Adventure schools	Schools run by private individuals for profit. The School Inspection Form No. VI for England Wales gives as the definition ‘conducted by the Teacher at his (or her) own risk, and on his (or her) responsibility.
Antinomianism	The opposite of legalism in religious thought: the belief that saving grace does not depend on rigid adherence to a set of laws.
Argyll Commission	A Royal Commission which enquired into the state of education in Scotland
Assembly school	Schools provided by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland (1824) and supervised by the Church of Scotland’s Education Committee. By 1839 there were 118 Assembly schools and by 1843, 146 with an enrolment of 13,000.
British and Foreign School Society	Founded in 1808 the British and Foreign School Society co-ordinated the efforts of the Nonconformist churches in providing voluntary schools for their children.
Burgh Schools	Burgh Schools usually had church origins and by the Reformation served as Grammar Schools for the large towns. In some of them the number of pupils of secondary age had declined by the mid-nineteenth century.
Certificated teacher	A teacher who had attained the certificate of the Committee of Education of the Privy Council.
Chapel of Ease	A chapel of ease was a church built within the bounds of a parish for the attendance of those who could not reach the parish church conveniently. The links with the presbytery were less formal and many congregations regarded themselves as independent of the parish church.
Church of Scotland Education Committee	Established in 1824, the Church of Scotland Committee co-ordinated the work of the national church in providing and supervising education.
Circulating schools	Intensive literacy campaigns involving adults as well as children which moved round the country. They were organised by the ‘Society for the support of Gaelic schools’ established in Edinburgh (1811), Glasgow (1812), and Inverness (1818). The Edinburgh Society concentrated on Gaelic reading, while the Glasgow and Inverness Societies included English, writing and arithmetic.
Disruption	In 1843 a large group of ministers and congregations of the Church of Scotland left the church on the grounds that individual churches and congregations had the right to choose their own ministers and not the heritors. The group formed the Free Church of Scotland.
Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS)	The EIS was founded in 1847 and remains the largest organisation in Scotland representing the views and needs of teachers.
English school	A school which taught English – reading and writing.
Evangelicals	Evangelicals are often contrasted with the Moderate Party in the Church of Scotland but there was considerable overlap, particularly at personal level, until the Disruption. Evangelicals emphsised personal belief in Jesus Christ, particularly his death and resurrection. They took part in Christian socialist action, beliving that faith without action was meaningless. They placed particular stress on the teachings of the Bible.
GES	The Glasgow Education Society, (1836 – c. 1843) of which Stow was the secretary.
GISS	The Glasgow Infant School Society, (1826 – c. 1836) of which Stow was joint secretary with David Welsh.
Heritors	In Scotland the term ‘Heritor’ was used to denote the major “landowners” of a Parish until the early 20th century. Historically – land-holding in Scotland is feudal in nature, meaning that all land is technically “owned” by the Crown, which, centuries ago, gave it out – or feued it – to various Tenants-in-chief in return for certain services or obligations. These obligations became largely financial in time, or ceremonial or at least notional. Similarly, these Tenants-in-chief gave it out to lesser “owners”, and the resulting reciprocal obligations too became financial -feudal dues – or notional. Often, though, conditions were imposed by the feudal superior at the time of the transaction – used in the 19th century as a form of planning control. (Most financial obligations were abolished in Scotland in 1974). The upshot was that “landowners” had differing rights to the land they “owned”. However, those who held their land without limit of time – that is, only had a ceremonial or ancient financial obligation towards their notional “superiors” – were distinguished from others and were called Heritors. In effect, they were the gentry of the Scots countryside, with legal privileges and obligations. Most ordinary farmers, etc rented their land for a specific space of time – from the Heritors. Like the gentry in other countries, the Heritors ruled the countryside. They were responsible for justice, law and order in their district and for keeping the roads in good repair. They were responsible for appointing – and paying – the Minister and the Schoolmaster, and for maintaining the church, manse and schoolhouse. They had also to provide for the poor of their Parish. For all this they levied a rate on all the Heritors in the Parish – and often included non-Heritor Tenant Farmers in the rate too. Sinclair, Prof. J.M (1991), Collins English Dictionary, HarperCollins, Glasgow (Wikipaedia)
Intellectual system	A system of question and answer designed to foster knowledge and understanding developed by John Wood in the Sessional (and model) school in Edinburgh. Although often seen a rival to Stow’s system, the difference was mainly in emphasis.
Lancastrian	A monitorial system developed by Joseph Lancaster, favoured in dissenting and utilitarian circles (see also below).
