A Plea for Ragged Schools; or, Prevention Better than Cure: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

A Plea for Ragged Schools; or, Prevention Better than Cure, credited to Thomas Guthrie, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of A Plea for Ragged Schools; or, Prevention Better than Cure by Thomas Guthrie. Read in English by MaryAnn The Reverend Thomas Guthrie was first introduced to the idea of ragged schools in 1841, while acting as the Parish Minister of St. John's Church in Edinburgh. On a visit to Portsmouth, he saw a picture of John Pounds and felt inspired and humbled by the crippled cobbler's work. Pounds had been injured in a shipbuilding accident at the age of 15. He later became a shoemaker and, in 1818, he began teaching poor children without charging fees. He actively recruited children and young people to his school, spending time on the streets and quays making contact and even bribing them to come with the offer of baked potatoes. He began teaching local children reading, writing, and arithmetic. He also gave lessons in cooking, carpentry and shoe making until his death in 1839. Pounds became an inspiration for others seeking to address the needs of impoverished children. Guthrie opened his first ragged school in 1847. Although this was not the first ragged school in Scotland, Guthrie was later acknowledged as a core leader of the movement. His 'Plea for Ragged Schools', published in March 1847 to garner the public's support for a school in the city, laid out his arguments and proved highly influential. Ragged Schools had a unique curriculum; education, regular meals, clothes, 'industrial training' and Christian instruction. Most of the children who attended the schools did not remain overnight but were in school for 11 to 12 hours a day. The teachers worked to win over the children with kindness. "These Arabs of the city are wild as those of the desert, and must be broken into three habits, – those of discipline, learning and industry, not to speak of cleanliness. To accomplish this, our trust is in the almost omnipotent power of Christian kindness. Hard words and harder blows are thrown away here. With these alas they are too familiar at home, and have learned to be as indifferent to them as the smith's dog to the shower of sparks." Guthrie saw the Ragged Schools as his most enduring legacy; "I never engaged in a cause, as a man and a Christian minister that I believe on my death-bed I will look back on with more pleasure or gratitude to God, than that he led me to work for Ragged Schools. I have the satisfaction, when I lay my head upon my pillow, of always finding one soft part of it: and that is, that God has made me an instrument in His hand of saving many a poor creature from a life of misery and crime” (Thomas Guthrie and Sons, Autobiography and Memoirs, London, 1896). Amongst Guthrie’s last words he was overheard to say “a brand plucked from the burning!” His legacy was that through his vision and love for his Savior, the Ragged School movement was established which in turn plucked thousands of little brands from a life of poverty and crime, and brought them to know the ultimate friend of sinners. (Summary by Wikipedia and MaryAnn)

Recording facts

• Recording title: A Plea for Ragged Schools; or, Prevention Better than Cure
• Author credits: Thomas Guthrie
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 3
• Listed recording duration: 1:42:41

Catalogue topics

• children
• poverty
• christian
• charity
• tenement
• charity school
• ragged school
• street urchins

Track guide

1. 01 - A Plea for Ragged Schools, Part 1 — 31:11
2. 02 - A Plea for Ragged Schools, Part 2 — 40:10
3. 03 - Appendices — 31:20

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Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.