George Bernard Shaw was born in Synge Street, Dublin in 1856 to George Carr Shaw (1814-1885), whose father was Bernard Shaw, an unsuccessful grain merchant and sometime civil servant, and Lucinda Elizabeth Shaw, née Gurly (1830-1913), a professional singer. He had two sisters, Lucinda Frances (1853-1920), a singer of musical comedy and light opera, and Elinor Agnes (1854-1876). George briefly attended the Wesleyan Connexional School, a grammar school operated by the Methodist New Connexion, before moving to a private school near Dalkey and then transferring to Dublins Central Model School. He ended his formal education at the Dublin English Scientific and Commercial Day School. He harbored a lifelong animosity toward schools and teachers, saying, Schools and schoolmasters, as we have them today, are not popular as places of education and teachers, but rather prisons and turnkeys in which children are kept to prevent them disturbing and chaperoning their parents. Shaw expressed this attitude in the astringent prologue to Cashel Byrons Profession where young Byrons educational experience is a fictionalized description of Shaws own schooldays. Later he painstakingly detailed the reasons for his aversion to formal education in his Treatise on Parents and Children. In brief, he considered the standardized curricula useless, deadening to the spirit and stifling to the intellect. He particularly deplored the use of corporal punishment, which was prevalent in his time.
Posted on: Sat, 02 Nov 2013 22:28:17 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015