Joseph Priestley and education - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Joseph Priestley, FRS was an 18th-century English theologian, Dissenting clergyman, natural philosopher, chemist, educator, and political theorist who published over 150 works...

( – 8 February 1804) was a British

Kingdom of Great Britain

The former Kingdom of Great Britain, sometimes described as the 'United Kingdom of Great Britain', That the Two Kingdoms of Scotland and England, shall upon the 1st May next ensuing the date hereof, and forever after, be United into One Kingdom by the Name of GREAT BRITAIN. was a sovereign...

natural philosopher, Dissenting

English Dissenters

English Dissenters were Christians who separated from the Church of England in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.They originally agitated for a wide reaching Protestant Reformation of the Established Church, and triumphed briefly under Oliver Cromwell....

clergyman, political theorist

Political philosophy

Political philosophy is the study of such topics as liberty, justice, property, rights, law, and the enforcement of a legal code by authority: what they are, why they are needed, what, if anything, makes a government legitimate, what rights and freedoms it should protect and why, what form it...

, and theologian. While his achievements in all of these areas are renowned, he was also dedicated to improving education in Britain; he did this on an individual level and through his support of the Dissenting academies

Dissenting academies

The dissenting academies were schools, colleges and nonconformist seminaries run by dissenters. They formed a significant part of England’s educational systems from the mid-seventeenth to nineteenth centuries....

. His grammar

Grammar

In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...

textbook was innovative and highly influential. More importantly, though, Priestley introduced a liberal arts

Liberal arts

The term liberal arts refers to those subjects which in classical antiquity were considered essential for a free citizen to study. Grammar, Rhetoric and Logic were the core liberal arts. In medieval times these subjects were extended to include mathematics, geometry, music and astronomy...

curriculum at Warrington Academy

Warrington Academy

Warrington Academy, active as a teaching establishment from 1756 to 1782, was a prominent dissenting academy, that is, a school or college set up by those who dissented from the state church in England...

, arguing that a practical education would be more useful to students than a classical one. He was also the first to advocate the study and teaching of modern history, an interest driven by his belief that humanity was improving and could bring about Christ's Millennium

Millennialism

Millennialism , or chiliasm in Greek, is a belief held by some Christian denominations that there will be a Golden Age or Paradise on Earth in which "Christ will reign" for 1000 years prior to the final judgment and future eternal state...

Personal and institutional teaching

Priestley was a teacher in one way or another throughout his entire adult life. Once he discovered how much he enjoyed teaching, he consistently returned to this calling. At the school he established in Nantwich

Nantwich

Nantwich is a market town and civil parish in the Borough of Cheshire East and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. The town gives its name to the parliamentary constituency of Crewe and Nantwich...

, Cheshire

Cheshire

Cheshire is a ceremonial county in North West England. Cheshire's county town is the city of Chester, although its largest town is Warrington. Other major towns include Widnes, Congleton, Crewe, Ellesmere Port, Runcorn, Macclesfield, Winsford, Northwich, and Wilmslow...

, he taught a wide range of topics to the town's children: Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

(and perhaps Greek), geography, mathematics

Mathematics

Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...

, and English grammar

English grammar

English grammar is the body of rules that describe the structure of expressions in the English language. This includes the structure of words, phrases, clauses and sentences...

. Unusually for the time, he also taught natural philosophy

Natural philosophy

Natural philosophy or the philosophy of nature , is a term applied to the study of nature and the physical universe that was dominant before the development of modern science...

. Following the success of this school, he was offered the position of tutor of modern languages and rhetoric at Warrington Academy

Warrington Academy

. In later years, when he lived in Leeds

Leeds

Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...

and Birmingham

Birmingham

Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...

, he created classes for the youth of his parishes; in Birmingham his three classes totaled 150 students and he helped organize the New Meeting Sunday school

Sunday school

Sunday school is the generic name for many different types of religious education pursued on Sundays by various denominations.-England:The first Sunday school may have been opened in 1751 in St. Mary's Church, Nottingham. Another early start was made by Hannah Ball, a native of High Wycombe in...

s for the poor.

Having received an excellent education at Daventry, a Dissenting academy

Dissenting academies

, and convinced that education was the key to shaping people and the world's future, Priestley continued to support the Dissenting academies throughout his life. For example, he advised the founders of New College at Hackney

New College at Hackney

The New College at Hackney was a dissenting academy set up in Hackney, at that time a village on the outskirts of London, by Unitarians. It was in existence from 1786 to 1796...

on its curriculum and preached a charity sermon on the "proper Objects of Education" to help raise money for the school. After emigrating to America in 1794, Priestley continued the educational projects that had always been important to him. He attempted to find funding for the Northumberland Academy and donated his library to it, but the academy did not open until 1813 and closed soon after. He communicated with Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...

regarding the proper organization of a university and when Jefferson founded the University of Virginia

University of Virginia

The University of Virginia is a public research university located in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, founded by Thomas Jefferson...

