People, Places and Spaces: Education in Robert Owen’s New Society

Abstract

During the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries popular education, formal and informal, developed slowly in various contexts, though with perennial debate about its purpose and content. Formal education expressed in the limited curricula of the time is readily identifiable, informal less so, but nevertheless much in evidence in this chapter. It is clear that Robert Owen (1771–1858), eschewing books for younger children, attached great importance to informal experiential learning and to play and other activities promoted by the great Pestalozzi. While acknowledging the activities of other practitioners, Andrew Bell (1752— 1832) and Joseph Lancaster (1778–1838) among them, this contribution focuses on Owen’s educational thinking and achievements central to his social reform agenda. It examines the significance of environment on his educational thought, the places, personalities and ideas which influenced his work in Britain and elsewhere, with special emphasis on teaching and the curriculum in the School for Children and in the Institute at New Lanark and briefly in other Owenite communities. A variety of spatial processes and themes can be identified, including the cultural and linguistic geography of mid-Wales, migration from Wales and from the Scottish Highlands, the economic and social geography of London, Stamford, Manchester and Glasgow, the location of New Lanark on a prime water power site, the relatively small, material scale of the institute and school relative to the community they served.

The children and youth in this delightful colony are superior in point of conduct and character to all the children and youth I have ever seen. I shall not attempt to give a faithful description of the beautiful fruits of the social affections displayed in the young, innocent and fascinating countenances of these happy children.

Dr Henry Macnab (1819)