Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects

What it is about

Spencer's four essays on education, of 1861, headed by the one asking what knowledge is of most worth, which helped push Latin out of the centre of the school.

Context and history

Spencer's answer is 'science', and the argument is not one of taste but of function: if education is to prepare for living, subjects must be ranked by which vital activity they serve — self-preservation, earning a living, rearing children, citizenship, leisure — and the classical languages come last. The other essays deal with intellectual, moral and physical education, and defend positions that were then in the minority: less memorising and more observation, no corporal punishment, exercise and open air for girls as well as boys. The book was very influential in the nineteenth century; read today, one sees both what it won and what its hierarchy left out.

Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.