Latitudinarianism	Initially a pejorative term applied to a group of 17th-century English theologians who believed in conforming to official Church of England practices but who felt that matters of doctrine, liturgical practice, and ecclesiastical organization were of relatively little importance. In this, they built on Richard Hooker’s position, in Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, that God cares about the moral state of the individual soul and that such things as church leadership are “things indifferent”. However, they took the position far beyond Hooker’s own and extended it to doctrinal matters. As a positive position, their stance was that human reason is a sufficient guide when combined with the Holy Spirit for the determination of truth in doctrinal contests, and therefore that legal and doctrinal rulings that constrain reason and the freedom of the believer were neither necessary nor salutary. At the time, their position was referred to as low church (in contrast to the High church position). Later, the latitudinarian position was called Broad church.
Madras System	A monitorial system, favoured by the Church of England since Bell was an Anglican clergyman) developed by a Scotsman, Andrew Bell, at Egmore, near Madras  (see below).
Merchants’ House of Glasgow	The Merchants House of Glasgow was founded in 1605 to represent the interests of the city’s merchants and to provide charitable assistance for members and their relatives in hard times. The House had an important role in local government and until 1833 it was strongly represented on the town council. (www.universitystory.gla.ac.uk/biography/?id=CB0019&type=C)
Minutes of the Committee of Council on Education	From 1839 when the first Committee of Council on Education, for the whole of Britain, was established, until 1939, the minutes of the Committee’s proceedings, provided they were not challenged and overruled by Parliament, had statutory force, and therefore many important changes were introduced not by legislation, but simply by the publication of a minute.
Moderate Party	Ministers (and laymen) in the Church of Scotland who distrusted both enthusiasm and dogmatism, preferring structure and organisation as a bulwark against heresy. They supported the ideas emanating from the Scottish enlightenment, emphasised Christian conduct rather than creed, rationalism and scholarship. They were dominant in the Church of Scotland during the late 18th century until the 1830’s when the Evangelicals  (see above) became more powerful.
Monitorial System	Publicised by Andrew Bell (National Society) and Joseph Lancaster (British and Foreign School Society), this was a system whereby clever pupils were taught particular pieces of knowledge or skill, and then, as ‘monitors’, given the task of passing this on to their fellows in the class. It enabled one teacher to achieve limited results with very large numbers, and for a time seemed a solution to the problems of popular education. The system was not popular in Scotland.
National Society	Founded in 1811, this society co-ordinated the efforts of the Anglican church in providing schools.
Normal Schools	Institutions in which intending teachers were trained in the best practice of the time, the name coming from the Latin ‘norma’, a rule. Probably the first was founded by the Glasgow Educational Society under the direction of David Stow at Dundas Vale in 1837.
Parish Schools	From 1696 onwards the heritors of each parish of Scotland were legally required to provide a school for the children of the parish, and these schools formed the basis of the Scottish educational system from then until 1872.
Pupil-teachers	Senior pupils who entered into an apprenticeship, assisting with the teaching of the school, and being given further education outside school hours. On satisfactory completion of their apprenticeship, they might go to a Training College to become certificated teachers.
Quoad sacra	A quoad sacra parish is one created and functioning for ecclesiastical purposes only. Originally a parish was “a township or cluster of townships having its own church, and ministered to by its own priest, parson, or parish clergyman, to whom its tithes or teinds [a proportion of the inhabitants produce or income] and ecclesiastical dues were paid” (Oxford Dictionary). The ecclesiastical parish, as a unit, was distinguished from the civil parishes after 1597 with the passing of the first Poor Relief Act. This division of the medieval parish created a parish that dealt solely with ecclesiastical functions and had its own church and clergyman.
Revised Code	Instituted in England in 1862, this revised the codification of all the existing regulations about grants for education, and operated a system of payment by results in individual examinations of pupils by the inspectors. By the time it was applied to Scotland in 1873, some of its original rigour had been lost, though the principles remained the same.
Sessional schools	Schools established and controlled by the kirk sessions of prosperous churches in the large towns, usually giving only elementary instruction but, in the conditions of the industrial revolution, playing a very important part in the educational provision of the time.
Subscription schools	Schools organised by parents, or the local community, who collected money to provide a salary for a teacher for their children particularly when the Parish school ran out of space owing to an influx of workers, for example miners and iron workers A Subscription List would be sent round all members of the community, from highest to lowest and from the smallest to the largest businesses. Often this was indicative of the broad-based support for a school within the community. Not all contributions were made in cash: masons, joiners etc could contribute in kind and/or labour.
Voluntary schools	Schools which were controlled by the religious denominations. They might receive government grants for the work they were doing, but could obtain no support from the rates.

