Our early life at school and university is formative for our characters and interests. This is as true now as it was when Adam Smith began his education at Kirkcaldy Burgh School nearly 300 years ago. Smith is a world famous figure, the founder of the modern discipline of economics, and by many accounts a genius in the true sense of the word. In what follows I want to explore how the early educational experiences Smith had in Scotland helped him to become the famous figure he is today.
Smith was born in 1723 and began his education in Kirkcaldy before moving on to Glasgow University in 1737 at the age of 14. His early life must have been difficult. His father, also called Adam Smith, died before young Adam was born. Smith was raised by his mother, Margaret Douglas, a strong-willed woman to whom he remained close for the rest of his life. Margaret Douglas came from a land-owning family in Fife and so the young Adam enjoyed a degree of financial security and the support of a number of influential relations.
Under the supervision of his mother and various friends of the family the young Adam grew up in the small Fife port where his father had been Commissioner of Customs. His early education would have taken place in the family home and been shaped by his mother’s deep religious faith and his late father’s collection of books. His formal education was in the Burgh School at Kirkcaldy where he joined the sons (but not daughters) of the merchants and tradesmen who formed the population of the small town.
The Burgh Schoolmaster was David Miller. A gifted teacher whom the Burgh Council poached from the county town of Cupar. Miller developed an innovative approach to learning that went beyond the stereotype of memorisation and rote learning. His aim seems to have been to find ways of bringing learning to life and making it exciting for his young charges. The students read classical texts such as Epictetus and Eutropius and learned Latin from an early age. Adam Smith’s schoolboy copy of Eutropius is in Kirkcaldy Museum, with his signature on the inside of the cover dating it to May 4th 1733. A ten year old boy already learning ancient languages.
Another common classroom practice was learning and presenting the arguments found in a book. Smith would have been expected to read a few pages of a book and then present them to class from memory as though they were his own ideas. His fellow students would then question him and he would have to defend the argument as though it were his own. Smith would have excelled at this as we know that he had a passion for books and an extraordinary memory. Miller also used morality plays in education. One of these had the rather grand title ‘A Royal Counsel for Advice; or regular Education for Boys the Foundation of all other Improvements.’ The students were assigned parts in the play and performed for
their parents.
Adam Smith benefitted from the first class education that was provided by the burgh school system of eighteenth century Scotland. In this system talented young boys were supported and pushed to excel in their lessons. Education was seen as a means of advancement for those from humble backgrounds. Smith’s small class in a small burgh school also produced other notable figures. His school friends included James Oswald of Dunnikier, son of a local landowner who went on to become an important politician; Robert Adam, the famous architect responsible for The University of Edinburgh’s Old College, and John Drysdale,
a minister and Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. From a very early age Smith was used to socialising and discussing ideas with intelligent and well-educated people. Smith clearly loved school and excelled in his classes, so much so that when he went on to Glasgow University at the age of 14 he was allowed to enter directly into second year.
In 1737 The University of Glasgow was a small institution based in the Old College on the High Street of Glasgow (near the modern High Street station). It was developing a reputation for being at the cutting edge in teaching delivery. Since its foundation the curriculum had focussed on the classics and religious education, but from the early eighteenth century a series of important changes were made. The University was among the first to appoint specialist professors for each subject and introduce modern subjects such as medicine, chemistry, and law.
Smith’s favourite professor was the Irish born professor of moral philosophy Francis Hutcheson. Hutcheson was a famous moral philosopher, but he was also deeply interested in what made education successful. Hutcheson abandoned lecturing in Latin, making the material more accessible to students. He also supplemented the classical authors with modern thinkers, adding Grotius, Pufendorf, John Locke and Bernard Mandeville to the moral philosophy curriculum. In his written work Hutcheson was fascinated by how human beings formed ideas about right and wrong and wanted to understand how we become
moral and what that means for society.
Hutcheson was a gifted lecturer who was able to inspire his students by bringing the material to life. Like David Miller at Kirkcaldy, Hutcheson wanted to provide his students with a solid intellectual grounding, but also like Millar, he was keen to shape the character of his students. The aim was to make the young men in his classroom into good people, to give them sound principles in addition to knowledge and to send them out into the world equipped to succeed. Indeed the Scottish education system was noted for its practical emphasis, the breadth of subjects covered, and the focus on inculcating virtue into the students. In addition to Hutcheson, Smith’s other favourite professor was Robert Simson,
the professor of mathematics. The young Smith showed a great deal of interest in science and this is something that stayed with him throughout his life. We don’t know much about what he got up to as a student or who were his friends among his fellow students. We do know that among them were Tobias Smollett, the famous novelist, who studied medicine; Rev. Alexander Carlyle, the noted diarist and church minister; Gavin Hamilton, the famous painter; and General Robert Melville, Governor of the West Indies. Once again Smith found himself amongst a group of bright and ambitious people who wanted to learn and to
discuss ideas.
