EDUCATIONAL RETROSPECT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 6, 4 August 1939, Page 37

EDUCATIONAL RETROSPECT

THE ENGLISH CHILD IN THE 18th CENTURY. By Rosamond Bayne-Powell. John Murray. This delightful book is a surprising footnote to the Age of Reason, or more accurately the Age of Theory, when children suffered educations more savage than Dotheboys Hall and more recklessly

indulgent than the modern parent-enslav-ing school. But a majority of Eighteenth Century children suffered not from the grown-up as theorists, but simply from their brutality and neglect: Mrs. BaynePowell has underlined some amazing paradoxes. Alongside the literally murderous treatment of babies trussed up in swaddling bands, we meet the estimable Dr. William Cadogan out-Trubying Sir Truby in the.bold: encouragement of nature. The well-flogged boys of several great public schools-and coming of a good family did not mean an easier passage tO manhood in the Eighteenth Century-took fire from the French Revolution and rebelled against their drab pastors and masters, the Winchester boys planting the red cap of liberty on their towers and tearing up paving stones to show they meant business. Familiar games and toys (even roller-skates and jigsaw puzzles) were well established in the middle of the -century, in which children, in spite of these solaces, were aptly described as "little victims," whom not even the law protected. This book is packed full of gracefully told anecdote, for Mrs. Bayne-Powell generally lets facts speak for themselves, except when she mutters afew impatient words against Rousseau. By her anthologising tact she has produced a book of permanent value and unflagging interest and charm.