10 research outputs found
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The M.L.S. Degree: Time for a Two-Year Program?
The author began working by asking a question: how well are library schools preparing students for future participation in the library profession? She thought that one year is not long enough for students to gain what they need to become a library and information science professional. She suggested library schools to undertake a major restructuring of their programs and recommended a two-year M.L.S. program
Payment by Results
Today the public is demanding that it exercise more control over how tax dollars are spent in the educational sphere, with multitudes also canvassing that education become closely aligned to the marketplace's economic forces. In this paper I examine an historical precedent for such demands, i.e. the comprehensive 19th century system of accountability, "Payment by Results," which endured in English and Welsh elementary schools from 1862 until 1897. Particular emphasis is focused on the economic market-driven aspect of the system whereby every pupil was examined annually by an Inspector, the amount of the governmental grant being largely dependent on the answering. I argue that this was a narrow, restrictive system of educational accountability though one totally in keeping with the age's pervasive utilitarian belief in laissez-faire. I conclude by observing that this Victorian system might be suggestive to us today when calls for analogous schemes of educational accountability are shrill
Patrick Touher. Fear of the Collar: Artane Industrial School. Dublin: The O'Brien Press, 1991. Pp. 176.
Sandra L. Hindman, ed. Printing the Written Word: The Social History of Books, circa 1450-1520. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1991.
The rise of popular literacy in Victorian England: The influence of private choice and public policy : By . Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992. xxiii 340 pp. Price: $36.95. (0-8122-3075-2)
Richard Aldrich. School and Society in Victorian Britain: Joseph Payne and the New World of Education. New York and London: Garland, 1995. Pp. xxvi, 317.
Payment by Resul ts ( 1862- 1897): Ensuring a Good Return on Governmental Expenditure
"Payment by results" ( 1862- 1897) was a system whereby the annual governmental grant for English and Welsh elementary schools depended for the most part on how well pupils answered in the examination conducted by Her Majesty's Inspectors. In this article I review its origin, its principles, its practice, and its effects. My main conclusion is that it was a narrow, restrictive, Philistine system of educational accountability. It impeded for the second half of the 19th century any hope that England's elementary education might swiftly advance from its generally appalling condition during the first half of the century when the theories and practices scorned in the likes of Dickens's Hard Times were more the norm than the exception