Thomas Arnold

Thomas Arnold (13 June 1795 – 12 June 1842) was an English educator and historian. He was an early supporter of the Broad Church Anglican movement. As headmaster of Rugby School from 1828 to 1841, he introduced several reforms that were widely copied by other noted public schools. His reforms redefined standards of masculinity and achievement.

Arnold was born on the Isle of Wight, the son of William Arnold, a Customs officer, and his wife Martha Delafield (sister to John Delafield). William Arnold was related to the Arnold family of gentry from Lowestoft. Thomas was educated at Lord Weymouth's Grammar School, Warminster, at Winchester, and at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He excelled in Classics and was made a fellow of Oriel in 1815. He became headmaster of a school in Laleham before moving to Rugby.

Arnold's appointment to the headship of Rugby School in 1828, after some years as a private tutor, turned the school's fortunes around. His force of character and religious zeal enabled him to make it a model for other public schools and exercise a strong influence on the education system of England. Though he introduced history, mathematics and modern languages, he based his teaching on the classical languages. "I assume it as the foundation of all my view of the case, that boys at a public school never will learn to speak or pronounce French well, under any circumstances," and so it would be enough if they could "learn it grammatically as a dead language." Physical science was not taught because, in Arnold's view, "it must either take the chief place in the school curriculum, or it must be left out altogether." Arnold was also opposed to the materialistic tendency of physical science, a view deriving from his Christian idealism. He wrote that "rather than have physical science the principal thing in my son's mind, I would gladly have him think that the sun went round the earth, and that the stars were so many spangles set in the bright blue firmament. Surely the one thing needful for a Christian and an Englishman to study is Christian and moral and political philosophy."

Arnold developed the praepostor (prefect) system, in which sixth-form students were given powers over every part of the school (managed by himself) and kept order in the establishment. The 1857 novel by Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's School Days, portrays a generation of boys "who feared the Doctor with all our hearts, and very little besides in heaven or earth; who thought more of our sets in the School than of the Church of Christ, and put the traditions of Rugby and the public opinion of boys in our daily life above the laws of God."

Arnold was no great enthusiast for sport, which was permitted only as an alternative to poaching or fighting with local boys and did not become part of Rugby's curriculum until 1850. He described his educational aims as being the cure of souls first, moral development second, and intellectual development third. However, this did not prevent Baron de Coubertin from considering him the father of the organized sport he admired when he visited English public schools, including Rugby in 1886. When looking at Arnold's tomb in the school chapel he recalled that he felt suddenly as if he were looking on "the very cornerstone of the British empire". Coubertin is thought to have exaggerated the importance of sport to Thomas Arnold, whom he viewed as "one of the founders of athletic chivalry". The character-forming influence of sport, with which Coubertin was so impressed, is more likely to have originated in the novel Tom Brown's School Days than exclusively in the ideas of Arnold himself. "Thomas Arnold, the leader and classic model of English educators," wrote Coubertin, "gave the precise formula for the role of athletics in education. The cause was quickly won. Playing fields sprang up all over England."

Arnold was involved in not a few controversies, educational and religious. As a churchman he was a decided Erastian and strongly opposed to the High Church party. His 1833 Principles of Church Reform is linked with the beginnings of the Broad Church movement. In 1841, he was appointed Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford.

In Ireland, Arnold's one-time Oxford University colleague, John Henry Newman, appointed Arnold to Professor of English at the Catholic University, now known as University College Dublin.

Arnold's chief literary works are his unfinished History of Rome (three volumes, 1838–1842) and his Lectures on Modern History. Far more often read were his five books of sermons, which were admired by a wide circle of pious readers, including Queen Victoria.