AMERICAN INFLUENCE ON THE MOVEMENT FOR A NATIONAL SYSTEM OF ELEMENTARY EDUCATION IN ENGLAND AND WALES, 1830-1870.

The article discusses the American influence on the movement for a national system of elementary education in England and Wales during 1830-1870. In 1826 it was enacted in Massachusetts that the school committee shall never direct to be purchased or used, in any of the town schools, any school books which are calculated to favour the tenets of any particular sect of Christians. It was legally permissible until 1855 for there to be no religious teaching whatever and this freedom was very similar to that permitted to Board schools under the Cowper-Temple clause of the Elementary Education Act of 1870. However, until a Board of Education was established in Massachusetts in 1837 there were serious defects in the common school system arising from the lack of any supervising Board. Until 1867 political controversy centred about the extension of the franchise, and when a Liberal government came into power with a large majority in November 1868 the main task confronting the government was the pacification of Ireland. The question of national education did not come to the front of the political stage until the autumn of 1867.