, it was Priestley's curricular principles that dominated the school. Jefferson also passed Priestley's advice on to Bishop James Madison

James Madison (Episcopal Bishop)

James Madison was the first bishop of the Diocese of Virginia of The Episcopal Church in the United States, one of the first bishops to be consecrated to the new church after the American Revolution...

, whose William and Mary College also followed Priestley's maxims.

Wherever Priestley went, he also instructed people in natural philosophy

Natural philosophy

Natural philosophy or the philosophy of nature , is a term applied to the study of nature and the physical universe that was dominant before the development of modern science...

. In Nantwich, he bought scientific instruments, such as a microscope

Microscope

A microscope is an instrument used to see objects that are too small for the naked eye. The science of investigating small objects using such an instrument is called microscopy...

, for the school, and encouraged his students to give public presentations of their experiments. In Calne

Calne

Calne is a town in Wiltshire, southwestern England. It is situated at the northwestern extremity of the North Wessex Downs hill range, a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty....

, where he was a tutor to the son of Lord Shelburne

William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne

William Petty-FitzMaurice, 1st Marquess of Lansdowne, KG, PC , known as The Earl of Shelburne between 1761 and 1784, by which title he is generally known to history, was an Irish-born British Whig statesman who was the first Home Secretary in 1782 and then Prime Minister 1782–1783 during the final...

, Priestley convinced his patron to buy expensive equipment with which to teach his son the fundamentals of natural philosophy. He wrote in his Miscellaneous Observations relating to Education (1778), published during these years, that children should not only be educated in the ancient subjects of rhetoric and grammar but should also become acquainted with science early in their lives since scientific understanding underpins the progress of the human race.

After Priestley moved to Birmingham in 1780, he encouraged the town's children to play with his apparatus and ask questions about his laboratory: the Priestley home became a place of scientific education for the town's children. Priestley's rain gauge and "perambulator" (a wheelbarrow for recording distances) delighted them. The boys often played with his air-gun, aiming at a wig of Priestley's which he had fastened to a post. Priestley designed magic lantern

Magic lantern

The magic lantern or Laterna Magica is an early type of image projector developed in the 17th century.-Operation:The magic lantern has a concave mirror in front of a light source that gathers light and projects it through a slide with an image scanned onto it. The light rays cross an aperture , and...

shows for them and shocked them with his electrical machine.

Educational philosophy

In 1765, Priestley dedicated his Essay on a Course of Liberal Education for Civil and Active Life
Essay on a Course of Liberal Education for Civil and Active Life
Essay on a Course of Liberal Education for Civil and Active Life is an educational treatise by the 18th-century British polymath Joseph Priestley....

(1765), to the governing board of Warrington Academy. In it he argues that young people's education should anticipate their practical needs, something he accused the current universities, Dissenting and Establishment alike, of failing to do. In Priestley's eyes, the contemporary focus on a traditional classical education

Classics

Classics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world ; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity Classics (sometimes encompassing Classical Studies or...

prevented students from acquiring useful skills. This principle of utility guided his unusual curricular recommendations. He proposed that students study English and the modern languages instead of the classical languages, learn practical mathematics, read modern rather than ancient history, and study the constitution and laws of England. He believed that these topics would prepare his students for the commercial middle-class life that most of them would live; he did not believe that the poor should receive this same education, arguing "it could be of no service to their country, and often a real detriment to themselves." In 1766 Warrington Academy replaced its old classical curriculum with Priestley's new liberal arts

Liberal arts

model. Some scholars of education have argued that this work and his later Miscellaneous Observations relating to Education (1778) (often reprinted with the Essay on Education) made Priestley the "most considerable English writer on educational philosophy" between John Locke

John Locke

John Locke FRS , widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social...

and Herbert Spencer

Herbert Spencer

Herbert Spencer was an English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era....

Grammar

Priestley's first successful educational venture was the establishment of a local school in Nantwich

Nantwich

. Believing that all students should have a good grasp of the English language

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

and its grammar before learning any other language and dismayed at the quality of the instruction manuals available, Priestley wrote his own textbook: The Rudiments of English Grammar
The Rudiments of English Grammar
The Rudiments of English Grammar was a popular English grammar textbook written the 18th-century British polymath Joseph Priestley....

(1761). The book was very successful—it was reprinted for over fifty years. Its humor may have contributed to its popularity; for example, Priestley illustrated the couplet
Couplet
A couplet is a pair of lines of meter in poetry. It usually consists of two lines that rhyme and have the same meter.While traditionally couplets rhyme, not all do. A poem may use white space to mark out couplets if they do not rhyme. Couplets with a meter of iambic pentameter are called heroic...

with this rhyme:

Beneath this stone my wife doth lie:

She's now at rest, and so am I.

