Extract from the Rector of Hackney's sermon on the 150th anniversary of the death of Joshua Watson
We are a church for children. We think of our scouts and our guides. We think of our two church schools which are doing so well and of which we are rightly proud. These schools are part of our national education system, a system which ensures that every boy and girl in our land has a school to go to. 

It wasn't always like that. If you were a child two hundred years ago you were lucky to get any kind of education. 

One man changed all that. His name was Joshua Watson. He went to St John-at-Hackney church. His brother John Watson was Rector of the parish for nearly forty years. They called Joshua Watson 'the best layman in England'. Joshua Watson was determined that there should be a school in every parish in the country. 

He wanted children to go to school, not to be sent down mines or to work long hours in factories. He and some like-minded friends - they came to be known as the Hackney Phalanx - founded The National Society, the movement which built hundreds of new schools providing instruction in the three Rs and in basic religious education for even - indeed for especially - the poorest children. 

He was a prodigiously able and energetic man and, with other members of the Hackney Phalanx, he did much else besides - particularly to stir up the rather sleepy Church of England of his day! 

For example, he founded the Additional Curates Society. And, looking beyond Britain, he was responsible for the establishment of a number of missionary bishoprics.

Joshua Watson died on the 30th January 1855 and is buried in St John-at-Hackney churchyard. On his memorial plaque inside our church are these words: God giveth to the man that is good in his sight, wisdom knowledge and joy. Those words are an appropriate tribute to the character of Joshua Watson. They also tell us what he believed about education. Watson recognised that there are all sorts of things that a child needs to know. But he saw that children need more than knowledge. He wanted the children who went to the schools he started, to grow up to be wise and good. He understood that children learn best when they are happy. He believed that joy is what God intends for his children and so joy too must be a goal of education.

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