Charity school

“ These schools are part of the general charity founded by Lady Elizabeth Hastings by deed 14 December, 1738. In a charity school for boys 20 scholars were to be taught and one youth between the ages of 17 and 23 as a charity school-master. The girls' school was for 20 scholars, who were to be clothed partly out of the proceeds of their spinning. The boys' school is now public and elementary, while the girls' school gives a free education in elementary subjects and household duties. ”

“ The Importance of Philanthropic Education.—Many other types of charity school arose during the eighteenth century both in Great Britain and America, but the chief movements have been described, and sufficient has been said to indicate the important part in education played by philanthropy. The moral, religious, Purpose, and economic condition of the lower classes had been sadly neglected, and by means of endowment, subscription, or organized societies, a series of attempts was made to relieve and elevate the masses through education. ”

“ The Charity-School idea was in a sense an application of the joint-stock-company principle to the organization and maintenance of an extensive system of schools for the education of the children of the poor, the stock being subscribed for by humanitarian- minded people. ”

“ I have elsewhere estimated that, allowing a considerable margin for overlapping between the endowment movement and the charity school movement, there were over 2,500 schools of all classes founded in England and Wales between 1660 and 1730, that over one hundred schools received supplementary endowments and that 650 unattached educational charities were created. These schools supplied the poor with such education as was to be had in the eighteenth century—the education given was ineffective enough, but it was at any rate better than nothing. ”

“ In the West Side School, as in most of the others, the dinners are furnished by some one or more practical philanthropists, whose pockets as well as their hearts are in the work. The schools themselves, like the Society’s lodging-houses for homeless children, stand as lasting monuments to a Christian charity that asks no other reward than the consciousness of having done good where the need was great. Sometimes the very name of the generous giver is unknown to all the world save the men who built as he or she directed. ”

“ At the date of the report of 1810, to which I have frequently alluded, the property of the charity consisted of the school premises, occupying an important site in the main road, two sums of South Sea stock, amounting to £2,275 and £925 each, the Royal bounty, five-eighths of the rent of the “Goat” public-house, and the rent of the land at Acton given by Dr. Millington. And the committee recommended that some children be boarded and longed as well as educated, and that more be educated, and that the title be changed from “Charity School” to that of “Free School.” ”

“ The charity-school movement had obtained a strong hold upon the public mind early in the past century; but although I have sought for the name of Blake through many books professing to give an account of the early history of such institutions, I have not yet met with the slightest allusion to him, his school, or his Silver Drops.
The superficial inquirer into the history of English charity-schools will be told that the honour of the first erecting such, and caring for destitute children, is popularly considered due to the parishes of St. ”

“ Instead of new homes of charity, let us organize to end the need for charity. Instead of building one new school, the true educator will ally himself with those forces that seek, through public action, to place education within the reach of all. ”

“ Certainly the College for Working Men and Women was founded by men of his school, and has grown and now flourishes exceedingly, and is a monument of voluntary effort sustained, passing from hand to hand, continually growing, and always bringing together more and more closely those who teach and those who are taught. Cheque-charity may harden the heart of him who gives, and pauperize him who takes. That charity which is personal can neither harden nor pauperize. ”

“ In the same way, the first attempts at providing a general education for the poor had been made by Archbishop Tenison, who founded a parochial school about 1680 in order 'to check the growth of popery.' Charity schools became common during the early part of the eighteenth century and received various endowments. ”

“ Society for promoting Christian Knowledge; which when he had communicated to them they put into Print, and sent it to the Directors of the 1764 Schools; (if I have not miscounted) that so a greater Proportion of Girls might be taken into them to receive a religious Education for the sake of their Posterity, and therein for the more effectual answering the very End of their Charity Schools. ”

“ A register of all those that deal with the children especially, as compiled by the Charity Organization Society, will be found in an appendix to this book. Before we proceed to look at the results achieved through endeavors to stop the waste down at the bottom by private reinforcement of the public school, we will glance briefly at two of the charities that have a plainer purpose—if I may so put it without disparagement to the rest—that look upon the child merely as a child worth saving for its own sake, because it is helpless and poor and wretched. ”

“ Students are at times sent to the school for instruction with a request for aid from some charitable institution, church, hospital, school, or settlement which knows and is interested in the family; but, in general, a girl needing financial help comes without such recommendations, and consequently a more thorough investigation of the case is necessary. Inquiry is always made at first of the Charity Organization Society, in order to learn whether her family has received or is receiving other relief. ”

“ Girls who come out of charity-schools, where they have been employed in knitting, sewing, and reading, are not sufficiently prepared for hard or laborious employments. I do not in general approve of teaching charity children to write, for the same reason. I confine within very strict limits my plan of educating the poor. A thorough knowledge of religion, and of some of those coarser arts of life by which the community may be best benefitted, includes the whole stock of instruction, which, unless in very extraordinary cases, I would wish to bestow. ”

“ The church has already been the pioneer in such work. In cities where kindergartens are now a part of the public school system, the first free kindergartens were supported by the churches, and large charities, now secularized, were supported by {176} churches until they had passed the stage of experiment. ”