Priestley also quoted from the most famous English authors, encouraging the middle-class association between reading and pleasure, a reading that would also, Priestley hoped, foster morality. Priestley's innovations in the teaching and description of English grammar, particularly his efforts to disassociate it from Latin grammar, made his textbook revolutionary and have led twentieth-century scholars to describe him as "one of the great grammarians of his time." Rudiments influenced all of the major grammarians of the late eighteenth century: Robert Lowth

Robert Lowth

Robert Lowth FRS was a Bishop of the Church of England, Oxford Professor of Poetry and the author of one of the most influential textbooks of English grammar.-Life:...

, James Harris

James Harris (grammarian)

James Harris, FRS was an English politician and grammarian.-Life and works:He was born at Salisbury and educated at the grammar school in the Close at Salisbury, and at Wadham College, Oxford. On leaving the university he was entered at Lincoln's Inn as a student of law, though not intended for...

, John Horne Tooke

John Horne Tooke

John Horne Tooke was an English politician and philologist.-Early life and work:He was born in Newport Street, Long Acre, Westminster, the third son of John Horne, a poulterer in Newport Market. As a youth at Eton College, Tooke described his father to friends as a "turkey merchant"...

and even the American Noah Webster

Noah Webster

Noah Webster was an American educator, lexicographer, textbook pioneer, English spelling reformer, political writer, editor, and prolific author...

. The resounding success of Priestley's book was one of the reasons that Warrington Academy

Warrington Academy

offered him a teaching position in 1761.

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

University of Oxford

The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...

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
Lectures on History and General Policy
Lectures on History and General Policy is the published version of a set of lectures on history and government given by the 18th-century British polymath Joseph Priestley to the students of Warrington Academy....

. 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
Essay on the First Principles of Government
Essay on the First Principles of Government is an early work of modern liberal political theory by 18th-century British polymath Joseph Priestley.-Genesis of work:...

(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. [Priestley's emphasis]

This millennial conception of history was in direct contrast to the two dominant historical paradigms of the time: Edward Gibbon's

Edward Gibbon

Edward Gibbon was an English historian and Member of Parliament...

decline narrative found in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and David Hume's

David Hume

David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...

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 . . . [in addition to] 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

Brown University

Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...

, Princeton

Princeton University

Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

, Yale

Yale University

Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

and Cambridge

University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...

.

The theory underpinning Priestley's millennial

Millennialism

view of history and his educational philosophy, was David Hartley's

David Hartley (philosopher)

David Hartley was an English philosopher and founder of the Associationist school of psychology. -Early life and education:...

theory of association. Hartley's associationism

Association of Ideas

Association of Ideas, or Mental association, is a term used principally in the history of philosophy and of psychology to refer to explanations about the conditions under which representations arise in consciousness, and also for a principle put forward by an important historical school of thinkers...

, an expansion of John Locke's

John Locke

theories in Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) and laid out in Observations on Man
Observations on Man
Observations on Man, his Frame, his Duty, and his Expectations is 18th-century British philosopher David Hartley's major work. Published in two parts in 1749 by Samuel Richardson, it puts forth Hartley's principal theories: the doctrine of vibrations and the doctrine of associations...

(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.

Charts of biography and history

As a supplement to his lectures on history, Priestley also designed and published a A Chart of Biography
A Chart of Biography
In 1765, 18th-century British polymath Joseph Priestley published A Chart of Biography and its accompanying prose description as a supplement to his Lectures on History and General Policy...

(1765) and a New Chart of History (1769) (which he dedicated to Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin

Dr. Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat...

). These charts and their accompanying Descriptions would allow students, Priestley said, to "trace out distinctly the dependence of events to distribute them into such periods and divisions as shall lay the whole claim of past transactions in a just and orderly manner."

The Chart of Biography covers a vast timespan, from 1200 BC to 1800 AD, and includes two thousand names. Priestley organized his list into six categories: Statesman and Warriors; Divines and Metaphysicians; Mathematicians and Physicians (natural philosophers were placed here); Poets and Artists; Orators and Critics (prose fiction authors were placed here); and Historians and Antiquarians (lawyers were placed here). Priestley's "principle of selection" was fame, not merit; therefore, as he mentions, the chart is a reflection of current opinion. He also wanted to ensure that his readers would recognize the entires on the chart. Priestley had difficulty assigning his all of his people to individual categories; he attempted to list them in the category under which their most important work had been done. Machiavelli is therefore listed as a historian rather than a statesman and Cicero

Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...

is listed as a statesman instead of an orator. The chart was also arranged in order of importance; "statesmen are placed on the lower margin, where they are easier to see, because they are the names most familiar to readers."

