Abstract
This chapter considers the place of mathematics in the curriculum at Christ’s Hospital, a school in central London, during the period from the establishment of the school in 1552, to 1673, when the Royal Mathematical School began within the school. Although there is no known extant manuscript evidence it is almost certain that elementary arithmetic was the only mathematics taught at the school during those early years, and that students were introduced to that subject by Writing School masters who adopted classroom organizational approaches consistent with the cyphering tradition. There would have been an emphasis on numeration and the four operations, and on calculations involving money and weights and measures, with the intention of preparing students for apprenticeships as clerks. The chapter also draws attention to the influence of the Grammar School within Christ’s Hospital. Grammar School masters taught Latin and Greek to children deemed to be “capable,” and there was an expectation that some would win scholarships to the University of Cambridge or to the University of Oxford—where they would seek to become qualified lawyers or clergymen within the Church of England. When, in 1673, the Royal Mathematical School was created, Samuel Pepys and others assumed that mathematics and navigation studies would be at the pinnacle of academic pursuits within Christ’s Hospital, but that assumption ran counter to a school ethos which had developed and matured between 1552 and 1673. The chapter concludes with a summary of six research questions for which answers will be sought in this book, as well as summaries of each of the ten chapters.
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Ellerton, N.F., Clements, M.A.(. (2017). Mathematics in the Christ’s Hospital Curriculum Before 1673. In: Samuel Pepys, Isaac Newton, James Hodgson, and the Beginnings of Secondary School Mathematics. History of Mathematics Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46657-6_1
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