The importance of public education in Scotland in the late 18th and early 19th centuries can be seen as a model for its southern neighbours. During this period, the reputation of the Scottish education system was enhanced not only within Scotland itself, but also became increasingly respected and recognized in its neighboring countries, England, Europe, and the North American continent.
Scotland's national basic educational structure was held up as a standard for imitation by Adam Smith and, like later by his compatriot Patrick Colquhoun, himself explicitly based on the work of the famous educator Andrew Bell (1753-1832).
Smith emphasized: "In Scotland, the establishment of such parochial schools taught all the common people to read, and a large number of them learned to write and keep accounts." Here is a sharp contrast to the England pointed out by Smith.
Smith praised the efforts of charity schools in England, such as those supported and led by Colquhoun and Bell in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Although they have had a positive impact, the author of believes that the ultimate goal should be to establish a national general education system.
Smith commented in "The Wealth of Nations" (1776) : "In England the establishment of charity schools, though not so common, produced the same effect." Similarly, the leading British educational reformer Joseph Lancaster Lancaster (1778-1838) claimed: "Scotland ranks first among nations in religion, education, merit and virtue, and is an example to all mankind.
The Kirk's national status and authority, maintained by the parliamentary union with England in 1707, profoundly shaped It is a vision that contemporaries and historians alike would like to see. The development of Scotland's popular education system gave the church the support of the state and left a long legacy. Colquhoun, building on the arguments of the leading thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment, identified local parochial school structures as a key foundation for a national education system.
Colquhoun has a very thorough understanding of the pattern of economic growth and social change in Scotland in the eighteenth century. The author believes that this pattern was promoted by the widespread provision of good general education, which provided appropriate solutions to the challenges posed by increasing urbanization and industrialization. Patrick Colquhoun Colquhoun embraced the appreciation of Scottish institutions and ideas for their dissemination and application in England and internationally.
The most original and influential discussion of education by the leading theorist of the Scottish Enlightenment is contained in Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. Scholars are increasingly paying attention to the education of all classes of society, especially the poor in Smith occupies an important position in thought.
However, Smith's positive and humane view of the liberating, empowering interests of public education actually stemmed from his anxiety about the potential destructiveness to workers' welfare of the division of labor that characterized and advanced the modern era of commercial civilization.
What is striking is that in Adam Smith's book "The Wealth of Nations" highlights the role of government in providing large-scale education to the working poor. In Smith’s view, the country should take active measures to offset the negative impact of economic development and specialization on ordinary workers.
We must realize that public education is indeed the core of Adam Smith's concept of political economy and the core issue of Scottish Enlightenment thought. Interestingly, however, Smith did not advocate universal education for economic reasons. In fact, much of Smith's thinking on the important role of education in commercial society was social and political rather than economic.
Smith's discussion of education mainly appears in the third part of "The Wealth of Nations" Volume 5 "On the Revenue of the Sovereignty or Commonwealth" "In the Expenses of Public Works and Public Institutions".He divided education into two distinct branches, the first focusing on young people and the second dealing with "the instruction of persons of all ages."
When solving the first problem, Smith focused on school education from primary school to university. The second category mainly involves the role of religion. Smith's core question is: "Should the public not pay attention to politics, but can demand a popular education for the people?"
The author believes: In an advanced commercial society characterized by manufacturing, such as England in the eighteenth century, the repetitive processes associated with manual labor will have a very harmful impact on the entire society. Smith explained: "In the progress of the division of labor, the employment of most of those who live by labor, that is, the broad masses of the people, has been restricted to a few very simple operations."
Smith then lamented: "Their existence in particular trades in this way seems to be obtained at the expense of their intellectual, social and martial virtues." He is deeply concerned about the structure and moral influence of modern labor, which seems to threaten the ability of ordinary workers to exercise their responsibilities in the public sphere.
Thus, for Adam Smith, this decadence was the result of "progress" embodied in the influential conception of history by Scottish Enlightenment philosophers such as Lord Kames and Adam Ferguson, the most widely known thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment, who were anxious about the advances in modern commercial production and division of labor.
Smith was very clear that authorities had a duty and obligation to offset social harms by providing public education, and Smith warned: "In every progressive civilized society, the working poor, that is, the people at large, are bound to fall into this state unless the government takes pains to prevent it."
Smith even advocated compulsory basic education to ensure that children were literate and numerate. The author believes that "for a small price, the public can advance and even impose the most important parts of education on every citizen."
Scottish education and Scottish Enlightenment ideas shaped the life and thought of Patrick Colquhoun. However, like other Scots of this era, Colquhoun was attracted to the center of British economic and political power.
Starting with the days of the American Revolution , Colquhoun made several trips to the British capital to lobby for commercial and manufacturing interests in Scotland and northern England, and was instrumental in establishing the House of Commons Standing Committee on Trade, before finally settling permanently in London in 789.
