"The charter schools, founded in the early eighteenth century, were envisaged by their supporters as the positive side to government policy towards the Roman Catholics of Ireland. The various penal laws sought to restrict power to those with an interest in maintaining the Protestant (Anglican) state, while the charter schools were to open the scriptures to the children of the poor, educating them in the Protestant habits of loyalty to the Hanoverian crown, of industry and of good husbandry." "In 1733-4 the Incorporated Society for Promoting English Protestant Working Schools in Ireland was granted its charter. In the course of a century, over a million pounds in government funding was provided for the establishment and running of these schools. But the results fell far short of expectations." "Chapters on the origins of the schools, on their administration, their everyday routine and their curriculum, will reveal many reasons for their failure. Yet the charter schools were never intended to be the places of horror, the prototypes of Dotheboys Hall, that they so frequently became. How did it happen that, established with such high hopes for advancing the cause of the Reformation in Ireland, they ended by seriously discrediting it?" "This study draws largely on manuscript sources, official and otherwise, in repositories in the England and Ireland. The picture that emerges is of an organisation insufficiently aware of the existence within its own system of those very phenomena central to its purpose: the frailty of human nature and the prevalence of Original Sin!"--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
The second edition of this handbook provides a state-of-the-art overview on the various aspects in the rapidly developing field of robotics. Reaching for the human frontier, robotics is vigorously engaged in the growing challenges of new emerging domains. Interacting, exploring, and working with humans, the new generation of robots will increasingly touch people and their lives. The credible prospect of practical robots among humans is the result of the scientific endeavour of a half a century of robotic developments that established robotics as a modern scientific discipline. The ongoing vibrant expansion and strong growth of the field during the last decade has fueled this second edition of the Springer Handbook of Robotics. The first edition of the handbook soon became a landmark in robotics publishing and won the American Association of Publishers PROSE Award for Excellence in Physical Sciences & Mathematics as well as the organization’s Award for Engineering & Technology. The second edition of the handbook, edited by two internationally renowned scientists with the support of an outstanding team of seven part editors and more than 200 authors, continues to be an authoritative reference for robotics researchers, newcomers to the field, and scholars from related disciplines. The contents have been restructured to achieve four main objectives: the enlargement of foundational topics for robotics, the enlightenment of design of various types of robotic systems, the extension of the treatment on robots moving in the environment, and the enrichment of advanced robotics applications. Further to an extensive update, fifteen new chapters have been introduced on emerging topics, and a new generation of authors have joined the handbook’s team. A novel addition to the second edition is a comprehensive collection of multimedia references to more than 700 videos, which bring valuable insight into the contents. The videos can be viewed directly augmented into the text with a smartphone or tablet using a unique and specially designed app. Springer Handbook of Robotics Multimedia Extension Portal: http://handbookofrobotics.org/