Michael Ernest Sadler

“ Rooper's official work began while the elementary schools were still cramped by the narrow traditions of formal training, and by the effects of the system of 'payment by results.' He was one of the inspectors who breathed a new spirit into the methods of English elementary education. Always exacting a high standard, he rose above formalism and routine. He threw himself into every movement likely to interest teachers in their profession and to humanise their work.
Rooper died unmarried at Southampton on 20 May 1903, from spinal tuberculosis, and was buried in the old cemetery there. ”

“ Moral training, ‘practised not by preaching and as little as possible by punishment, but mainly by example and by atmosphere,’ he held to be of supreme importance, and its primary purpose to be ‘an intellectual clearing and purifying of the moral sense.’ To physical training (including play, gymnastics, singing, and handwork) he attached importance only less than that which was assigned to moral culture. ”

“ Both in the West Riding and in Southampton and the Isle of Wight he initiated classes for ex-pupil teachers, which met an urgent local need, and were subsequently taken over by the local education authorities. In the movement for the improvement of the curriculum of rural schools, Rooper played an unobtrusive but highly influential part. He was unsparing in his attendance at meetings held to advance the cause of rural education, and by the establishment of a school garden at Boscombe provided a model for imitation in other parts of England. ”