The Educational Writings of Richard Mulcaster — Inside the Classic

Regularity as a Social Foundation

Mulcaster repeatedly insists on 'regularity' as the linchpin of education, extending it beyond the schoolroom into the home and church. He urges parents to act 'so in the home that there may be conformity between their management and that of the school,' warning against 'infection from private corruption.' His prescriptions are strikingly specific: children should have fixed times for rising, bed, prayers, and greeting parents. He argues that 'obedience to the prince and to the laws is securely grounded when private houses are so well ordered,' and that 'there is little need for preaching when private training is so carefully carried out.' This vision of education as a mechanism for social discipline is central to his thought.

The Editor's Apology and Method

Oliphant's preface is itself a revealing document. He notes that Mulcaster's contemporary Roger Ascham 'had far less to say, but knew how to say it with lucidity and grace,' implying that Mulcaster's obscurity is self-inflicted. The editor justifies his abridgment by asserting that the writings 'must be rather for their substance than for their literary style.' He also records that the Positions was out of print for 300 years until a facsimile edition in 1888, and the Elementarie 'has never been reprinted at all.' This editorial framing shapes how readers encounter Mulcaster: as a thinker whose ideas merit recovery despite their original form.

Mulcaster's Rhetoric of Counsel

In his own voice, Mulcaster adopts a posture of humility and persuasion. He writes 'not because I am greatly dissatisfied with what we have, but because I often wish for what we have not.' He explicitly rejects a 'dictator-like' pronouncement, preferring 'the way of counsel.' He grounds his principles on 'reading, and some reasonable experience,' applied to 'the circumstances of this country, without attempting to enforce any foreign or strange device.' This rhetorical strategy—combining deference with a clear reformist agenda—reveals a writer acutely aware of his audience and the need to win them over 'by argument' rather than 'precise brevity.'

Readers should note that this edition is an abridgment and arrangement, not a complete reproduction. Oliphant's selections and his critical estimate shape the presentation of Mulcaster's ideas. The excerpts show a thinker focused on uniformity, discipline, and the integration of school, home, and state, but the full range of his arguments—particularly on curriculum and the education of girls—may be more fully represented in the original texts. This volume is best approached as a curated introduction to an influential but stylistically challenging Elizabethan educationist.

Mulcaster’s stern plea for orderly minds and state-appointed learning always puts me in mind of a quieter volume, one that lingers over the same old questions with a softer tread. Both sit well on a shelf, like patient friends who nod to each other across the years. In the School-Room: Chapters in the Philosophy of Education — A Reader’s Guide carries that same earnest, unhurried warmth—a hand extended from another century, offering company rather than command.