Education Victorian Style

Education was an extremely controversial issue in the Victorian Era. Some thought that education belonged in the church others believed that the responsibility of teaching the youth of England rested with the state. Then there were the people who did not want any kind of modern schooling at all for it would take away a form of very cheap labor. Victorians had a lot to learn but not many people could agree on what to learn or who to learn it from. And, while they were addressing these issues, society had to answer the question as to who could attend school. Should girls be allowed to attend, or just boys? Should workers' kids be allowed to go to school or not? How about the poor, should there be charity for their children to go to school and should they go to the same schools as the rich kids? All of these questions needed to be answered, however, it remains a mystery as to whether they ever were.
Education before 1870 was kept in the church and what was known as ragged schools. These were schools for very poor children and they were established as a result of necessity when it became apparent that such children were often excluded from existing schools because of their ragged clothing and appearance. Charles Dickens saw ragged schools as very unsatisfactory and quite jury-rigged: "at best, a slight and ineffectual palliative of an enormous evil. . .And what they can do, is so little, relatively to the gigantic proportions of the monster with which they have to grapple, that if their existence were to be accepted as a sufficient cause for leaving ill alone, we should hold it far better that they had never been."
Ragged schools were taught by volunteers who would teach the students the necessities to survive life in England. These schools were connected by the Ragged School Union which was very much like the modern day school board. They were forerunners of schools created by the 1870.

when, all children from five to thirteen had to attend school by law. In winter in the countryside, many children faced a teeth chattering walk to school of several miles. A large number didn’t turn up. Lessons lasted from 9am to 5pm, with a two hour lunch break. Because classes were so large, pupils all had to do the same thing at the same time. The teacher barked a command, and the children all opened their books. At the second command they began copying sentences from the blackboard. When pupils found their work boring, teachers found their pupils difficult to control.