Hartlib, Samuel (c. 1600–c. 1670)

Prussian-born English agriculturist and writer on education. He was an important leader of a circle of education reformers during the Puritan revolution. Hartlib left no precise statement of his educational ideas, and it is not easy to determine his own precise contribution; but he and his circle were firm advocates of a state-controlled system of universal education and of what would now be termed ‘relevant curriculum’. He also urged the importance of developmental psychology linked in turn with the empirical philosophy of Francis Bacon.

His demand for state control of education was overtaken by events, for, after 1660 and the Clarendon Code (a series of acts directed against Nonconformists; see Edward Clarendon), the Nonconformists, who were his intellectual heirs, were firmly convinced that government was the enemy of freedom, and Hartlib's main influence may have been on the Nonconformist academies of the 18th century.

The son of a Polish merchant, Hartlib was born in Elking, Prussia. He emigrated to England c. 1626, and became acquainted with the poet John Milton, who dedicated his ‘Tractate on Education’ (1644) to him.