Samuel Wilderspin and the Infant School Movement

Phillip McCann, Francis A. Young

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138219700
• eBook ISBN: 9781315414676
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Samuel Wilderspin became a household name in his own lifetime. Befriended by Dickens, lampooned by Cruikshank, his achievements discussed in Parliament, he was one of the best known educators of the 1830s and 1840s. However, Wilderspin's consistent opposition to denominational education combined with his liberal and advanced views made him unpopular with the Establishment.

Samuel Wilderspin's fame declined after his retirement in 1847 but his reputation as an infant school educator has survived. Many of his ideas and practices have had a great influence on infant education. In this book, first published in 1982, Wilderspin's own story is placed in the context of this growing movement led by Owen, Buchanan and Oberlin, and it goes a long way towards reinstating him as one of the prominent figures in the early education movement. This title will be of interest to students of history and education.

Chapter 1
Early Influences: Nature and the New Church

Samuel Wilderspin was born on 23 March 1791 in Hornsey, near London, the son of Alexander and Ann Wilderspin.¹ His mother dedicated him, her only child to live, to some special work for humanity.² He was baptised on 10 April 1791 in the Swedenborgian Chapel in Great East Cheap, London. The beautiful cap he wore at the christening was made by his mother, who, according to family tradition, also made his other clothes, except for his shoes, which were made by his father.³

Although baptised in London, Wilderspin spent his infancy in idyllic surroundings in Hornsey along the banks of the New River, its channel now straightened by the hand of man, but then a meandering stream which came down from Hertfordshire to provide London with its principal water supply. On approaching Hornsey the river swung in a wide arc, enclosing the village on three sides with a border of trees and grassy banks which added much to its rural charm. After skirting the old parish church with its ivy-covered tower (the only part of the building still standing today) the river turned southward again, passing east of Hornsey Wood before making its final run to Islington and the reservoirs of Clerkenwell.⁴

This wild and beautiful stretch of the river became Wilderspiri's playground. He recalls that as an only child he was thrown much upon his own resources and thus had to find his principal pleasures in exploring his environment. "I beheld a beautiful world around me, he relates, "full of everything to admire and win attention".⁵ The countryside was indeed a cornucopia of plants and animals, fruits and flowers, rocks and minerals. In addition, his father and mother took a constant and affectionate interest in his welfare and instruction, interpreting his growing world of experience and inspiring, by reference to the book of nature, his first religious thoughts. His mother, he said, taught him that all things came from God, who made heaven and earth as proof of his wonderful existence. Wilderspin disclaimed having a well-formed notion of God at so early an age, but said that he was led through the visible world to recognise an invisible presence which he could feel within but could not see.⁶

While he was still a young child, Wilderspin's parents allowed him to wander freely in the neighbourhood. On the south side of Hornsey, a footpath led to Hornsey Wood and to a network of other pathways, one of which followed closely the course of the New River, making in less than a mile four crossings of the stream. Describing his juvenile excursions, Wilderspin wrote:

The world and the wonders in it formed as it were a heaven to me... In the beautiful fields and wild coppices about Hornsey, as yet unencroached upon by suburban extension; and by the side of the then solitary banks of the New River I was always to be found,.. Small live animals were my constant companions; they taught me that love begets love, I did love and delight in them, and when they died I mourned their loss.⁷

Wilderspin was thus nurtured, like Rousseau's Emile, in the lap of nature, and the care which his parents took in his early instruction and their methods of teaching were enlightened and unorthodox, and may have been influenced by the teachings of the New Church, of which his father was a member.⁸ His mother, he said, in addition to playing childish games with him, was his oracle during the first six years of his life, resolving his difficulties and answering his questions.⁹ His grandmother and other relatives related "simple tales of the Bible", which, he remembered, filled him with delight.¹⁰ There were no set tasks; instead he learned his first lessons from the world of things, his parents waiting until he asked for information and then perfecting his impressions. Only later was the alphabet mastered and spelling, reading and simple arithmetic begun. "My mind being thus previously filled with ideas", he later explained, "the acquirement of words and abstract terms became less irksome and I cannot remember that. ..it cost me any trouble, much less pain".¹¹