Colquhoun moved from Glasgow (the second largest city in the nineteenth century Empire) to the imperial metropolis London, where he played an important role as a Scottish Enlightenment thinker in the speeches of the British Empire and the entire European continent.
In 11792, the Metropolitan Government appointed Colquhoun as temporary magistrate of the East End, , where he served as a magistrate in the commercial heart of London's East End.
In the imperial metropolis, the new urban working class posed huge challenges in terms of crime, industrial relations and social welfare, which prompted Colquhoun to make a significant contribution to the practice of solving poverty problems in the historical development of the evolution of market capitalism.
Colquhoun's focus on education as a way of responding to the social harms of industrialization and urbanization reflected his Scottish background and his deployment of Scottish political economy.
Patrick Colquhoun's work on socio-economic reform and improved governance draws heavily on his experience in traditional knowledge in Glasgow and Scotland. As his political economist Adam Smith showed, Scottish writers of the Enlightenment did not subscribe to intellectual expertise or disciplinary boundaries.
Colquhoun's treatment of education and his advocacy of public school education illustrate the way he captured the interest of others as an Enlightenment scholar who developed a series of proposals that drew on political economy and empirical statistical analysis to reform criminal justice and poverty relief.
The author's important point of view influence: All important branches of Colquhoun's thought are interrelated and are collective answers to the social problems of the time. His educational thoughts were influenced by the ideological conflicts and European colonial plans of the Enlightenment Era, which were also based on the anxieties of famous Scottish commentators such as Adam Smith.
Colquhoun combined these concerns and interests with his belief that education was a key means of alleviating social tensions and providing improved conditions for the poor.
Colquhoun became actively involved in education soon after moving to London from Scotland. He showed a strong acumen in accounting and management, emphasizing the importance of education for the poor in his 1796 Treatise on the Metropolitan Police, which detailed various crimes against public and private property and suggested remedies to prevent them.
Colquhoun, in his The Metropolitan Police, argued that the key cause of crime was "little attention paid to education". He noted that the situation in London was particularly dire because of the lack of basic education for the poor.
Based on the insights of Adam Smith, Andrew Bell, and Joseph Lancaster regarding the role of education in national progress, Colquhoun hoped to "create a disposition on the part of the legislature to accomplish the great object of providing a national education for the children of the poor."
Colquhoun's proposals for developing a national education system in the UK envisaged a partnership between private and public efforts. In seeking collaboration between individuals and government, Colquhoun's educational agenda reflected his experience advocating for institutional reform, which has attracted the attention of many scholars.
Colquhoun played a leading role in the establishment of the Thames Constabulary, along with magistrate John Harriot, utilitarian philosopher Jeremy.
The police force was originally established in 1798 with the support of West Indies merchants, and subsequently received statutory support from Parliament in 1800. Thames Police can be interpreted as embodying the historical evolution of criminal justice and social policy .
However, this is also related to Colquhoun's early experience as a civic leader, as Glasgow was the first British city to have a police force, founded in 1779.
An Act of Parliament eventually authorized the Glasgow Constabulary in 1800, and Colquhoun's experience as leader of Scottish local government had a major influence on his efforts to transform policing in London and to establish a model for mass education.
The ultimate goal of Colquhoun's public policy was to establish a national education system in England, which was successful in Scotland in the late eighteenth century (largely under the authority of the Kirk and with the support of civil government), but individual effort and leadership also figured prominently.
The "Westminster Free School Model" published by Colquhoun clearly proposed incentives for people in the UK and Ireland to provide financial support to expand access to the poor. Colquhoun opined: "It is difficult to conceive of a model which would enable the state or the community as a whole to achieve a greater good which encompasses almost every object of importance in political economy."
Although scholars who have discussed Colquhoun's views on police power generally assume that Colquhoun was A conservative theorist of repressive measures, he was also a staunch critic of the "Bloody Code" of eighteenth-century England. His harsh criticism of the British judicial system echoed the righteous criticism of thieves in The Tudors in Sir Thomas More's "Utopia."
Colquhoun complained: "It is wrong both in ancient times and in modern times to let the people of the lower classes receive a bad education, completely ignore the national policy regulations that help to improve their morals, and then punish them with unprecedented measures. You must know that their crimes stem from bad habits and must be corrected." What this failing criminal justice system needs first and foremost is the question of improving education."
The interconnectedness of urbanization and industrialization, most intensely in London, informed Colquhoun's debates on poverty, crime and social policy in Britain, all of which converged in the ultimate solution of education.
The moral decline of the lower classes of society was rapidly declining, which was obvious to every careful observer, Colquhoun warned in 1806: "As the population increases, what will become of the rising generation if they do not receive a good education?"
The education of the poor should focus on equipping them with moral faculties, so that they can resist those vices and temptations, so that they can become good and useful members of the community.
References:
Adam Smith "The Wealth of Nations" (1776)
Patrick Colquhoun "Treatise on the Metropolitan Police" (1796)
Thomas More "Utopia" (1516)
