ABSTRACT
Herbert Spencer had little experience of teaching but he had the most far-reaching influence on teaching and teacher training; he was compared by R. H. Quick in his Essays on Educational Reformers with Mulcaster, Ascham and Locke, and H. E. Armstrong advised all teachers to read Spencer's Education to 'have clear ideas on the subject'. Herbert Spencer's early education was however neglected and at the age of 13 he was sent to live near Bath with his uncle Thomas Huxley, a radical thinker and priest. He learnt a lot from the former don at Cambridge and was offered a place at the university at the age of 16, which he declined. Though Thomas experience of teaching and of young people was very limited, he pronounced with great authority in his dogmatic way but also with great acclaim on the whole gamut of education– child development, curriculum, teaching methods.
