Robert Raikes inherited a publishing business the Gloucester Journal from his father in 1757. Wanting to serve God my making a difference with his platform, Robert looked into the prison system in England and advocated for reform – arguing it was preferable to prevent crime than to punish it.
In investigating the prisons and the poverty that fed them, Robert was made aware of a dark underbelly of English society. The slums of England housed many children employed in the factories. In their time off, usually just on Sundays, they ran unsupervised and uncontrolled through the city.
Speaking to some adults about the children roaming the area, a woman replied to him, “Sir, if you could take a view of this part of town on a Sunday, you would be shocked indeed, for then the street is filled with multitudes of these wretches, who, released on that day from employment, spend their time in noise and riot, playing at a throwing game, and cursing and swearing in a manner so horrid, as to convey to any serious mind an idea of hell rather than any other place.”
Wondering what he could do to bring improvement to this situation, he was struck by God with a single word in his heart – “TRY.” Speaking it over with his pastor, he broached the idea of a school for the children on Sundays. With volunteer teachers, the children would be taught to read and write part of the day and receive Bible lessons the rest of the day. Initially, the school was derisively called “Raikes’ Ragged School.”
His initial attempt had minimal attendance. When he explored why, he found that many children did not want to come because they were ashamed of the clothes they had. Raikes assured the children that all they needed was a clean face and combed hair. He also instituted a matching program – for every penny the children brought for clothing, donors were lined up to match it. This taught the children and their families the benefits of saving and thrift.
One anecdote shows how Robert handled children. One girl had an attitude, and was causing her mother a great deal of grief. Raikes met with the girl and her mother and pleaded with the child to ask her mother’s forgiveness as the first step toward changing course. When she refused, Raikes replied, “If you have no regard for yourself, I have a great deal of regard for you…If you will not humble yourself, I must humble myself.” He then knelt in front of the child’s mother and asked her forgiveness for failing to reach her daughter. Seeing this grown man on his knees in humility before her mother broke the child. She fell on her knees and was much changed after that.
Before long, Robert had over a hundred children ages 6 to 14 attending his Sunday School. While this wasn’t the first attempt in England at a task like this, it was the first to really gain traction. Using his paper to publish what was happening, Raikes’ schools became a model for dozens of similar schools around England. By 1788 there were 300,000 children attending Sunday Schools around England. Police commented that crime had drastically dropped.
Some criticized the schools – complaining that they would weaken home-based religious education and that Christians should not be employed on Sunday. Some politicians worried that the Sunday Schools could be used to propagandize children into radical ideas. Nevertheless, the idea stuck.
Robert Raikes passed away on April 5th, 1811, age 75. His Sunday Schools became the forerunner of the English public education system. Robert used what he had and had great success. Perhaps that is why he wrote, “I can never pass by the spot where the word ‘TRY’ came so powerfully into my mind, without lifting up my hands and heart to heaven, in gratitude to God, for having put such a thought into my heart.”
Christian History e-mail: 05 April 2022, Dan Graves
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Raikes
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