding to Wadham College, Oxford. The move to Tamworth apparently agreed with the fifteen-year-old Hastings

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.