His talent as a student secured him a Snell Exhibition, a scholarship which funded six years of study at Balliol College, Oxford. It’s fair to say that Smith was not impressed by the teaching at Oxford and compares it unfavourably to the experience at Glasgow. On his return to Scotland he was soon appointed as a professor at the University of Glasgow.
It was at Glasgow that he began the research that would become his two great books The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776). Smith was a gifted and popular lecturer. Though not as rhetorically gifted as Hutcheson, he became something of a celebrity. Students would discuss his ideas and he set a fashion for political economy in the wider city. You could buy a stucco bust of Smith in
the city bookshop and John Millar explains that he was so popular and affection for his eccentricity so great, that students started to adopt his pronunciation and manner of speaking. When Smith taught he would use the same methods he had experienced under David Miller and Francis Hutcheson. He attracted students from England, America, Geneva, and Russia. Among the most famous of his students were James Boswell, the biographer and diarist, and John Millar, Professor of Civil Law at Glasgow.
Smith immersed himself in the intellectual and social life of the University. His colleagues included the scientists William Cullen and Joseph Black; the engineer James Watt whose workshop developed scientific instruments; and the Foulis Brothers who opened a printing press producing beautiful copies of classical texts and who also started an Academy of Fine Arts teaching painting, sculpture and engraving. The University built its own observatory in the 1750s and had a physic and botanical garden (where Professor Simson’s pet cow wandered freely). Smith was also a member of Robert Simson’s club. This was a university club that met in the University tavern on Friday evenings and then on Saturday walked to
the nearby village of Anderston for lunch. It was famed for its relaxed intellectual conversation, its card playing (Smith was an unpopular partner at whist as he would get lost in a train of thought and forget to play his hand) and for Professor Simson singing ancient Greek odes to modern tunes. Once again Smith surrounded himself with bright people for debate and conversation. This group became known as the Scottish Enlightenment. He was
friends with all of the main figures. His closest friends were David Hume, the philosopher and historian; Joseph Black the chemist who discovered Carbon Dioxide and Latent Heat; and the father of modern Geology James Hutton. He was a member of the main Enlightenment clubs and societies where ideas were exchanged and theories developed. Smith was also deeply interested in what the Scots called ‘improvement,’ the practical application of science and technology to improve the lives of the population.
In Glasgow he joined the Provost’s Political Economy Club. Glasgow had begun to develop as a trading and manufacturing city and to take advantage of its geographic location and become a major port for trade with North America. The main trade was in tobacco produced by slave labour in Britain’s North American colonies. This in turn developed a ship owning and building industry and an industry in re-exporting tobacco. By the 1770s Glasgow handled above 50% of all the tobacco imported into Britain.
The Glasgow Tobacco Lords, whose names live on today in the street names of Glasgow’s Merchant City, lobbied government to secure their control of this trade. People often point to Smith learning about the economy by watching the nascent industries developing in Glasgow. While this is certainly true, what is perhaps more of a puzzle is how he developed such strong views against merchants, colonies, and slavery in a city, and amongst a group of people he socialised with, who were all profiting from it. It seems he was open about his
economic ideas even in the discussions with the Tobacco Lords.
Smith could see in Glasgow a city that was changing at an astonishing rate and he wanted to understand what was driving those changes. Smith’s fondness for Glasgow and the University is shown by his pleasure at being appointed Rector shortly before he died, and also in the fact that he sent his heir, David Douglas, to Glasgow to board with Professor John Millar and study law. The Adam Smith that we know today was shaped by his early life and education in Kirkcaldy and Glasgow. As a bright young man he was able to benefit from
gifted teachers, to read widely, and to discuss what he read with the students he spent time with. Smith clearly loved the school, the university, and the clubs and societies in Glasgow and Edinburgh. They shaped his thinking. But we should also remember that, for all his sociability, Smith also loved to be on his own. When it came time to write the Wealth of Nations he returned to his Mother’s home and to the solitude of Kirkcaldy. Here he was able to arrange his thoughts during long walks on the beach. It is no surprise that a major section of Book V of the Wealth of Nations ended up being about education. Smith’s own education and experience as a teacher shaped his thinking and awareness of how important education is to society.
Craig Smith is Professor of the History of Political Thought at
the University of Glasgow and Editor of The Adam Smith Review.
He researches the moral and political philosophy of the Scottish
Enlightenment. He is the author of Adam Smith’s Political
Philosophy; Adam Ferguson and the Idea of Civil Society, and
Adam Smith. He is co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to
the Scottish Enlightenment and The Oxford Handbook of Adam
Smith.
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