Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part One: The ‘Mental Exercises’: List of Members and Scribes’ Rota
- Members’ Agreement
- On Study
- On Honour
- On Argument
- On Imagination and Judgement
- Hope
- On General Character
- On the Pleasures and Uses of the Imagination
- On Politeness
- Agis
- The Charms of Sleep
- Friendship & Charity
- An Ode to the PASS
- Garreteer's Epistle
- A Mathematical Love Letter
- On seeing a Rose in the Possession of a Lady at the SMHPABNASL
- On Courage
- Irritus to the Manager
- Marriage is Honourable in All
- Friendship
- On Mind and the Duty of Improving It
- A word for Page 73
- On the Early Introduction of Females to Society
- Memoranda
- On prematurely Forming Opinion of Characters
- On the Death of the Princess Charlotte
- Affectation
- On Conscious Approbation
- The Origin of a Critic—A Fable
- Reflections on Death
- On Avarice
- On Tradesmen
- On Laws
- On the Changes of the mind
- On Marriage
- On Calumny
- Letter to the Secretary
- Enigma
- On Marriage
- Effeminacy & Luxury
- A Brother's Letter to Mr. Deeble
- Junius & Tullia
- A Ramble to Melincourt
- On Triflers
- 139th Psalm
- Infancy
- At a Village on the Dunchurch Road
- Part Two: Contexts: Faraday and Self–Education Faraday, from the Correspondence (1812–16)
- Faraday, from Observations on the Means of Obtaining Knowledge (1817)
- Faraday, from ‘Observations on the Inertia of the Mind’ (1818)
- Faraday's indexes to eighteenth-century periodicals
- Faraday, from ‘Observations on Mental Education’ (1854)
- The Improvement of the Mind: Isaac Watts, from The Improvement of the Mind (1741)
- Samuel Johnson, from The Rambler (1751)
- Thomas Williams, from The Moral Tendencies of Knowledge (1815)
- Isaac Taylor, from Self-Cultivation Recommended: Or, Hints to a Youth Leaving School (1817)
- From The Black Dwarf (1819)
- Mary Shelley, from Frankenstein (1818)
- Henry Brougham, from Practical Observations upon the Education of the People (1825)
- The Pleasures of the Imagination: Joseph Addison, from The Spectator (1712)
- Mark Akenside, from The Pleasures of the Imagination (1744)
- Index
Henry Brougham, from Practical Observations upon the Education of the People (1825)
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part One: The ‘Mental Exercises’: List of Members and Scribes’ Rota
- Members’ Agreement
- On Study
- On Honour
- On Argument
- On Imagination and Judgement
- Hope
- On General Character
- On the Pleasures and Uses of the Imagination
- On Politeness
- Agis
- The Charms of Sleep
- Friendship & Charity
- An Ode to the PASS
- Garreteer's Epistle
- A Mathematical Love Letter
- On seeing a Rose in the Possession of a Lady at the SMHPABNASL
- On Courage
- Irritus to the Manager
- Marriage is Honourable in All
- Friendship
- On Mind and the Duty of Improving It
- A word for Page 73
- On the Early Introduction of Females to Society
- Memoranda
- On prematurely Forming Opinion of Characters
- On the Death of the Princess Charlotte
- Affectation
- On Conscious Approbation
- The Origin of a Critic—A Fable
- Reflections on Death
- On Avarice
- On Tradesmen
- On Laws
- On the Changes of the mind
- On Marriage
- On Calumny
- Letter to the Secretary
- Enigma
- On Marriage
- Effeminacy & Luxury
- A Brother's Letter to Mr. Deeble
- Junius & Tullia
- A Ramble to Melincourt
- On Triflers
- 139th Psalm
- Infancy
- At a Village on the Dunchurch Road
- Part Two: Contexts: Faraday and Self–Education Faraday, from the Correspondence (1812–16)
- Faraday, from Observations on the Means of Obtaining Knowledge (1817)
- Faraday, from ‘Observations on the Inertia of the Mind’ (1818)
- Faraday's indexes to eighteenth-century periodicals
- Faraday, from ‘Observations on Mental Education’ (1854)
- The Improvement of the Mind: Isaac Watts, from The Improvement of the Mind (1741)
- Samuel Johnson, from The Rambler (1751)
- Thomas Williams, from The Moral Tendencies of Knowledge (1815)
- Isaac Taylor, from Self-Cultivation Recommended: Or, Hints to a Youth Leaving School (1817)
- From The Black Dwarf (1819)
- Mary Shelley, from Frankenstein (1818)
- Henry Brougham, from Practical Observations upon the Education of the People (1825)
- The Pleasures of the Imagination: Joseph Addison, from The Spectator (1712)
- Mark Akenside, from The Pleasures of the Imagination (1744)
- Index
Summary
[Henry Brougham's pamphlet Practical Observations upon the Education of the People was not the first, but was certainly one of the most influential, of his salvos in support of popular education. Brougham's work in this field can be broadly divided into two arenas: as a Whig MP with considerable national popularity following his successful defence of Queen Caroline in the House of Lords, Brougham used some of his political capital to persuade the government to investigate charity schooling in England and Wales, though he did not succeed in his larger aim of instituting state education in the 1820s and 1830s. And outside Parliament, Brougham was a powerful and effective activist for both children's and adults’ education; perhaps his most important contributions to artisan education were his leading role in the establishment of Mechanics’ Institutes in many industrial and manufacturing towns, and his work in founding and running the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge from 1826, together with its associated publishing ventures for popular readers.
Practical Observations was published in 1825 (parts of it having appeared in the Edinburgh Review the previous year) and went into over 20 editions within two years. It aroused serious and sustained controversy, most of all for its possible effects on harmonious class relations. One critic described it as ‘one tissue of theoretical absurdities’ and proposed that the title should really be ‘Chimerical Notions upon the Education of the People, calculated to overturn the Government, for the good Order of Society and the Peace of the Country!!!’ Among more credible responses, a hostile review in Blackwood's attacked Brougham's proposals for focusing on comparatively privileged mechanics rather than on the much needier labouring classes, for ignoring moral education and concentrating on scientific and political learning, and for tending to promote industrial and civic discord. The Edinburgh Review, on the other hand, and not surprisingly given Brougham's very close connection with it, praised both Brougham and his scheme lavishly: ‘since the time when the Scriptures were first printed and circulated in the common tongue, there has been no such benefit conferred on the great body of the people, as seems now to be held out to them in the institutions which it is the business of this little work to recommend and explain.’
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- Michael Faraday’s Mental ExercisesAn Artisan Essay-Circle in Regency London, pp. 233 - 238Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2008