Joseph Priestley and Education - History

History

Priestley's philosophy was founded on the fervent belief that a thorough understanding of history was necessary not only to worldly success but also to spiritual growth. He wrote: "my view was, not merely to make history intelligible to persons who may choose to read it for amusement, but . . . to facilitate its subserviency to the highest uses to which it can be applied: to contribute to its forming the able statesman and the intelligent and useful citizen." His abiding interest in history, particularly modern history, sets Priestley apart from his contemporaries. Priestley was the first person to advocate the serious study of modern history; no other British university was teaching the subject at the time and Oxford would not begin until 1841.

While at Warrington Academy, Priestley gave a series of lectures on history and government; in 1788 he finally published them as Lectures on History and General Policy. They cover a wide array of topics—"forms of government, the feudal system, the rise of corporations, law, agriculture, commerce, the arts, finance and taxation, colonies, manners, population, war and peace"—demonstrating how all-encompassing Priestley believed the study of history to be. In this text, he narrates a version of history in which all events are "an exhibition of the ways of God;" studying history and nature, according to Priestley, "leads us to the knowledge of his perfections and of his will." Understanding history thus allows one to comprehend the natural laws God established and the perfection towards which they allow the world to tend. This millennial outlook is tied together with Priestley's belief in scientific progress and the improvement of the human race. Priestley maintained that each age improves upon the previous one and studying history allows people to see and participate in that progress. In his Essay on the First Principles of Government (1768) he writes:

Highly as we think of the wisdom of our ancestors we justly think of ourselves, of the present age, wiser and . . . must see that we can . . . improve upon institutions that have been transmitted to us. Let us not doubt but that every generation in posterity will be as much superior to us in political, and all kinds of knowledge, and that they will be able to improve upon the best civil and religious institutions that we can prescribe for them.

This millennial conception of history was in direct contrast to the two dominant historical paradigms of the time: Edward Gibbon's decline narrative found in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and David Hume's cyclical narrative found in his History of England.

Unlike Gibbon and Hume, Priestley did not limit himself to narrating a version of history in these Lectures; he also presented a method for historical research and was one of the first to argue for the primacy of original documents in the study of history. He also contended that much could be learned from "material evidence" of former civilizations, such as "ancient coins, medals and inscriptions," as well as "exchequer rolls, public and private ledger books, letters, diaries, monetary, financial and exchange systems, systems of fortifications and city plans . . . ballads and works of fiction." The book was well received and was employed by many educational institutions, such as the Dissenting academy at Hackney, Brown, Princeton, Yale and Cambridge.

The theory underpinning Priestley's millennial view of history and his educational philosophy, was David Hartley's theory of association. Hartley's associationism, an expansion of John Locke's theories in Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) and laid out in Observations on Man (1749), postulated that the human mind operated according to natural laws and that the most important law for the formation of the self was "associationism." For Hartley, associationism was a physical process: vibrations in the physical world traveled through the nerves attached to people's sense organs and ended up in their brains. The brain connected the vibrations of whatever sensory input it was receiving with whatever feelings or ideas that the brain was simultaneously "thinking." These "associations" were impossible to avoid, formed as they were simply by experiencing the world; they were also the foundation of a person's character. Locke famously warns against letting "a foolish maid" convince a child that "goblins and sprites" are associated with the darkness, for "darkness shall ever afterwards bring with it those frightful ideas, and they shall be so joined, that he can no more bear the one than the other." Associationism provided the scientific basis for Priestley's belief that man is "perfectible" and served as the foundation for all of his pedagogical innovations.

Because Priestley viewed education as one of the primary forces shaping a person's character as well as the basis of morality, he, unusually for his time, promoted the education of women. Alluding to the language of Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, he wrote: "certainly, the minds of women are capable of the same improvement, and the same furniture, as those of men." He argued that if women were to care for children and be intellectually stimulating companions for their husbands, they had to be well-educated. Although Priestley advocated education for middle-class women, he did not extend this logic to the poor.