ABSTRACT
The best governed State will be that which shall possess best national system of education”. Robert Owen wrote these words in 1814, when he was at the height of his successful experiment at New Lanark. It was largely Owen’s work in schools of New Lanark that first made him a great figure in the world. From moment when he assumed control of the mills there, he began planning the means of putting his educational ideas into practice. Owen criticised Dr. Bell and Joseph Lancaster because, while they had suggested improvements in “methods” of education, they seemed to him to have no conception of its living purpose and fundamental idea. Owen’s contention was that education was paying proposition for the manufacturer as well as a national and international need. From 1800 to 1813 Owen pursued his educational work without any attempt to institute a propagandist campaign, or any public avowal of the wider meaning which it bore in his own mind.
