Joseph Priestley and education
While his achievements in all of these areas are renowned, he was also dedicated to improving education in Britain; he did this on an individual level and through his support of the Dissenting academies.
More importantly, though, Priestley introduced a liberal arts curriculum at Warrington Academy, arguing that a practical education would be more useful to students than a classical one.
He was also the first to advocate the study and teaching of modern history, an interest driven by his belief that humanity was improving and could bring about Christ's Millennium.
At the school he established in Nantwich, Cheshire, he taught a wide range of topics to the town's children: Latin (and perhaps Greek), geography, mathematics, and English grammar.
For example, he advised the founders of New College at Hackney on its curriculum and preached a charity sermon on the "proper Objects of Education" to help raise money for the school.
In Nantwich, he bought scientific instruments, such as a microscope, for the school, and encouraged his students to give public presentations of their experiments.
[6] In 1765, Priestley dedicated his Essay on a Course of Liberal Education for Civil and Active Life (1765),[7] to the governing board of Warrington Academy.
In it he argues that young people's education should anticipate their practical needs, something he accused the current universities, Dissenting and Establishment alike, of failing to do.
In Priestley's eyes, the contemporary focus on a traditional classical education prevented students from acquiring useful skills.
"[14] Rudiments influenced all of the major grammarians of the late eighteenth century: Robert Lowth, James Harris, John Horne Tooke and even the American Noah Webster.
Priestley was the first person to advocate the serious study of modern history; no other British university was teaching the subject at the time and Oxford would not begin until 1841.
[19] They cover a wide array of topics—"forms of government, the feudal system, the rise of corporations, law, agriculture, commerce, the arts, finance and taxation, colonies, manners, population, war and peace"—demonstrating how all-encompassing Priestley believed the study of history to be.
Let us not doubt but that every generation in posterity will be as much superior to us in political, and all kinds of knowledge, and that they will be able to improve upon the best civil and religious institutions that we can prescribe for them.
[Priestley's emphasis][23] This millennial conception of history was in direct contrast to the two dominant historical paradigms of the time: Edward Gibbon's decline narrative found in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and David Hume's cyclical narrative found in his History of England.
"[25][26] The book was well received and was employed by many educational institutions, such as the Dissenting academy at Hackney, Brown, Princeton, Yale and Cambridge.
"[28] Associationism provided the scientific basis for Priestley's belief that man is "perfectible" and served as the foundation for all of his pedagogical innovations.
Alluding to the language of Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, he wrote: "certainly, the minds of women are capable of the same improvement, and the same furniture, as those of men.
[33] These charts and their accompanying Descriptions would allow students, Priestley said, to "trace out distinctly the dependence of events to distribute them into such periods and divisions as shall lay the whole claim of past transactions in a just and orderly manner.
The chart was also arranged in order of importance; "statesmen are placed on the lower margin, where they are easier to see, because they are the names most familiar to readers.
[37] As Arthur Sheps in his article about the Charts explains, "the horizontal line conveys an idea of the duration of fame, influence, power and domination.
[40] The trustees of Warrington were so impressed with Priestley's lectures and charts that they arranged for the University of Edinburgh to grant him a Doctor of Law degree in 1764.
"[43] Unlike the later Sunday schools established by Robert Raikes, Priestley aimed his classes at middle-class Rational Dissenters; he wanted to teach them "the principles of natural religion and the evidences and doctrine of revelation in a regular and systematic course," something their parents could not provide.
