Thomas Arnold

English educator and social reformer

• Born: June 13, 1795
• Birthplace: Cowes, Isle of Wight, England
• Died: June 12, 1842
• Place of death: Rugby, Warwickshire, England

As the headmaster of England’s Rugby School, Arnold professionalized the teaching profession and introduced reforms that helped to transform education in English public schools.

Early Life

Born on the Isle of Wight, off the southern coast of England, Thomas Arnold began his education at home and later attended a school in Warminster, Wiltshire, and the great public school at Winchester. He did well in these schools, although he did display a youthful rebelliousness. In 1810, he began his university education at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Arnold was enchanted by Oxford, and after three years of intense study, he received a first-class degree in humane letters in 1814 at the age of nineteen. His success at Oxford was followed by a fellowship at Oriel College, Oxford, and he looked forward to a teaching career as a don. At twenty-four, however, he fell in love, and with a professorship many years away, he had to resign himself to becoming a schoolmaster, taking in private pupils at Laleham. The school was a success, and Arnold was happy with the school and the large family surrounding him.

In 1827, Arnold’s great opportunity came when he was elected headmaster at Rugby School. His application for the position was supported by Edward Hawkins, the provost of Oriel, who predicted in a letter that Arnold would “change the face of education all through the public schools of England.” The public schools (the equivalent of private schools in the United States) at that time were notorious for floggings by the masters and the lawlessness of the pupils; they were described by the Reverend Bowlder as “the very seats and nurseries of vice.” As Hawkins suggested, Arnold was to change all that.

Arnold was a young man, only thirty-two, when he became headmaster at Rugby. However, he was a man who had boundless energy and the assurance that he could transform the former nurseries of vice into places where a “really Christian education” was the aim. Arnold experienced moments of doubt about Christianity in his early years, just as he had been a rebel earlier, but those doubts and that rebelliousness were put aside as he confidently began to take charge at Rugby. Lytton Strachey describes the Arnold of this period as a man whose “outward appearance was the index of his inward character: everything about him denoted energy, earnestness, and the best intentions.”

Life’s Work

Rugby School had declined from a high of 381 pupils to a low of 123 when Arnold became headmaster. He planned to reverse that trend and put his educational ideas into practice. The first thing that he did was to make the whole sixth form (seniors) praepositors (prefects). The school became a republic, and the boys were to be responsible for their own government. In addition, Arnold cultivated the boys in the sixth form and through them changed the tone of the school. The former rowdiness was replaced by a mood of piety and respectability. In addition, Arnold’s sermons and presence made the boys both fear and respect him, and they tried to live up to the ideal he set for them. Nothing less than total commitment would do.

Arnold’s next major reform was to raise the status and salary of the undermasters. By this move, he turned them into a professional corps and replaced the earlier brutality and carelessness with dedication. The annual salaries of the undermasters rose from about 125 to 500 pounds, so Arnold attracted some of the most skilled and effective teachers to Rugby. As a result, Rugby boys began impressing others by their serious demeanor and their success in the Schools exams at Oxford and Cambridge. In turn, Rugby became more popular, and the decline in the number of students was reversed.

Arnold did not, however, make major reforms in the curriculum of the school. He maintained the emphasis on Latin and Greek texts and resisted any attempt to add science to the curriculum. He stated his educational ideal succinctly: “Surely, the one thing needful for a Christian and an Englishman to study is Christian and moral and political philosophy.” That aim was achieved by the study of the Greek and Roman classics, not science or modern languages; Arnold even taught English history through those Greek and Roman texts. The study of science might be suitable, even useful, for the masses, but Greek and Latin remained the one thing needful for the future governors of the country and its far-flung empire. Arnold did, however, help to standardize the teaching of Latin and Greek by proposing a headmasters’ conference and uniform textbooks.

Arnold did not approve of the incessant flogging that took place in the public schools of the time. He believed that it degraded both pupil and master, and he preferred to expel a boy rather than flog him. He did not, however, eliminate flogging altogether at Rugby. In a letter, he was proud to announce that he had flogged only seven boys during half of one school year. Arnold had few illusions about young boys, and he did not believe that they were “innocent.” They were victims of Original Sin, and the evil within them had to be exorcized in order to make them display “a more manly and Christian standard of duty.” This sense of duty was extended from the classroom to the playing fields, as can be seen in a novel written by a Rugby “old boy,” Thomas Hughes: Tom Brown’s School Days (1857).

Arnold had a strong belief in social reform and progress, and these views led to some conflicts with the more conservative parents of the boys at Rugby. Although Arnold’s belief in the necessity of an established church and an aristocracy was hardly radical, his approval of the Reform Bill of 1832 and his essays and sermons disturbed many of the parents. As T. W. Bamford has noted: “Inevitably, one of them was moved to write a letter of protest to the local paper claiming that Arnold, as a Headmaster, ought to be non-political.” That letter was followed by many others, and a campaign against Arnold began to gather supporters. Arnold survived this campaign but continued to have strong opposition to his rule at Rugby.

The next controversy in which Arnold became involved was the Oxford Movement. The movement began with the writings of John Keble, who wished to challenge the right of the state to appoint bishops in the Anglican Church. Keble saw the church as an Apostolic institution rather than one controlled by the secular arm. E. B. Pusey and John Henry Newman joined the Oxford Movement and published a number of tracts supporting this position. Arnold’s Christianity was rooted in the life and example of Jesus Christ, and the Oxford Movement struck at his first principles. As he said in a letter to one of his pupils, “The moral fault… is in the idolatry—the setting up of some idea… and then putting it in place of Christ.”

