Lit Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Lit - Essay Example In the early days, those schools not attached to a church were primarily intended for the sons of nobility as a means of preparing them for future leadership and, by the seventeenth century, many schools had opened that were supported by private foundations with positions being offered to the poor. The earlier schools catered to specific social classes, frequently requiring students to live within the grounds during the instructional period and sometimes functioning as full-service orphanages. Schools were structured to admit both boys and girls, only boys or only girls depending upon the proprietor and the method of instruction was also left to the discretion of the proprietor. There was widespread concern, however, that educating the masses would lead to large-scale uprisings, so these early attempts at the formation of a national education system began to fade replaced by trade schools, apprenticeships and a general apathy on the parts of the wealthy and the poor alike regarding f ormal education. By the early nineteenth century, the period classified as the Georgian period, curriculum at these schools had been mostly structured to provide appropriate instruction for the particular social class to which it catered (Gillard, 2004). Although this was almost universally true, there was no national curriculum, no standardized block of subjects to be taught and methods of instruction varied as widely as the reputations of said schools. This lack of a formalized national curriculum or even basic curriculum guidelines made it easier for the other form of education system in England to flourish as well. Those families who could afford it often hired governesses for daughters or tutors for sons to instruct their children upon the family grounds, instructing the children in those subjects the family felt important and the educator was qualified to teach. These qualifications were