A MORAL AND INTELLECTUAL DECLINE?

The allegation that industrial development was undermining the physical condition of the population was worrying enough for notables during the mid-nineteenth century, not least because it implied a threat to the military strength of the country. The possibility that there was also a moral and intellectual decline under way was if anything more disturbing. In their minds, moral corruption and the politics of their opponents were inextricably linked. The great fear was that a deterioration in the general education of the classes populaires would prepare the ground for some kind of social and political revolution. Time and again reformers of various political hues argued that industrial society was prising away working-class children from established institutions, such as the family, the Church, the school and the apprenticeship system, only to thrust them into the unsavoury atmosphere of the factory and the slum. Deprived of ‘wise counsels’, the gamins of the city were exposed to all manner of debauchery and political extremism – or so the argument ran. Sorting out fact from fantasy in all this is not easy. Accusations of declining moral standards amongst the young are far from specific to the 1830s and 1840s. Nonetheless, it is possible to discern a number of changes, if not an overall decline, affecting the various strands of the popular education in the towns during the early nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]