‘A Victorian Class Conflict?’: Schoolteaching and the Parson, Priest and Minister, 1837–1902. By John T. Smith. Portland, Ore.: Sussex Academic, 2009. viii + 233 pp. $70.00 cloth.

摘要

In 1872 a Buckinghamshire teacher protested that he was “the parson’s fag, thensquire’s doormat, church scraper, professional singer, sub-curate, landnsurveyor, drill master, club collector, parish clerk, letter writer, librarian,nwasherwoman’s target, organist, choirmaster, and youth’s instructor” (60).nThe Anglican schoolteachers of Victorian England often felt, as this onencertainly did, grossly exploited. They sometimes worked for a pittance andnyet the expectations imposed on them were huge. Their resentments werenvoiced against their superiors, the parish clergy. The illustration andnexplanation of this tension is the subject of this book by John T. Smith, anSenior Lecturer in Education at the University of Hull in England. Thentheme has not previously been addressed at book length, and the discussion is greatly enhanced by the inclusion of the Roman Catholic and WesleyannMethodist experiences for the sake of comparison.