The Educational Writings of Richard Mulcaster

I write in my natural English tongue, because though I appeal to the learned, who understand Latin, I wish to reach also the unlearned, who understand only English, and whose in...

As for _excess_ I conceive that as in every natural body the number of sinews, veins, and arteries to give it life and motion, is definite and certain, so in a body politic the...

We are now come to that government in writing which was under sound, reason and custom jointly, and which proceeded in this way. Reason, as he is naturally the principal directo...

I will now consider what children ought to learn when they are first sent to school. There are in the human soul certain natural capacities which by the wisdom of parents and th...

The use and custom of our country has already chosen a kind of penning, in which she has set down her religion, her laws, her private and public dealings; every private man has,...

The highest position to which learned valour doth give advancement, is that of a wise counsellor, the fruit of whose learning is policy, not in the limited sense where it is opp...

When learning and knowledge came first to light, those men who were the authors of them uttered their minds in the same speech that they used when they bred the things. And as t...

But why not everything in English, a tongue in itself both deep in meaning and frank in utterance? I do not think that any language whatsoever is better able to express all subj...

Those who see imperfections in our tongue either blame certain errors which they allege to be in our writing, or else they will seem to seek its reformation. In pointing out err...

When the question is _how much_ a woman ought to learn, the answer may be, “as much as shall be needful,” and if this is doubtful also, the reply may be, either as much as befit...

I think it is not good to begin study immediately after rising, or just after meals, or to continue right up to the time of going to bed. From 7 to 10 in the forenoon, and from...

Football could not possibly have held its present prominence, nor have been so much in vogue as it is everywhere, if it had not been very beneficial to health and strength. To m...

Thus bold have I been with you, my good and courteous fellow-countrymen, in taking up your time with a multitude of words, whose force I know not, but whose purpose hath been to...

As for my own words and the terms that I use, they are generally English, and if any be an incorporated stranger, or translated, or freshly-coined, I have shaped it to fit the p...

It is not only the more formal aspects of language, moreover, that he treats with discrimination. On the still subtler question of its relation to thought and knowledge he speak...

In our Grammar Schools we profess to teach the tongues, or rather to make a beginning with teaching them. Every subject that is treated in any tongue supplies the student with t...

On the question of the position and standing of the teacher Mulcaster’s contentions were scarcely more timely and just for his own generation than they are for the present time....

Surely there is nothing unreasonable in proposing that these seven colleges should be set up, and should have the names of the things they profess--Languages, Mathematics, Philo...

Some apology is needed for the presentation of an Elizabethan writer to English readers in any form but that of the original text. The justification of the present volume must l...

It is perhaps idle to expect any equalisation of opportunities by postponing every kind of specialism to a period beyond the elementary stage, until there is a more general agre...