School provision was organised on an ad hoc basis during the eighteenth century, and children gained their education in myriad different settings within any given locality, making it difficult to establish a comprehensive picture of the schooling on offer. There are, nonetheless, discernible trends that correspond with the chronology of generational change uncovered in Chapter 1. In the case of boys’ education, existing endowed grammar schools appear to have declined mid-century as a growing number of schools were established on a commercial basis, but the older institutions regained a dominant position in this sector by 1780. At the same time, boarding schools for better-off girls became particularly fashionable from around 1750, before trends seemingly shifted back to home-based education during the later decades of the century. Again, charitable schooling for poorer children waned as the commercial sector expanded, and was then transformed during the 1780s by the emergence of the Sunday school movement. A generational perspective exposes the links between these distinct but interrelated developments, and by focusing attention on teaching methods, rather than the type of educational institution attended, this approach demonstrates fundamental changes in the experiences of schoolchildren.

Unlike the beguiling pre-school primers considered in the last chapter, the eighteenth-century classroom has not generally been associated with either delight or instruction. The conventional assumption has tended to be that early industrialisation in England coincided with a period of educational stagnation, and that a shift towards a more rational and scientific epistemology was all the more remarkable because it occurred despite low standards of schooling. Roy Porter painted a particularly bleak picture of educational provision as he emphasised the role of the autodidact in transforming the intellectual knowledge base of society. Yet this dismissive assessment failed to recognise the impact that such individuals could have upon the educational experiences of the next generation. This is particularly clear in the example Porter used to demonstrate his point: Charles Hutton (1737–1823), the well-known mathematician from Newcastle. Hutton was without doubt a remarkable autodidact, as Porter suggested. He was, however, also a remarkable pedagogue. By the time he turned twenty, in 1757, Hutton was the master of the school he had attended in Jesmond, just outside Newcastle.