Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Rooper, Thomas Godolphin
ROOPER, THOMAS GODOLPHIN (1847–1903), writer on education, born at Abbots Ripton, Huntingdonshire, on 26 Dec. 1847, was son of William Henry Rooper, rector of Abbots Ripton, by his third wife, Frances Catherine, younger daughter of John Heathcote of Conington Castle, Huntingdonshire. Rooper's father was a liberal high churchman. In 1862 Rooper was sent to Harrow into the boarding-house of Dr. H. M. Butler, recently appointed headmaster. In his essay 'Lyonesse' Rooper vividly describes his school days at Harrow (1862-1866), where he began his lifelong study of botany, being one of the founders of the school scientific society. In October 1866 he went to Balliol College, Oxford, taking a second class both in classical moderations in 1868 and in the final classical schools in 1870. To Benjamin Jowett [q. v. Suppl. I], T. H. Green [q. v.], and his college friend, Bernard Bosanquet, his chief intellectual debt was due. He felt that Green's teaching laid the foundation of the beliefs in which he lived and worked. As an undergraduate Rooper intended to take orders, but in 1872 conscientious difficulties deterred him, though he remained till death a communicant lay member of the Church of England. From 1871 to 1877 he was private tutor to Herbrand Russell (afterwards eleventh duke of Bedford), gaining experience in teaching, studying German education, and acquiring a knowledge of history, literature, and science. After teaching for a few months Dr. Butler's young children at Harrow, he was appointed in Nov. 1877 inspector of schools under the Education Department, and spent the rest of his life in the public service, successively in Northumberland, in the Bradford district, and in the Southampton district, including the Isle of Wight.
His influence upon the teachers, the inspectorate, public opinion, and the policy of the board of education grew steadily from year to year. The specific service which he rendered to English elementary education lay mainly (1) in his efforts for the improvement of the teaching of geography, (2) in his encouragement of manual training, (3) in his influence upon methods of teaching in infant schools, (4) in the reforms which he secured in the professional and general education of younger teachers, and (5) in the closer adaptation of the course of study in rural schools to the conditions of country life, especially by the practical encouragement of school gardens. To improve the teaching of geography he wrote two papers, organised a geographical exhibition at fcadford in 1887, and in 1897 founded a Geographical Society at Southampton. Manual training he regarded as a necessary part of general education. He prepared himself for the advocacy of this educational reform by studying Dr. Goetze's work in Leipzig, and by attending Slōjd classes at Naas. His ideas on the subject were set forth in four important papers. He made a special study of the subject of drawing in infant schools, and of reforms in the methods of teaching children in the lower classes of the elementary schools. Both in the West Riding and in Southampton and the Isle of Wight he initiated classes for ex-pupil teachers, which met an urgent local need, and were subsequently taken over by the local education authorities. In the movement for the improvement of the curriculum of rural schools, Rooper played an unobtrusive but highly influential part. He was unsparing in his attendance at meetings held to advance the cause of rural education, and by the establishment of a school garden at Boscombe provided a model for imitation in other parts of England. His experiments in this field had influence upon the improvement of rural education in Canada. In all these activities Rooper was almost lavish in the financial aid which he privately gave to educational experiments at their critical stage. And in every case he mastered the practical technique of the improvements which he advocated, not only by visits to foreign countries, but by strenuous private study and by investigation in different parts of England. He constantly examined the house of education at Ambleside for his friend, Miss Mason, the founder of the Parents' National Educational Union, for the meetings of which many of his best addresses were prepared. And in the last years of his life he devoted much time and labour to the foundation of the Hartley University College at Southampton.
Rooper's official work began while the elementary schools were still cramped by the narrow traditions of formal training, and by the effects of the system of 'payment by results.' He was one of the inspectors who breathed a new spirit into the methods of English elementary education. Always exacting a high standard, he rose above formalism and routine. He threw himself into every movement likely to interest teachers in their profession and to humanise their work.
Rooper died unmarried at Southampton on 20 May 1903, from spinal tuberculosis, and was buried in the old cemetery there. A memorial tablet is at Hartley University College, Southampton; a memorial scholarship was founded at the same college, and a memorial prize for geography at the Bradford grammar school.
Rooper's chief publications were: 1. 'The Lines upon which Standards I. and II. should be taught under the Latest Code' (Hull and London), 1895. 2. 'School and Home Life' (Hull and London), 1896; new edit. 1907. 3. 'Reading and Recitation,' written in conjunction with Mr. F. B. Lott (Hull and London), 1898. 4. 'Educational Studies and Addresses,' 1902. 5. 'School Gardens in Germany' (in 'Board of Education's Special Reports on Educational Subjects, vol. 9), 1902. He also contributed papers to 'Hand and Eye,' a manual training magazine. The 'Selected Writings of Thomas Godolphin Rooper,' edited by R. G. Tatton (1907), contains an excellent memoir and good portrait, and a selection of papers already published in Nos. (2) and (4) above, together with 'Handwork in Education,' 'Practical Lastruction in Rural Schools,' and other essays.
[Memoir by R. G. Tatton in Rooper's Selected Writings, 1907; family information; personal knowledge.]