ІСТОРІЯ. Загальна історія

Шинкар А.

Науковий керівник: асистент кафедри іноземних мов

Анісімова Світлана Анатолїївна

Донецький національний університет економіки і торгівлі імені

Михайла Туган - Барановського, Україна

History of education in England

Ever since the existence of man the teaching and learning process has been an integral part of human experience. The communication of knowledge and practical skills has always been essential to the development of individuals, groups and wider communities. If this is true of the most primitive of communities it is all the more so in today's complex society where personal fulfillment depends to a large extent on one's social role which is often a direct result of acquired knowledge and the ability to make the most of it. The ability to develop one's critical sense, the ability to analyze, to see how things and persons relate are all skills that are the result of education.

The earliest known schools in England date from the late sixth century. The conscious object of these early schools, attached to cathedrals and to monasteries, was to train intending priests and monks to conduct and understand the services of the Church and to read the Bible and the writings of the Christian Fathers.

Two types of school grew up (often connected): the grammar school, to teach Latin, and the song school (which some cathedrals still have today), where the 'sons of gentlefolk' were educated and trained to sing in cathedral choirs.

The following two centuries saw a significant expansion in educational provision. In the 12th century more cathedral schools opened and by the beginning of the 13th universities were beginning to develop. In Oxford, students began to form groups which would soon become the earliest colleges - University College was established in 1249, Balliol in 1260 and Merton in 1264. These early colleges were founded by bishops and catered exclusively for wealthy graduates.

There were changes in the school curriculum. For younger pupils rhetoric became as important as grammar, while for older students the increasing availability of Aristotle's works led to a greater emphasis on logic. Perhaps most importantly, while education was still seen as a Christian enterprise, the concept of a liberal education - a preparation for the specialised study of law, medicine, or theology - began to develop.

Тhere is a legend that Oxford University was founded by King Alfred in 872. A more likely scenario is that it grew out of efforts begun by Alfred to encourage education and establish schools throughout his territory. There may have been a grammar school there in the 9th century. A grammar school was exactly what it sounds like; a place for teaching Latin grammar. The University as we know it actually began in the 12th century as gatherings of students around popular masters. The university consisted of people, not buildings. The buildings came later as a recognition of something that already existed. In a way, Oxford was never founded; it grew. Cambridge University was founded by students fleeing from Oxford after one of the many episodes of violence between the university and the town of Oxford.

In the 17th and 18th centuries there were important developments in educational theory and the school curriculum began to take on a form we would recognize today.

The modern concept of a common education emerged in Europe after the Reformation amid quarrels between learned groups of Protestants, and between the Protestants and the established monastic orders.

Comenius (1592-1670), a Czech teacher, scientist, educator and writer, was one of the earliest champions of universal education, a concept he developed in his 1632 book Didactica magna. He argued that teachers and learners should leave the divisive sects and unite in common institutions of learning.

Meanwhile, the older grammar schools divided themselves roughly into three groups in this period:

· the nine leading schools, seven of them boarding institutions, maintained the traditional curriculum of the classics and mostly served 'the aristocracy and the squirearchy) on a national basis;

· most of the endowed grammar schools served their immediate localities and had a reasonably broad social base, but they, too, stuck mainly to the old curriculum;

· the grammar schools which changed most significantly were those situated in the larger cities, serving the families of merchants and tradesmen. During the 18th century their social base widened and their curriculum developed, particularly in mathematics and the natural sciences.

By the 18th century, then, the curriculum was beginning to take on its modern form, with the addition of mathematics, geography, modern languages, and, crucially, the physical sciences.

Across Europe and the USA systems of publicly financed elementary schools had been rapidly developed in the second half of 19th century, providing educated personnel for the new industries. Now, at the turn of the century, the USA was beginning to open common secondary high schools as well, and many European schools were giving priority to engineering and science, subjects 'conspicuously downgraded in England's classical model of education, the one preferred by gentlemen.

So the development of a national public system of education in England and Wales was lagging behind much of Europe and the USA 'by a good half a century' (Green 1990:6 quoted in Benn and Chitty 1996:4), and it was against this background that the Conservative government of Arthur Balfour presented its 1902 education bill to the Commons.