Why aRomanticconception of education matters

Romanticism’s valuing of love and the life of the imagination, combined with its belief in human potential taken heroically to and beyond its limits, provides a way of addressing differently and fruitfully certain issues to do with pedagogy in schools, making in particular better sense of what it means to be an effective teacher and a productive learner in such contexts. Notes 1. Apart from a book chapter by Sturrock (Citation1988), which examines the lasting educational significance of the beliefs of Wordsworth, Coleridge and Dickens, I have unearthed only three substantial texts that seek to make explicit links between British Romanticism and schooling: Willensky’s (Citation1990) edited collection of papers explores aspects of the educational legacy of Romanticism; Egan (Citation1990a) outlines a conception of Romantic understanding that is used as a vehicle for developing proposals for a reformed pedagogy and curriculum for the middle years of schooling; and Richardson (Citation1994) studies how changes in the definition and status of literature within late 18th and early 19th century British culture were implicated in and informed by modifications in educational methods, institutions and ideologies anticipated by and articulated within the writings of particular Romantic authors and poets. A fourth book that relates to the theme, but only indirectly, is Marples’ (Citation1967) fascinating study of the school lives of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Byron, Shelley and Keats. 2. Although many hold to the theory that it was in England that the Romantic Movement started, Romanticism should not be regarded as a peculiarly British phenomenon of the 18th and 19th centuries. Not only have aspects of romance featured throughout cultural history, but the attitude of mind associated with British Romanticism has also been located in contemporary drama, music, painting, philosophy, sculpture and architecture in other parts of Europe, notably Germany, France and Italy (see Heath & Boreham, Citation1999 and Porter & Teich, Citation1988). Additionally, the fact that the writers listed here are all English men should not go unnoticed. On the contrary, the masculine gendering of Romanticism is the subject of an extensive critical literature (see, for example, Mellor, Citation1988, Citation1993; Fulford, Citation1999; Hofkosh, Citation1998; Ross, Citation1989). This literature, however, has less to do with revising radically the characteristics said to be definitive of Romanticism, as with extending the names of the people said to represent it so as to include more women, including identifying the patriarchal attitudes of particular English male Romantic writers (e.g. Wordsworth’s feminisation of nature). So, while I recognise that this article marginalises through exclusion all the great female British Romantic poets and writers of the 18th and 19th century (e.g. Charlotte Smith, Caroline Norton, Mary Robinson), my defence is that, in a work of this limited scale, I had to draw a boundary somewhere, and that my preference was to do this in such a way as to encompass those individuals about whom I know the most and whose work has had, so far, the greatest impact on my thinking. In a book manuscript which I am presently completing (Romanticism and education: love, heroism and imagination in pedagogy) I intend to redress this deficiency, as well as discuss the importance of other male contributors to the oeuvre, notably William Blake, whose absence from my account here is unfortunate and regrettable. Adding this new material, however, will not, I anticipate, alter radically the kind of argument I develop here, though it will undoubtedly enrich it. 3. Hindsight, reinforced by the comments of a critic of an earlier version of this paper, has taught me that maybe I should have also included Romanticism’s distinctive vision of childhood, an absence which will be rectified in my forthcoming book, Romanticism and education, which includes a chapter on the topic. 4. It is not possible to overestimate the imaginative impact that the French Revolution had on the development of English Romantic literature. It was colossal, with Wordsworth and Coleridge probably being the most affected. See Everest (Citation1991) for accounts of the exhilaration and optimism the French Revolution wrought in England among those of liberal or radical disposition generally. See Duff (Citation1998), Breen and Noble (Citation2002, pp. 117–133) and Hanley and Selden (Citation1990) for short accounts of its effects on certain of the Romantic poets in particular. 5. The exceptions here might be Wordsworth and Coleridge, each of whom for a period gave public approval to the so‐called ‘Madras’ or ‘Monitorial System’. For the details, see Richardson (Citation1994), esp. p. 95.