ABSTRACT
The circulating schools were conceived on a less liberal plan than even the S.P.C.K. schools. In Wales the latter gave a four-year course in reading, writing, religious instruction, and singing. In the Welch Piety Griffith Jones refers to his schools as ‘catechetical schools’. It is clear that the educational work of the schools, in the broad sense in which these words are understood, was completely subordinated to the duty of catechetical instruction. Paradoxically, the success of the schools is shown also by the alarm his enterprise created in the breasts of his fellow-clergymen. Their objections centred around two main points: the fear that his schools would foster the continuance of the Welsh language, and the fact that they promoted Methodism and Dissent. The objections of the Methodists to catechizing were on the grounds that it ‘dries up the spirits’ of the faithful and ‘creates hypocrites in the Church’.
