Richard Mulcaster

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Richard Mulcaster, one of the greatest British educational visionaries, is known best for his headmasterships and paedegogic writings.

In 1561 he became the first headmaster of Merchant Taylors' School in London, where he wrote his two treatises on education, Positions (1581) and Elementarie (1582). Merchant Taylors' School was at that time the largest school in the country, and Mulcaster worked to establish a rigourous curriculum which was to set the standard for education in Latin, Greek and Hebrew. In 1596 became high master of St Paul's School.

Mulcaster was born into the gentry in Carlisle, and began his formal education at Eton College, from where he progressed to King's College, Cambridge. Throughout his time at Cambridge and later at Oxford, he met important scholars who were to influence his later thinking, including Sir John Cheke and John Caius. By the time he left Oxford, Mulcaster was known for his intellectual prowess in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, which he took to Merchant Taylors' School.

Richard Mulcasters writings remain important in the study of humanist education and the sixteenth century.

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