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Abstract:
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England’s reluctance to establish a national system of education throughout the nineteenth
century allowed for the continued dominance of religiously controlled classical education
which was forced to confront the growing demand for scientific education with Darwin’s
publication of The Origin of Species in 1859. Any move towards a primarily secular
education would have significant implications for the Victorian social hierarchy and
longstanding aristocratic rule. Consequently, Victorian culture spiraled into a heated debate
over the future of education between the classicists, whose resistance was, in part, the result
of rising religious tensions with the geological challenge to Genesis, and the scientific
community, who argued that a classical education contributed little applicable knowledge for
the technological advancement of society. Darwin’s publication of The Origin of Species
added a new dimension of religious controversy to the education debate and redefined the
fundamental reasons for the irreconcilable clash between scientists and classicists. |