The Chart of History lists events in 106 separate locations; it illustrates Priestley's belief that the entire world's history was significant, a relatively new development in the eighteenth century, which had begun with Voltaire

Voltaire

François-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire , was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state...

and William Robertson

William Robertson (historian)

William Robertson FRSE FSA was a Scottish historian, minister of religion, and Principal of the University of Edinburgh...

. The world's history is divided up into the following geographical categories: Scandinavia, Poland, Russia, Great Britain, Spain, France, Italy, Turkey in Europe, Turkey in Asia, Germany, Persia, India, China, Africa and America. Priestley aimed to show the history of empires and the passing of power; the subtitle of the Description that accompanied the chart was "A View of the Principle Revolutions of Empire that have taken place in the World" and he wrote that:

The capital use [of the Charts was as] a most excellent mechanical help to the knowledge of history, impressing the imagination indelibly with a just image of the rise, progress, extent, duration, and contemporary state of all the considerable empires that have ever existed in the world.

As Arthur Sheps in his article about the Charts explains, "the horizontal line conveys an idea of the duration of fame, influence, power and domination. A vertical reading conveys an impression of the contemporaneity of ideas, events and people. The number or density of entries . . . tells us about the vitality of any age." Voids in the chart indicated intellectual Dark Ages, for example. Both Charts were popular for decades—the A New Chart of History
A New Chart of History
In 1769, 18th-century British polymath Joseph Priestley published A New Chart of History and its prose explanation as a supplement to his Lectures on History and General Policy...

went through fifteen editions by 1816. The trustees of Warrington were so impressed with Priestley's lectures and charts that they arranged for the University of Edinburgh

University of Edinburgh

The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1583, is a public research university located in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The university is deeply embedded in the fabric of the city, with many of the buildings in the historic Old Town belonging to the university...

to grant him a Doctor of Law degree in 1764.

Religious education

Priestley pondered what form the best religious education would take throughout his life. In the 1760s, when he was a student at Daventry Academy

Daventry Academy

Daventry Academy was a dissenting academy, that is, a school or college set up by English Dissenters. It moved to many locations, but was most associated with Daventry, where its most famous pupil was Joseph Priestley...

, he imbibed the pedagogical principles of its founder, Philip Doddridge

Philip Doddridge

Philip Doddridge DD was an English Nonconformist leader, educator, and hymnwriter.-Early life:...

; although he was dead, Doddridge's emphasis on academic rigor and freedom of thought lived on at the school and impressed Priestley. These ideals would always be a part of Priestley's educational programs. He began writing one of these while still at Daventry, the Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion
Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion
The Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion, written by 18th-century English Dissenting minister and polymath Joseph Priestley, is a three-volume work designed for religious education published by Joseph Johnson between 1772 and 1774...

. However, he did not publish the work until 1772, when he as at Leeds

Leeds

. In an effort to increase and stabilize membership at his church there, he taught three religious education classes. He subdivided the young people of the congregation into three categories: young men from 18-30 to whom he taught "the elements of natural and revealed religion" (young women may or may not be included in this group); children under 14 to whom he taught "the first elements of religious knowledge by way of a short catechism in the plainest and most familiar language possible"; and "an intermediate class" to whom he taught "knowledge of the Scriptures only." Unlike the later Sunday school

Sunday school

s established by Robert Raikes

Robert Raikes

Robert Raikes was an English philanthropist and Anglican layman, noted for his promotion of Sunday schools...

, Priestley aimed his classes at middle-class Rational Dissenters; he wanted to teach them "the principles of natural religion and the evidences and doctrine of revelation in a regular and systematic course," something their parents could not provide.

Priestley wrote texts for the courses he envisioned: A Catechism for Children and Young Persons (1767), which went through eleven English-language editions; and A Scripture Catechism, consisting of a Series of Questions, with References to the Scriptures instead of Answers (1772), which went through six British editions by 1817. He aimed to write non-sectarian Catechisms, but in this he failed. He offended many orthodox readers by focusing on God's benevolence instead of on Adam's sin and Christ's atonement. Priestley implemented this same system of religious instruction over a decade later in Birmingham

Birmingham

, when he became a minister at New Meeting.

External links

The Joseph Priestley Society
www.josephpriestley.com - Comprehensive site which includes a bibliography, links to related sites, images, information on manuscript collections, and other helpful information.

Full-text online links

A Course of Lectures on Oratory and Criticism (full text from google books)
Lectures on General History, and General Policy (full text from google books)
Heads of Lectures on Course of Experimental Philosophy (full text from google books)
A Description of a New Chart of History (full text from google books)
Letters to Dr. Horne, Dean of Canterbury, to the Young Men who are in a Course of Education for the Christian Ministry at the Universities of Oxford or Cambridge (full text from google books)

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.