Adamson, John William. English
Education, 1789-1902 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964; first
published 1930).
Among several other mentions of Kingsley, Adamson refers to his advocacy of
improved educational opportunities for women.
Females ; Education
; Muscular
Christianity
Archer, Richard Lawrence. Secondary
Education in the Nineteenth Century (London: Cass, 1966).
Archer discusses the educational thought and practice of Kingsley and their
subsequent influence on British education. He stresses the connection
for Kingsley between religion and education; both served the same end.
Moreover, science in the curriculum was essential and was in no respect against
the teaching of religion. His ideal of mens sana in corpore sano
went hand in hand with his espousal of muscular Christianity. He detested
“the identification of bodily feebleness with spiritual strength” (200).
Archer also examines Kingsley’s important role in the sanitary movement and
his work in having hygienic instruction in schools.
Education
; Muscular
Christianity ; Sanitation
; Science
.
Avery, Gillian (with the assistance of Angela
Bull). Nineteenth Century Children: Heroes and Heroines in English Children’s
Stories 1780-1900 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1965).
Though Kingsley in real life did not like the punishing of children, believing
that misbehavior often has a physical cause and that punishment can undermine
a child’s relationship with his parents, punishment is a major theme in The
Water-Babies. Avery declares that Kingsley wishes to point the
moral that punishment is the natural consequence of sin. She also states
that education is the primary purpose of The Water-Babies, “the education
of the child to become the honest English gentleman that was Kingsley’s ideal”
(49). Holding that education and teaching are quite distinct, Kingsley
depicts Tom’s trials and subsequent learning and the final attainment of
grace as constituting his true education.
The Water-Babies
; Punishment
; Children
; Education
.
Barnard, H. C. A History of English
Education From 1760. 2nd ed. (First published 1947) (London:
University of London Press, 1961).
Barnard provides a very brief overview of Kingsley the educationist.
He declares that Kingsley was a strong advocate of science in the school curriculum
and held that it complemented the study of religion. Moreover, he was
a firm believer that a knowledge of science was essential for progress in
the hygienic and sanitary reform movement.
Education
; Sanitation
.
Brock, W. H. "Glaucus: Kingsley
and the Seaside Naturalists," Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens Vol.
3 (1976): 25-36.
Brock examines Kingsley the seaside naturalist, placing him in the context
of the contemporary scientific community. Though much of his work,
for example Glaucus, was derivative and popular in nature, he was
a good amateur naturalist. For two thirds of the century there were
few professional natural historians. Brock sees one of Kingsley's most
significant contributions to science being his advocacy for increased science
education and his desire that it be a suitable occupation for all social
classes. Science might prove an appropriate entrée for advancement
into higher society for an individual barred by more traditional societal
conventions. “. . . Kingsley became a powerful spokesman for science
education at a time when this was becoming an important issue among the professional
scientific community” (34).
Science ;
Education
; Natural
History ; Glaucus.
Charques, R. D., Mrs. “Kingsley as Children’s
Writer,” Times Literary Supplement Vol. 2576 (15 June, 1951): i
In this short article, Charques discusses Kingsley's writings for children
as well as his attitudes towards and his understanding of children.
She also touches briefly on his educational views.
Children
; The
Water-Babies ; Education
.
Curtis, S. J., and M. E. A. Boultwood.
An Introductory History of English Education Since 1800 (London:
University Tutorial Press, 1962).
A very brief overview of Kingsley as educationalist. Declares that
because of his early connections with St. Mark’s Training College, Chelsea,
he tended to have greater awareness of practical educational matters than
some of the more subject oriented educationalists.
Education
.
Hawley, John C., S.J. “The Muscular Christian
as Schoolmarm,” in Kristine Ottesen Garrigan, Victorian Scandals: Representations
of Gender and Class (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1992): 134-156.
Hawley examines Kingsley's views on the role of women in society, focusing
in particular on their educational provision. Believing that the deliberately
inadequate education of many young middle-class women had rendered them just
as much societal victims as the children of the poor, Kingsley argued that
the education of the former must be improved. Hawley declares that Kingsley
held a middle ground between the conservatives who viewed women's education
as essentially decorative and the progressives who considered that the male
and female curriculum should be identical: "Kingsley's implied compromise
endorses subjects that would turn out intelligent social workers rather than
stereotypical bluestockings" (139). Hawley also states that Kingsley's
work and writings supporting improved education for women were not complemented
by support for all aspects of the women's movement. Believing in essential
differences between men and women and ultimately ambivalent on the Woman
Question, Kingsley was critical of women's suffrage and caricatured those
women who refused to allow men to lead the movement for their rights.
Education;
Women's
Movement ; Females .
Hawley, John C., S.J. “The Water Babies
as Catechetical Paradigm,” Children's Literature Association Quarterly
Vol. 14, No. 1 (Spring 1989): 19-21.
Hawley declares that The Water-Babies has two principle functions,
to entertain and to teach. The goal of education for Kingsley was ultimately
a religious one. Little Tom’s adventures, his evolutionary progress,
the lessons learned all end in religious salvation. Kingsley also uses
The Water-Babies to show that science and evolution can co-exist
with religion. “With the publication of this novel he offers his most
attractive, deceptively simple presentation of the argument that all purely
scientific explanations of reality would benefit by being placed in the larger
context of Christian revelation” (20).
The Water-Babies
; Religion
; Education
; Science
; Evolution
.
Johns, Edward F. Let the Twig Follow Its Bent:
Recalling Charles Kingsley (Winchester: Warren and Son, 1947).