While editions two to eleven of Stow’s ‘The Training System’ are still extant, it has always been assumed that the first edition has been lost. Stenhouse [footnote]Lawrence Stenhouse, Lawrence Hartvig Nissen. (1961) ‘Impressions of the Scottish Educational System in the Mid-Nineteenth Century’ in British Journal of Educational Studies, Vol. 9, No. 2 (May, 1961), pp. 143-154.[/footnote]notes that the Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature gives the 1^st Edition as 1836 but the Second Edition, ‘Moral Training Infant And Juvenile As Applicable To The Condition Of The Population Of Large Towns’ was published in 1834 so the Cambridge Bibliography is self-evidently incorrect. Alexander Morgan states that ‘the date of the first edition is doubtful, but the second edition was published in 1834. [footnote]Morgan, A. (1929). The makers of Scottish history. London: Longmans, Green and Co., page 180.[/footnote] This article argues that the book ‘Infant training: A dialogue explanatory of the system adopted in the model infants School, Glasgow by a director’ usually catalogued as the first edition of ‘Granny and Leezy’ is, in fact, the first edition of ‘The Training System’.

1. No date is given for this edition. It is calculated from references to: ‘The formation of the Society seven years ago’ (1826+7=1833), page 4; ‘During the Spring of last year (1832)’, page 5; The Preface is dated ‘Glasgow, 31^st August, 1833, page 18. To start with the obvious, therefore, the first two editions were probably published consecutively in 1833 and 1834.

2. Equally obvious is the length of the two editions, with the second edition, at 237 pages, being longer than the first at 144 pages.

3. The first edition is written by ‘A Director’. In the early years, Stow seldom put his name to articles, referring to himself as ‘a correspondent’; [footnote]The Glasgow Herald – May 26th 1828.[/footnote]^] ‘a friend to the ignorant’; [footnote]Extracted From Dr. Cleland’s Statistical Work. (1831) (2nd  ed.).[/footnote]‘S. D.’;[footnote]Glasgow Herald, 18th January 1828: ‘Wanted: for An Infant School’. [/footnote]‘the secretary of the Infant School Society’; [footnote]Glasgow Herald, 26th May, 1828. [/footnote]‘a gentleman of this city’; [footnote]GES Third Report, List of Office Bearers. [/footnote]or Alpha Beta. [footnote]The Scotsman, 15th October, 1828: Attack on secular infant schools.[/footnote]

4. All the committee members of the Glasgow Educational Society were also known as Directors. [footnote]Glasgow Herald, 21st May, 1835: Examination of the Educational Society’s Model Infant School; The Scottish Guardian, 2nd November, 1837: Report of the opening of the Normal Seminary.[/footnote]This suggests that the writer of ‘Infant Training’ thought of himself as directly associated with both the school and the Glasgow Educational Society.

5. Chapters 4 and 5 of the second edition, known to be by Stow, – ‘Grandmothers’ First Visit to the Infant School – a Dialogue’ and ‘Grandmother’s Second Visit’ – are exactly the same as chapters 2 and 3 of the possible first edition.

6. To regard ‘Granny and Leezy’as a separate publication misses Stow’s point. He initially intended to use the dramatic dialogue in the Glasgow vernacular to describe his ‘system’ to those with an immediate interest – i.e. the parents and friends of the infant school. It was only when ‘the system’ attracted a wider audience that he converted to standard English for the ‘Training System’, eventually publishing editions of ‘Granny and Leezy’ as a separate publication.

7. ‘Granny and Leezy’ is repeated almost verbatim from the first edition to the second with the following exceptions:

• Inexplicably, while almost all Scottish dialect terms are retained, for example kinkhost’ meaning whooping cough’ and ‘haveril’ meaning a simpleton someone who makes a fuss out of nothing, a few words are anglicised: ‘little’ for ‘wee’ and ‘mother’ for ‘mither’. These are both on the first page of the actual dialect. ‘Spectacles’ for ‘spentacles’, ‘wall nearest us’ for ‘wa’niest us’ and ‘no’ for ‘na’ near the beginning and suggest that the publisher wished to anglicise the book for wider publication and either gave up after the first few pages; or only knew these few terms.
• A number of hymns and songs have been added or extended in the second edition, for example ‘Lesson on cleanliness’, ‘London is the capital of England’, ‘Thou Guardian of our earliest days’, ‘The Sheep’, ‘Pence Table, ‘The Dog’, ‘Infant School Song’ and ‘The Infant School’.
• Some pedagogical discussions have been extended, for example an unexpected but correct response by the children to a question, or a response when they do not know the answer, as in the 2^nd Edition, page 119. An extension of the exegesis of a sentence by the teacher is given in the footnotes of page 178 in the 2^nd
• There are some minor changes suggesting that the 2^nd Edition is not a simple re-print of the first, for example the omission of ‘Sir’ occasionally in the children’s responses, the use of the word ‘ten’ instead of the numeral 10, the spelling of ‘connection’ rather than ‘connexion’, ‘Bible-flower’ replacing ‘flower’ and the occasional title.
• In the second edition the term ‘girls’ replaces actual children’s names such as ‘Margaret’ and ‘Jane’.
• A very different selction of Scripture questions is used on pages 108-110 1^st Edition and on pages 187-190 2^nd

8. Far from the ‘First Edition’ being simply that of ‘Granny and Leezie’, it contains ample material related to the pedagogy and management of infant schools in general. The intention of the book is to extend the discussion about infant training and to exemplify the system currently operating in Glasgow.

