Study On The School-running Model Of British Sunday School (1780-1803)

The Sunday school established by the middle class in Britain is a kind of charityschool which can provide free education for children from the bottom of the society.In1780, a newspaper publisher named Robert Raikes established the first Sundayschool in Gloucester. As a result, a great number of Sunday Schools appeared acrossBritain, which had led to an extremely popularly educational movement among thepublic since the Industrial Revolution.The center of study in this paper is the school-running model of British Sundayschool from1780to1803. It tries to illustrate the specific content of theschool-running model, mainly including its school-running mission, teaching activityand institution of management. This paper is divided into three parts: preface, mainbody and summarization.The first part mainly illustrates the review of domestic and foreign study onSunday schools, the analysis of main concepts and relative theories and methods ofstudy.The second part is the main body of this dissertation. It consists of three chapters.The first chapter mainly introduces the establishment of school-running mission.The Industrial Revolution beginning in the late18th century drives the socialtransformation in Britain to its peak, bringing lots of challenges in building moralityand value. At the same time, the phenomenon of a great number of uneducatedchildren is paid much attention by the middle class. As far as they are concerned,founding Sunday schools is an essential means to norm the ideology of the lower classand to keep a normal order of industrial society. As a result, Robert Raikes sets up the first Sunday school. These Sunday schools are established to devote to cultivate thelower’s religious consciousness. Founders expect the lower to be religious Christiansand excellent social members through Sunday schools. During the progress ofestablishing Sunday schools, different social classes closely connect with each other,which leads the seriously social misunderstanding to gradually be in reduction.The second chapter researches the organization of teaching model. Ascomponent factors of teaching system, teachers, students, teaching contents andteaching resources each play an important role in the teaching activity. Theemployment of teachers and selection of students are premise of teaching activity. TheSunday school is strict with teachers’ qualities in religion and morality. Studentsadmitted by the Sunday school are from the bottom of society and it has normalrecruiting program. At the same time, cultivating religious consciousness plays anabsolutely important part in the teaching contents. On the other hand, teaching easycultural knowledge is inferior to the former. Divided into different classes, studentsare taught by step-by-step manner. This chapter also illustrates the teaching resourceswhich are involved in textbooks, libraries and school buildings.The third chapter analyses the working of management institutions in the Sundayschool. In the inner management, every post is clearly powerful and responsible. Theinner management also forms a piece of perfectly daily managing institution involvedin supervision, reward and punishment and a regular schedule. In the integralmanagement, the committees, the organizations of the Sunday school and parents playdifferent roles.The third part of the dissertation is epilogue, where the writer briefly summarizesthe clear and completed framework of the school-running model from1780to1803. Ithas a profound influence on the development of the Sunday Schools and theelementary education in the future.