Robert Raikes
Robert Raikes ( born 14 September 1735 in Gloucester, † April 5, 1811 ibid. ) Was an English newspaper publisher and social reformer. He is considered the founder of the Sunday School.
Biography
Raikes was the son of the owner's printing and newspaper publisher Robert Raikes (* 1690, † 1757) and his wife Mary Drew (* 1710, † 1756 ) was born in the southwestern English city of Gloucester. He attended first the Crypt School and later the King's School, a 1541 set up by Henry VIII Cathedral School ( Cathedral School ). After that he made with his father, who founded in 1722 the newspaper "The Gloucester Journal," a printing apprenticeship. After his father's death in 1757 Robert Raikes inherited the printing company and took over the publishing line. He enlarged the scope of the Gloucester Journal and improved layout.
His father was considered an early pioneer of press freedom and the younger Robert Raikes used his newspaper philanthropic ideas. He turned decisively against the inhumane prison conditions in English prisons and against the roaring trade with alcohol. Particularly intense, he criticized the lack of education opportunities for the emerging industrial proletariat. 1780 Raikes founded in Sooty Alley a Sunday school, in which he let the children of poor chimney sweeper, who had often contribute by child labor to the livelihood of families teach reading, writing, arithmetic and religion.
Raikes concern was the revival preacher John Wesley (1703-1791) promoted actively. In 1785 he gave Raikes the possibility of his educational ideas in the Methodist program sheet " Arminian Magazine" imagine what the Sunday School movement to break through. Robert Raikes wrote the reader " Redinmadesy " (Reading made easy ) for the children's education. However, the Bible was always at the center of the curriculum. 1802 Raikes retired from public life. His Sunday school movement was formed in 1803 with the union of the London Sunday School Union much attention and sparked an international diaconal movement.