Although it was almost certainly not the author's intent to enter into the heated, ongoing public debate in the United States about how best to educate children, Linda Ryan's John Wesley and the Education of Children has arrived as the news media almost daily report on some aspect of the wrenching battle for funding and control of the American pedagogical endeavor. Do children learn best in public or private school? In a charter school or a Christian academy? By homeschooling, whether individually in the child's residence or in a cooperative of homeschooling families? None of these arguments are new, although they have become considerably more fraught in recent years. One of greatest contributions of this thoughtful, well-researched book is to review the history of those arguments as they were expressed in the specific context of Methodist founder John Wesley (1703–1791)’s ideas and activities on education within the eighteenth century's “watershed in thinking concerning children and childhood” (5).

Ryan's project was to locate Wesley's philosophy of education, informed as it was by contemporary notions of social class and gender roles in the context of revolutionary changes in the understanding of childhood that were driven by Enlightenment thinkers, such as John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, although they were primarily concerned with the children of “gentlemen.” Locke and Rousseau both advocated for what might be termed home schooling by a tutor for both boys and girls, although to different ends. Locke argued that affluent children should be trained in the use of reason in order to develop their intellectual potential, while recognizing and affirming the individuality of each child, in order to produce “happy, well-behaved and virtuous children in the present time” (14). He further believed children should memorize the Lord's Prayer, Apostles’ Creed, and Ten Commandments, giving them some grounding in faith. Rousseau, whose work became quite controversial in England, advocated for allowing children to play freely and to be indulged in childhood pleasures without the imposition of moral rules. He sneered at the Lockean notion of teaching reason to children.

Despite evidence that Wesley was influenced by Locke (and rejected Rousseau), the Methodist founder believed the purpose of education was to save children's souls, not to produce happy little individuals. The deep-seated influence of his Puritan-raised mother Susannah ensured that Wesley was grounded in Evangelical notions about education. He wrote in 1745 that a child's innate sinful will could be broken only through prayer for a “humble, submissive, simple and obedient heart . . . . They were to avoid idleness, take responsibility for their actions and, when they were willfully wrong, expect to be punished” (39). Ryan argues that Wesley was also influenced on the topic of education by German Pietists, which is consistent with their profound impact on his theological system. For example, Wesley concurred with August Hermann Francke's notion that “the first essential was to place in the hands of a child the means by which he could prepare his soul for salvation,” but he disagreed with Ludwig von Zinzendorf's insistence that all children, no matter their social class, should be educated together, with emphasis on faith development through “freedom and love” (49).

Wesley's egalitarian theology could not overcome his innate eighteenth-century British notions of social class and gender roles. Although Wesley supported the education of impoverished children, Ryan explains at some length his insistence that education should not encourage children to rise above their origins, and that they not get ideas about changing social position, a canard that Wesley's followers in America quickly dismissed. Further, Ryan points out that Wesley's emphasis on asceticism and introspection under the force of patriarchal authority in the curriculum of his Kingswood School did not have the same impact on most adolescent boys that it had on Wesley himself. When Wesley's ideas were tested at Kingswood, they were not successful; few students seem to have stayed long enough to complete the course of study. Wesley seems to have been somewhat ambivalent on education of girls. He encouraged education that would produce pious and virtuous young women, having witnessed the superior intellect and education of his own sisters. Those well-prepared female minds, however, could be exercised only at home, schooling their own children or, perhaps, running a small boarding school for girls, such as that run by Mary Bosanquet Fletcher.

But how would Wesley adjudicate the present-day argument about the most appropriate venues for educating children? First and foremost, he insisted that spiritual formation was the primary goal of all education; he “condemned” public schools—including Oxford University where he earned bachelor's and master's degrees—for their failure “to protect pupils from ‘all kinds of vice,’” (173), an evaluation with which modern secular educators would be familiar. He would have approved home schooling with a tutor, or small private boarding schools, but only if they maintained a curriculum of which he approved. Although he advocated for educating the poor, he did not support educational systems or institutions that threatened the social, cultural, and gender expectations of his era. Linda Ryan's nuanced, comprehensive, and carefully crafted study puts Wesley in his context but also reminds us why our contemporary debates about education are so fraught. The various stakeholders cannot agree on the purpose of education, let alone how it might best be achieved. This book shines a light on some of the reasons why and how our current state of affairs came to be.