Finding learning a delight, the young Wilderspin could not understand why children cried on their way to school. He soon ceased to wonder when he was sent there himself. At his first school, he recalled, he learned nothing, but often had "raps with the cane on the head, across the shoulders, and on the hand.. .for not learning what the teacher had forgotten to teach me". The master and mistress soon became "objects of terror"; the "dislike and pain" he experienced at school, in comparison with his previous happy existence, affected him so much that his parents removed him and resumed their own informal teaching, an enlightened act which involved obligations they did not seek to evade. "My father.. .became my teacher as before", he wrote, "the world being my great book".¹²

Alexander Wilderspin was well fitted for the task. "My father", his son recalled, "always in the evening took great pains to explain things to me; he nurtured but never crammed; he knew when to teach and when to leave alone".¹³ The close relationship which existed between Samuel and his father is evidenced by the son's care in preserving a fragment of his father's handwriting in which the elder Wilderspin, writing to friends, thanked them for their "kindness to my dear and only son Samuel, who is worthy of that endearing name from me, and whom I shall always with love and pleasure acknowledge". Coming across this memento in later life, Wilderspin put it in an envelope which he marked "Sacred to the memory of my Father", dating it "Jan'y. 30, 1860". Below he wrote, "This envelope contains the handwriting of my simple-minded, Christian, humble, yet learned father. I do not know how I came by or possessed of it but, now, to me it is above all price".¹⁴

It is evident from this surviving sample of his handwriting, as well as from his signature on New Church records, that Alexander Wilderspin was a fine penman, much better in fact than his son became, and that he had had some formal schooling. Moreover, he could scarcely have become "a learned man" without a taste for reading and he communicated his love of books to his son. "I was delighted with Robinson Crusoe", Wilderspin recalled, "and this work became my companion, and to which was added the Pilgrim's Progress. After these, my great favourite was Buffon's Natural History". "I used to go alone", he added, "taking a volume at a time to read amongst the pleasant country around, but most frequently in the quiet nooks and retreats of Hornsey Wood". His mother, not unlike Emile's tutor, kept an unobtrusive watch on these excursions "and whenever danger was near she generally appeared, but never otherwise, so that I had perfect freedom in these matters".¹⁵

In these reminiscences, written long after the event, Wilderspin seems to be idealising his childhood and attributing to his parents some of the pedagogical insights he arrived at in later life, but there is no reason to doubt their essential truth. "I have every reason to believe", he concluded, "that the first seven years of my life laid the basis of all I know that is worth knowing and led to the formation of my character and future career in life".¹⁶ A distaste for the formalities of the traditional classroom and an appreciation of the desirability of freedom and activity on the part of the pupil were undoubtedly the legacies of his early childhood, and when he looked back after half a century he was convinced that the roots of his infant system could be traced to these years.¹⁷

This idyllic phase of Wilderspin's childhood came abruptly to an end at the age of seven. "Through very peculiar circumstances", he states, "I was removed from the immediate care and superintendence of both parents.. .and, at an age the most dangerous, was left to grapple nearly alone with the wide world..."¹⁸ Wilderspin's careful wording suggests that it was separation rather than death which was the cause of the break-up of the family, and some evidence survives to support this view. The fragment of Alexander Wilderspin's letter to his friends, which, as we have noted, his son preserved with such care, seems to bear upon the episode. After referring to his "dear and only son", Alexander complains of his wife's temper and ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Early Influences: Nature and the New Church
• Chapter 2: Spitalfields Infant School
• Chapter 3: The English Infant School: Buchanan and Owen
• Chapter 4: The English Infant School: Swedenborg and Pestalozzi
• Chapter 5: The Infant School Society
• Chapter 6: Educational Missionary: New Schools and Old
• Chapter 7: Wilderspin in Scotland
• Chapter 8: A National and International Reputation
• Chapter 9: Theory and Practice
• Chapter 10: The Infant School Movement in the 1830s: Crisis
• Chapter 11: The Infant School Movement: New Directions
• Chapter 12: The Liverpool Corporation Schools 1836-1837
• Chapter 13: National Education: Wilderspin versus the Evangelicals
• Chapter 14: The Dublin Model Schools 1837-1839
• Chapter 15: Years of Adversity
• Chapter 16: An Active Retirement
• Appendices
• Bibliography
• Index