Devexity I share your interests and thanks for the link, sounds very interesting
I've been reading about how things were educationally in the nineteenth century and before. Largely it seems Latin and leadership were taught to the bright young people who were going to run the Parliament, Army and Church and needlework and diligence sums and obedience to the rest. School as 'monastery' v school as 'factory' (it doesn't seem that it has moved that far away from being factory- like in the main - even the architecture is similar -from what I can see/read). As on the production line, quality control is essential, so the 'products' are regularly tested and graded to make sure the operation has been successful. Claxton says:
If they are found to be faulty it is usually because they are intrinsically so ' 'low ability' or 'lazy' or, more rarely because the assembly-line worker, the teacher, is found not to be performing their operation properly. Occasionally revised operating instructions are issued centrally, telling the assembly-line worker that new, more efficient methods have been discovered and should be implemented - 'synthetic phonics' or the 'three part lesson' for example.
The work force itself cannot be entirely trusted to be effective and responsible, so every so often external, national forms of quality control are imposed and teams of inspectors visit the production line to make sure everything is being carried out as ordered. If not, the teacher technicians are told to pull their socks up, and in the last resort the management can be sacked and replaced. Though many of the operatives see themselves and their students in quite different terms.
As in the factory, the teacher-workers are supposed to be punctual, meticulous, and respectful of authority - and these qualities are also expected to be cultivated in the student-products. As they get nearer the end of the process, the students are encouraged to think, within reason, about what they are learning. Those who attend grammar school factories are allowed to think about what they were doing a bit more than those whose basic mental material is presumed to be lower quality, and who were sorted out and sent to less prestigious factories. Quality control requires considerable numbers of students to be graded as 'seconds' and 'rejects', but recently it has been thought that the workers shouldn't use that language for fear of damaging students self esteem so confusing forms of language have been developed that mask the continuing quality control operation.
A slightly different version of this assembly line metaphor would describe teachers as 'managers' and students as 'workers'. The classroom is a 'work-place' where students do 'work' which they sometimes have to continue or elaborate as 'homework'. They are told to 'get on with their work' and asked how their 'work' is coming on. As in a factory, work involves the completion of a task or the creation of a product that passes 'quality control'. If you continually produce such work you are classified as a 'good worker'.
The point is not to think about what you are doing, or develop any particular ability or understanding from doing it but the point is to get the job done and complete the work satisfactorily.
(I could go on but I'll spare you) Claxton is very interesting in his analogies. I think things have improved since he wrote this and his tone is deliberately amusing .
I am very curious to see what Maria Edgeworth 'valued' and suggested.
Joseph Payne in 1856 had some revolutionary ideas that children should be taught the arts of 'perception, reflection, judgment, ..reasoning'. They should be taught 'thinking' skills.
This went against the grain with the more prevalent Gradgrind type of education/views of time.
Payne criticised the educational reforms of 1862 and apparently his views chimed with those that criticised the National Curriculum in 2008:
We need no hesitation in pronouncing it to be mechanical in conception, mechanical in means, mechanical in results.
You can compare what Payne was driving at to what Harvard educationalist Ron Ritchart said in 2002:
We've come to mistake curricula, textbooks, standards, objectives, and tests as ends in themselves, rather than as a means to an end. Where are these standards and objectives taking us? What is the vision they are pointing towards? What purpose do they serve? What ideals guide us? Without ideals, we have nothing to aim for. Unlike standards, ideals can't be tested. But they can do something that standards cannot: they can motivate, inspire and direct our work.
(as quoted in Guy Claxton's book What's The Point of School).
Sorry if I derail thread a bit off to look at 'Practical Education'.