1. Dictionary of National Biography, 9 (1917): 967. All biographical information is taken from this source.Google Scholar

2. See, for example, Soffer, Reba N., Ethics and Society in England: The Revolution in the Social Sciences, 1870–1914 (Berkeley, Calif., 1978); Abrams, Philip, Origins of British Sociology 1834–1914: An Essay with Selected Papers (Chicago, 1968); Haskell, Thomas L., The Emergence of Professional Social Science: The American Social Science Association and the Nineteenth-Century Crisis of Authority (Urbana, Ill., 1977). Both the Social Science Association and Hodgson himself call for further study; there are signs of new interest in the former.Google Scholar

3. The 1868 London edition provides the text reprinted here. The British Library kindly supplied me with a photocopy. I acknowledge their assistance as well as that of the interlibrary loan librarian, Gibb, Isobel, at the Ontario Institute tor Studies in Education.Google Scholar

4. Scribner, Sylvia and Cole, Michael, The Psychology of Literacy (Cambridge, Mass., 1981). For an elaboration on this point, see Graff, Harvey J., The Legacies of Literacy: Continuities and Contradictions in Western Society and Culture (Bloomington, Ind., 1986), Introduction; for précis, see idem, “The Legacies of Literacy,” Journal of Communication 32 (Winter 1982): 12–26; idem, The Literacy Myth: Literacy and Social Structure in the Nineteenth-Century City (New York, 1979). The Literacy Myth sets the trans-Atlantic context, see esp. chs. 1, 7. These views should be contrasted with the more normative approaches of, especially, Marshall McLuhan, Jack Goody and Ian Watt, G.H. Bantock, Daniel Lerner, Alex Inkeles, among others.Google Scholar

1. “A Maiden Session.—At the Salisbury Quarter Sessions, just held, there was not a single prisoner for trial. The Mayor of the city (Mr. S. Eldridge) had therefore the pleasing duty of presenting the Recorder (Mr. J. D. Chambers), the clerk of the peace, and the governor of the gaol with pair of white kid gloves each, according to custom on occasions of this sort. The Recorder, in addressing the grand jury, said that he had read the other day in The Times that Wiltshire was one of the best educated counties in England, and it was highly satisfactory to learn therefore that the decrease of crime had been in proportion to the spread of education” (!)—Times, 2nd Jan., 1868.Google Scholar

2. “Although the perusal of such works must, in strictness of speech, be denominated reading, yet, so far as the cultivation of mind is concerned, it is little else than the sheer act of deciphering so much letter press, without the acquisition of a single new idea that can at all conduce towards improvement.”—Rev. Thos. Price, “Tour in Brittany, Literary Remains,” 1854, vol. 1, p. 81. “No doubt the power of reading is a key to the whole literature of England. But in the hands of persons ignorant how to use it, a key is of little use.”—Saturday Review, 4th Jan., 1868, p. 20. In the very same article the writer says:— “What is wanted is that every child should be able to read and write fairly before he goes to work; that he should be enabled to turn this knowledge to more intellectual account while he is at work; and that, in cases where his parents' means, or his own industry, can defray the cost, he should be further enabled to perfect himself in the various branches of study which have a bearing, general or special, on his professional occupation.” It is too obvious that the reviewer does not expect the child to turn the ability to read and write to any “intellectual account” during the school period!.Google Scholar

3. “The imperfect instruction given to the children in factories, under the half-time system, is retained by them during a year or two at most, when it is forgotten, and many intelligent young overlookers are unable to keep correctly the simple accounts which should form a part of the duties of their position.”—Mr. Samuelson, M.P. (speaking of Bradford, Yorkshire).Google Scholar

4. “Why are the people who notice what comes before them to be marked by a separating name, and called naturalists? Why are we ashamed of a failure in what comes to us through books and the costly instrumentality of masters and teachers? Why do we blush at any flagrant slip in history, or science, or language, and keep cool and easy under any extravagance of error in what nature, through our own observation, might teach us.”—Saturday Review, 28th July, 1863. Article on “Ignorance.” Yet Canon Moseley, who is deservedly an authority in education, would keep out of schools (not merely elementary schools) all “the sciences of observation,” specially so called. At Clifton College, on 30th July, 1867, he is reported to have said:—“The subjects of human knowledge, which claimed to be considered and taught in our schools, might be divided into four groups. First of all,” (why ‘first?’) “there were the languages and the subjects allied to them; secondly, the pure mathematical sciences, which were pursued in the exercise of pure thought and rested upon abstractions; thirdly, the sciences of experiment, including physics and chemistry; and fourthly, the great sciences of observation, such as natural history and the like. He thought they might put the last out of consideration, as they had had quite enough to do with the three others.” In like manner, I once heard it contended that any new poetry is superfluous, because there is more poetry already written than any human being can possibly read! In like manner, it has been urged that the discovery of new planets is absurd, because we have as many already as we well know what to do with! But, perhaps, we ought less to regret that the subjects in the fourth class are thus shut out, than rejoice that those in the third are admitted. Too often both classes are still visited with the same arbitrary sentence of exclusion, and on the same ground, that there is quite enough to do without them! It is not very long since subjects of even the second class ceased to be regarded as unlicensed intruders on the traditional monopoly of the first.Google Scholar

5. “To the three reasons given in the text a fourth may well be added. Society is, not without reason, more and more alarmed by the rapid increase of outrages which threaten its very existence. “Education” is hailed as the sure if slow, remedy. The adult ruffian is probably beyond its influence, but the embryo garotter may be tamed if only he can be taught to spell “gallows;” and on the juvenile pickpocket a course of alphabet, with exercise in pothooks and hangers, may have a salutary effect, deterrent or emollient! By all means let trial be made. Its failure will open the eyes of many to the need of something better, though it may also lead many to say, “Education has been tried, and tried in vain.”Google Scholar

6. “Coleridge, when he predicted that the effect of popularizing knowledge would be to plebify it, erred in his vision of the future, as many seers have done before and since. He uttered that prediction on the assumption that knowledge, in its higher portions, was confined to the regions of theology and psychology; and he overlooked the fact that, in proportion as these branches of knowledge have been cultivated by the few, ignorance has prevailed among the many. He failed to observe that, if thousands rushed to Abelard's lecture room, millions outside of it were immersed in the grossest superstition.”—Saturday Review, 26th Oct., 1867, p. 544.Google Scholar

7. “As Sir R. Palmer reminded his audience, the line between ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ is purely conventional. ‘All knowledge, all instruction, in whatever is honest and of good report, is essentially religious.’ Dogmatic theology concerns itself with creeds; but religion has to do with common life; and its sphere, though not identical, is co-extensive with that of education. The clergyman and the schoolmaster arc inevitably working together, whether they are working in concert or not.”—Times, 2nd Nov., 1866.Google Scholar