Reference is made in the Preface:

• To there being five schools in operation attended by about 700 children;
• To the formation of the ‘Society seven years ago’: this would be the Glasgow Infant School Society in 1826;
• The importance of observing the system in action is emphasized (the beginning of teacher training);
• The need to train boys and girls together;
• The necessity for ‘partial government endowment’;
• The importance of some payment in order to value education
• The necessity of suitable, enclosed, playgrounds;
• The emphasis on Moral education in addition to intellectual;
• The contaminating influence of the environment during the week compared with only two hours of Sabbath School;
• The ‘sympathy of numbers’;
• The limiting and limited role of parents;
• The phrase ‘Prevention is better than cure’’
• The central importance of religious education

Reference is made in the Appendix to:

• The list of schools in operation in Glasgow
• School plans
• Raising funds for schools
• The qualifications required of an infant school master
• The moral machinery required for large towns
• Rules and regulations for an infant school after the Glasgow model
• Parents’ views (in letters)

There is therefore considerable similarity of subject matter with the following editions of ‘The Training System’ rather than the following editions of ‘Granny and Leezy’

9. References are made to the need to ‘train’ children: page 10 (three references); page 11 (the importance of numbers of children rather than individuals); page 13 (three references)

10. The peculiar machinery of the Infant system is described as follows:

1. An enclosed play-ground in which the master or mistress, or both, exercise at constant superintendents at play, and where, each scholar finding a number of companions of his own particular age, the natural and therefore the true dispositions of every child fully developed, and exercise is afforded and health attended to.
2. A gallery fitted to seek to the hall children, for the development of mental, moral, and social sympathy; where the eyes of all may more easily be fixed upon the master and upon the object or picture presented to their retention.
3. Picture lessons of objects to arrest the wandering eye of the child, and, in unison with oral narrative, to inform his understanding. Without such accompaniments, viz, play-ground, gallery, and picture lessons, schools may be formed for the reception of Infants, arts, destitute of these, no child can be taught under what is termed the Infant system – which is simply taking man as we find him, and adapting education to compound nature, as moral, religious, physical, and rational beings.

11. Although Stow comments ‘In the first instance I had little hope of this work being purchased by anyone and therefore gave away nearly the whole of the first edition’. (Preface to the Sixth Edition 1845), 800 copies were produced must have been printed.

12. Notices of First Edition of this Work

Of the six notices concerning the First Edition of “this” work given in the second edition of “The Training System” the following from the ‘Scottish Guardian’ appears conclusive:

“To all our readers who are interested in the improvements of the rising generation – and who is that calls himself a Christian should not be interested – we recommend the perusal of this little volume, containing, in a dialogue, entitled “Grandmothers Visit to see Infant School,” an interesting exposition of the whole system.”

The Training System, second edition, end flyleaf

Furthermore, the following quote from the ‘Christian Instructor’ emphasizes a “system”  more reminiscent of “The Training System” than ‘Granny and Leezy;

“Much, however, as we have to congratulate ourselves on the great and beneficial change that has taken place on the old system of education, we have two congratulate ourselves yet more on the invention of a new system of education altogether – a system peculiar to the present age – a system invented for, and adapted to, and most numerous class of the human race – overlooked by every other system from the beginning of the world to the present day, — I mean the system of Infant Training in Infant Schools.”

The Training System, second edition, end flyleaf.

[1]          Lawrence Stenhouse, Lawrence Hartvig Nissen. (1961) ‘Impressions of the Scottish Educational System in the Mid-Nineteenth Century’ in British Journal of Educational Studies, Vol. 9, No. 2 (May, 1961), pp. 143-154.

[2]          Morgan, A. (1929). The makers of Scottish history. London: Longmans, Green and Co., page 180.

[3]          The Glasgow Herald – May 26th 1828.

[4]       Extracted From Dr. Cleland’s Statistical Work. (1831) (2nd  ed.).

[5]       Glasgow Herald, 18th January 1828: ‘Wanted: for An Infant School’.

[6        Glasgow Herald, 26th May, 1828.

[7]          GES Third Report, List of Office Bearers.

[8] The Scotsman, 15th October, 1828: Attack on secular infant schools.

[9]        Glasgow Herald, 21st May, 1835: Examination of the Educational Society’s Model Infant School; The Scottish Guardian, 2nd November, 1837: Report of the opening of the Normal Seminary.