“ And that the Blessing of many of our American Heathens, who shall in the present and succeeding Generations, reap the Benefit thereof, may come upon them: And that others understanding that this School stills lives, under GOD, upon the Charity of good Men, will be moved to open their Hands to minister further, and necessary Supplies for it. ”

“ This fund, then, is destined for the support of the orphans of such artists and for their education. No one particular school is to be set apart for education. The guardians of the children will be allowed to select the schools to which they shall go and no restrictions of any kind will be imposed upon them with respect to religion. I may add that the first idea of this fund came from a gentleman who offered to place a certain number of candidates in two schools which he himself established, and that he has since given to the charity the [Pg 113] munificent donation of £900. ”

“ Like the majority of so-called charity schools, this foundation was for many generations so managed that the funds went into almost any channel except the purpose for which it was designed—the free education of the poor—and even now it would be an interesting question to find out how many boys are receiving the advantages thereof whose parents are well able to pay for their learning elsewhere. ”

“ We are establishing schools of philanthropy in the modern time and we talk much about the organization of charity and other phases of mutual aid. In this as in everything else we map out, as George Eliot once said, our ignorance of things, or at least our gropings after solutions of problems, in long Greek names, which often serve to produce the idea that we know ever so much more about these subjects than we really do. The training in brotherly love and helpfulness in the old gilds was a fine school. ”

“ This case clearly shows, that, at the present day, a school, founded by a charity, for the instruction of children, cannot be sanctioned by the courts as a charity, unless the scheme of education includes religious instruction. ”

“ It begins at home, with anxiety for one's own soul first, and the souls of one's children next. Charities give way to doles; doles are succeeded by almshouses; these again by charity schools. The present generation has begun to understand that the truest charity consists in throwing open the doors to honest effort, and in helping those who help themselves. Else what is the meaning of technical schools? What else mean the classes at the People's Palace, the Polytechnic, the Evening Recreation Schools, and the City of London Guilds Institute? ”

“ The whole lot of building save the frontage a miserable affair.
“There was no boarding of children in my time. There was free education, but leave was obtained to make a change subject to a small free list being maintained. As to clothing, there was a partial clothing of some children, but as the uniform of charity was distasteful it was dropped, and the saving thereof thrown into the educational fund of the school.
“The question of new schools arose, and what we did was, first, to buy up the house in Church Court next to the police station, and on the site of it build the girls’ schools. ”

“ Another charm that renders charity-schools so bewitching to the multitude, is the general opinion established among them, that they are not only actually beneficial to society as to temporal happiness, but likewise that Christianity enjoys and requires of us, we should erect them for our future welfare. They are earnestly and fervently recommended by the whole body of the clergy, and have more labour and eloquence laid out upon them than any other Christian duty ”

“ As a result, charity schools of many varieties and more or less permanent in character arose in all parts of the British Isles, the United States, and even location, France. In many instances the pupils were furnished course, with lodging, board, and clothes. The curriculum in these institutions was, of course, mostly elementary. It generally included reading, spelling, writing, and arithmetic, while a moral and religious training was given 249 through the Bible, catechism, prayer book, and psalms, and sometimes through attendance at church under supervision of the master. ”

“ For teaching the children to read, though I have ranked it under the latter, equally belongs to both: and without some advantages of the latter sort, poor people would not send their children to our charity-schools; nor could the poorest of all be admitted into any schools, without some charitable provision of clothing. And care is taken, that it be such as cannot but be a restraint upon the children. ”

“ The Charity Schools and the Sunday Schools were the two most conspicuous of the voluntary-organization type of undertakings for providing the poor children of England with the elements of secular and religious education. ”

“ These charity children are coming from church, with the two parish-beadles before them. Several thousands of poor children are taught to read, work, and write, in the different charity-schools of London, and to do their duty to God and to their neighbours; which will enable them to become respectable in this world, and tend to make them happy in the next. ”

“ And as to those who do contribute to these schools; they are so far from being more sparing in their relief of other objects, than they were before, that the poor widows, the aged and the impotent do plainly receive more relief from them, in proportion to their numbers and abilities, than from any the same numbers of men under the same circumstances of fortune, who do not concern themselves with charity schools, in any respect, but in condemning and decrying them. ”

“ What a different spectacle we should soon witness in our colleges were gentlemen of means to show their zeal for education, and follow the wholesome example of Protestants by bestowing upon our seats of learning a portion of their wealth! Progress would then be possible, college bills could be lightened entirely or at least partially, gratuitous education might be granted to deserving young men. As things now stand, charity is out of the question for most of our colleges. We must endeavor to beget and promote in our people this enlightened and patriotic spirit toward our colleges. ”

“ It is not a charity, for it has not that which gives to a charity for education its chief value. It will, therefore, soothe the heart of no Christian parent, dying in poverty and distress, that those who owe to him their being may be led, and fed, and clothed by Mr. Girard's bounty, at the expense of being excluded from all the means of religious instruction afforded to other children, and shut up through the most interesting period of their lives in a seminary without religion, and with moral sentiments as cold as its own marble walls. ”

“ It fastens a stigma on the child to hinder and curse it for life. Any institution supported otherwise than by voluntary contribution, or in the hands of paid public officials, can never have the spirit of charity nor be correctly called a charity. ”