‘The Church, as it now stands, no human power can save,’ said a well-informed commentator in 1833. He feared that England should come to the American fashion and have no provision made for the teaching of Christianity at all. ‘When I think of the Church, I could sit down and pine and die.’
Who was this well-informed commentator? None other than Thomas Arnold, the reforming head master of Rugby School from 1828-1841. He found Rugby slack and old-fashioned. He raised the fees, made the chapel central, put his trust in prefects and reformed the curriculum. In appointing a member of staff, he said, ‘What I want is a man who is a Christian and a gentleman, an active man, and one who has common sense und understands boys.’ Arnold aimed to form Christian men ‘for Christian boys I can scarcely hope to make.’ Here is a man delightfully aware of his limitations.
In Germany Arnold learned a critical approach to history. It did not prevent him from appreciating the strength of having an Established Church. In his view this served to introduce the principles of Christianity into man’s social and civil relations. He took a wider view than the common one, saying that it would be appropriate to allow Dissenters (though not Roman Catholics Quakers and Unitarians) to have the use of parish churches at different hours. Another commentator, Dean Stanley, described Arnold as ‘a learned, pious, virtuous person, without five grains of common sense.’
Arnold changed public schools (i.e. fee-paying boarding schools independent of the State). He introduced maths, modern history and modern languages into a stuffy curriculum and turned schools like Rugby into training-grounds for running the Empire rather than centres of bullying idleness. When he told his staff that ‘no parochial ministry could be more properly a cure of souls than yours,’ he was speaking in a context of Victorian prosperity nouveau riche and middle-class aspiration that was to fade with the coming of an educational system designed for all.
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