The sub-title of this short volume is somewhat misleading. Though the author
does indeed refer to Kingsley on several occasions, the work is primarily
concerned with the school for boys, Winton House, that the author’s father
founded in 1874. However, a couple of interesting observations of Kingsley’s
views on children and education are included.
Education.
Leavis, Q. D. “The Water Babies,” Children's
Literature in Education Vol. 23 (Winter 1976): 155-163.
Leavis regrets that the “excitingly written and splendidly imaginative Victorian
classic” The Water-Babies is no longer read by children (155).
She argues that its literary merits justify that it be kept in circulation
and suggests various ways it might be used in modern children’s education.
“The combination of drama, saga, nonsense, science, magic, poetry and comedy
Kingsley invented is irresistible and became a mode adopted by writers for
children in the later 19th and the 20th centuries with great success” (163).
The Water-Babies
; Sambourne,
Linley ; Illustrations
; Children
; Education
.
Leinster-MacKay, Donald and Finkelstein, Mark.
“‘Jean Paul’ Richter, Charles Kingsley and Education: A Case for European
Influence on English Education?" ANZHES Journal Vol. 11, No. 2 (1982):
37-47.
Leinster-MacKay and Finkelstein examine Kingsley the educationist. They
argue that it is likely that Kingsley’s educational views may have been strongly
influenced by those of Jean Paul Richter (1763-1825). They focus on
four principal themes in establishing the links: a) stress on the vernacular
rather than the classics; b) the child’s need of a loving environment; c)
manliness and moral education; d) the education of females. In these
areas both Richter and Kingsley “were largely in a state of intellectual congruence
and as such, show in no uncertain manner, a similar Rousseauvian flavour
as heirs to the naturalistic philosophy of education” (46).
Education
; Richter,
Jean Paul .
Mukherjee, Pablo. “Nimrods: Hunting, Authority, Identity.”
The Modern Language Review 100, no 4 (October 2005): 923-939.
Mukherjee discusses Kingsley’s treatment of hunting and game-keeping and
their relationship to evolving social authority in his novel Yeast.
The hero Lancelot Smith is initially depicted as a man whose education owes
far more to sports and hunting than to book learning. His manliness promoted
by hunting would come to typify Victorian imperial authority. However, Lancelot’s
education develops as he learns more from the gamekeeper Tregarva about the
rural poverty and human suffering on the land on which he hunts and which
he has hitherto blindly considered picturesque. Tregarva humanizes the hunting
countryside for Lancelot. “Lancelot’s education as one of the British elite,
that had begun with a spontaneous appreciation of the hunt as a knitter of
physical and moral fibre, is completed only after the gamekeeper implants
in him a particular code of social, paternalist responsibility that in turn
constructs the idealized vision of order” (928).
Yeast;
Hunting;
Rural
Life; Education.
Rapple, Brendan A. “The Educational Thought
of Charles Kingsley (1819-75),” Historical Studies in Education Vol.
9, No. 1 (Spring 1997): 46-64.
Rapple writes that though Kingsley’s educational works were not as considerable
as those of such contemporaries as Kay-Shuttleworth, Matthew Arnold, Spencer,
or Huxley, they were still significant. However, they have generally
received scant scholarly attention, with the exception of his muscular Christianity
activities. Contending that Kingsley the educationist requires a more
complete treatment, Rapple, “as a vanguard to the needed account,” examines
Kingsley’s “attitude to the young, his staunch belief that the State should
be deeply implicated in the provision of education, the relation between
Kingsley's 'Muscular Christianity' and his views on education, his fervent
conviction that science should figure more noticeably in the curriculum,
his belief that hygiene and sanitary knowledge should be universally taught,
and his advocacy of female education at all levels” (47).
Education
; Children
; Christian
Socialism ; Muscular
Christianity ; Science ;
Sanitation
; Females .
Schilling, Bernard N.
“Kingsley,” in Human Dignity and the Great Victorians (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1946): 96-122.
Schilling examines Kingsley's work as a humanitarian and his efforts to dignify
the life of England's poor. "Kingsley achieved a working synthesis
between his religion and his radicalism; he made it seem as if he had to
be a humanitarian reformer because of the implications which he saw in religion,
not in spite of them" (96). Schilling discusses Kingsley's work on
behalf of sanitary reform and his campaign against the terrible conditions
of the sweated tailoring trade, stressing Kingsley's belief that many societal
problems had their underlying cause in laissez-faire capitalism. He
also considers Kingsley's advocacy of popular medical instruction and of
cooperative movements, his plans to make art, amusement, country life and
education more available to the public, and his staunch promotion of public
education. Though Kingsley became increasingly conservative and came
to embrace a form of feudalism as he aged, Schilling concludes that he "bore
the mark of all great humanitarians - the union of compassion, humaneness,
and optimism" (122).
Overview
; Sanitation
; Social
and Political Views ; Religion
; Education
; Christian
Socialism .
Tozer, Malcolm. "Charles Kingsley and the 'Muscular
Christian' Ideal of Manliness," Physical Education Review Vol. 8, No.
1 (1985): 35-40.
Tozer sketches Kingsley’s life and works paying particular attention to his
views on manliness and its relation to muscular Christianity. He declares
that Kingsley was the individual who was most responsible for acquainting
the English with the Romantic, Christian and Chivalric ideal of manliness,
the ideal that had such a strong influence on the subsequent development
of games and outdoor pursuits in education.
Overview
; Manliness
; Muscular
Christianity ; Education
.
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