Scottish Education and Dissenting Division

Abstract

The final chapter assesses the role of the Free and United Presbyterian churches in the campaign for national education. From the early 1830s the questions regarding the position of national education in Britain and Ireland formed part of the broader battle between Church and dissent in the mid-nineteenth century. In Scotland, the national education debates offered Scotland’s dissenters an opportunity to attack the perceived privilege of the Established Church and its control over the parish schools. Organisations such as the National Education Association of Scotland that called for a state-run non-denominational system to replace the parish schools were primarily under the influence of Scottish dissent. However, debate over the future direction of education in Scotland divided not only the dissenting churches, but the Free Church itself. This chapter examines the extent to which the national education debates unified Scotland’s dissenters in a common goal against the Established Kirk’s parish schools, or whether they simply highlighted the existing divisions within Scottish dissent. In many respects, the education debates, like the other aspects of ecclesiastical, political, and social co-operation covered in the book, provide an interesting snapshot of Presbyterian dissenting relations in the transitional period between 1843 and 1863.