Arnold felt compelled to oppose the movement in print, and he published “The Oxford Malignants” in the Edinburgh Review. In that essay, he described those in the Oxford Movement as “malignant fanatics” and accused them of “moral wickedness.” Because of Arnold’s tone as much as his content, he was attacked by the conservative press; one newspaper asked if the trustees would appoint a headmaster who wrote “in such a style as this.” One of the trustees did ask Arnold if he were the author of such an article, but Arnold refused to answer and said that his private life and opinions were his own business. There was even a vote by the trustees on retaining Arnold, but the tie vote was not enough to oust him, and he remained headmaster. He did lose a bishopric, however, because of this incident; he was the top man on the list, but after the prime minister read Arnold’s essay, he believed that Arnold was too controversial a figure to be appointed a bishop.

Arnold found relief from the burdens of his position as headmaster in the Lake Country of northern England, which has been celebrated by William Wordsworth. In fact, Arnold’s summer home, Fox How, was close to Wordsworth’s home, and they often met and talked. Arnold often invited his sixth-form students to visit him at Fox How, and while they were there, they saw not the stern headmaster but the nature-loving human being. Arnold’s teaching function did not stop in the Lake Country. He spoke of showing his students “the mountains and dales, a great point in education… to those who only know the central or southern counties of England.”

Arnold was also involved in scholarly work while he was headmaster. He published a three-volume edition of Thucydides and a three-volume (the third volume, however, was left unfinished) History of Rome (1838-1843). Arnold wanted to write a Roman history that would oppose the anti-Christian attitude in Edward Gibbon’s great History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1788). For these scholarly achievements and his Liberal politics, Arnold was appointed Regius Professor of Modern History in 1841. He continued as headmaster of Rugby and lectured at Oxford when he could arrange it.

Arnold returned to Rugby full time in 1842 and was pleased to see that the school had continued to increase in reputation and enrollment. He fell ill, however, in June of that year and died on June 12, 1842, at the early age of forty-six. His reputation did not decline as a result of his early death; his pupils and disciples continued and enhanced the Arnold legend. Essays in the Quarterly Review and Arthur Penrhyn Stanley’s Life and Correspondence of Dr. Arnold (1844) gave support to the earlier claim of Hawkins, and it became clear to all that Arnold had reformed not only Rugby School but also the whole public school system.

Significance

Thomas Arnold’s specific reforms did change and improve the public schools in England. However, Arnold’s insistence that a Rugby education be Christian and emphasize a sense of duty was, perhaps, even more important. The whole tone of the school was altered, as was the relationship of student and master. After Arnold’s death, new public schools such as Marlborough and Wellington were founded on Arnoldian principles. Older schools such as Repton and Winchester also changed their tone and became more like Rugby. In addition, several of Arnold’s old praepositors became headmasters at such prestigious public schools as Harrow. The Arnold model became the model for nearly all the public schools in England and for many of the most important preparatory schools and universities in the United States.

Arnold was very much a man of his age. He believed, as many Victorians did, in progress. All that was needed to create progress was to reform certain institutions in the society. Arnold died too young to see his concept of reform and an ideal Christian state be dashed by the discoveries of Charles Darwin and the doubt and cynicism that plagued many Victorians, including his famous son, Matthew. What Arnold attempted and partially achieved, however, remains impressive. Matthew Arnold’s poem on the death of his father, “Rugby Chapel,” says it best:

But thou would’st not aloneBe saved, my father! aloneConquer and come to thy goal,Leaving the rest in the wild.We were weary, and weFearful, and we in our marchFain to drop down and die.Still thou turnedst, and stillBeckonedst the trembler, and stillGavest the weary thy hand.

Bibliography

Arnold, Thomas. Thomas Arnold on Education. Edited by T. W. Bamford. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1970. A very good brief introduction to Arnold’s religious, social, and educational views, with a fine selection of Arnold’s writings on education.

Bamford, T. W. The Rise of the Public Schools. London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1967. A detailed study of public schools since 1837; especially good on Rugby and Arnold.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Thomas Arnold. London: Cresset Press, 1960. The best available intellectual biography of Arnold. Critically surveys his ideas and the controversies in which he engaged.

Copley, Terence. Black Tom: Arnold of Rugby, the Myth and the Man. London: Continuum, 2002. Examines Arnold’s life and his influence as an educator, theologian, and churchman. Provides a more balanced view than previous uncritical biographies and Strachey’s cynical perspective.

McCrum, Michael. Thomas Arnold, Headmaster: A Reassessment. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Focuses on Arnold’s life and achievements as headmaster of Rugby School.

Strachey, Lytton. Eminent Victorians. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1918. An amusing if somewhat inaccurate study of Arnold’s life; the insights are marred by sarcasm.

Wiley, Basil. “Thomas Arnold.” In Nineteenth Century Studies. New York: Columbia University Press, 1949. A sensitive essay on various aspects of Arnold, including his love for the Lake Country.

Wymer, Norman. Dr. Arnold of Rugby. London: Robert Hale, 1953. An uncritical examination of Arnold’s life and influence; the best book on Arnold the man.