The Past is a Foreign Country: schooling and writing in early nineteenth century Kent, a talk by Tony Fairman

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After the dissolution of the monasteries, the UK gentry organised most schooling of reading and writing, to prepare children for 'that ſtate of life, unto which it ſhall pleaſe God to call me' (Church of England catechism) - classical instruction for their own children and, from the Industrial Revolution, mechanical drills for children 'called to a mechanical state of life' - until the late nineteenth century.

By comparing four letters in the KHLC Archive, which two boys wrote, we see some consequences of two different educations and schoolings: 1) the first and last of eight letters, which a labourer's son (aged 19-20, in the fourth and fifth years of his five-year apprenticeship to a watchmaker and silversmith) wrote to his parish overseer (1821-22); 2) the first and last of five letters, which a gentleman's son (aged 7-8, in his first two years at boarding school) wrote to his parents (1834-35).