“For Home, Country and Race”: The Gendered Ideals of Citizenship in English Elementary and Evening Continuation Schools, 1885-1914

Between 1885 and 1914, English Elementary and Evening Continuation Schools - the institutions designed to cater to the educational needs of the working class - engaged in both formal and informal efforts to indoctrinate their students in the principles of “good citizenship”. This ideological initiative was an attempt to construct “appropriate” individual and collective character traits in children, many of whom were never expected to attain formal political rights. The books and lessons of the schools tended to romanticize English history and use specific figures from the past to explain values and traits deemed especially worthy in the“good citizen”. This article points to the ways in which these projected civic virtues were explained to working-class boys through association with accepted notions of virtuous masculinity. Demonstrated with examples of both real and fictitious martial heroes this masculine code resembled the ethic of service to the nation prevalent in elite educational culture, but with an entirely different result implied.Entre 1885 et 1914, les écoles du soir élémentaires anglaises - institutions qui avaient été créées pour répondre aux besoins scolaires de la classe ouvrière - s'efforcèrent d'endoctriner officiellement et officieusement leurs élèves et de leur inculquer les principes qui feraient d'eux de « bons citoyens ». Par cette initiative idéologique, on tentait de donner aux enfants des traits de caractère individuel et collectif « adéquats », même si on savait que nombre de ces enfants n'obtiendraient jamais de véritables droits politiques. Le contenu des livres et les leçons dispensées dans les écoles avaient tendance à romancer l'histoire anglaise et recouraient à des données historiques spécifiques pour présenter les valeurs et les traits de caractère jugés particulièrement dignes d'un « bon citoyen ». Le présent article démontre comment on expliquait aux garçons de la classe ouvrière ces vertus civiques en les associant aux notions acceptées de la masculinité vertueuse. S'appuyant sur des exemples de héros guerriers à la fois réels et fictifs, ce code masculin s'apparentait à l'éthique préconisant le service à la nation, message qui imprégnait la culture scolaire de l'élite, mais qui suggérait des résultats entièrement différents

Younger Infants in the Elementary School: Discursively Constructing the Under-Fives in Institutional Spaces and Practices

Expansion of state-regulation of education and care for under-fives in England has seen increasing numbers of under-fives attending primary school early years provision in the 21st century’s opening decades. However, this is not entirely novel as under-fives attending elementary school feature in numerous 19th and 20th century reports. This article examines how under-fives have been discursively constructed in three reports between 1861 and 1933. Changing conceptualizations of under-fives are reflected in these documents. Shifting discourses of schooling, child development and curriculum are deployed, adapted or silenced to frame and judge the personal, social and moral conduct of the young child and parent. This normalizing discursive gaze positions the spaces and practices of schooling as necessary interventions inculcating specific governmentally designated desirable aspects of the child. Under-fives are enmeshed in an advancing process of educational colonization that removes them from the home, coming to dominate their time and experiences as young children. Current trends towards earlier school starting ages, longer daily hours, and the forensic use of data to chart progress towards expected goals is extension of this pattern. Attending to the genealogy of the discursive rationalization of this process helps us to critique how similar contemporary policy arguments are made

Geographically touring the eastern bloc: British geography, travel cultures and the Cold War

This paper considers the role of travel in the generation of geographical knowledge of the eastern bloc by British geographers. Based on oral history and surveys of published work, the paper examines the roles of three kinds of travel experience: individual private travels, tours via state tourist agencies, and tours by academic delegations. Examples are drawn from across the eastern bloc, including the USSR, Poland, Romania, East Germany and Albania. The relationship between travel and publication is addressed, notably within textbooks, and in the Geographical Magazine. The study argues for the extension of accounts of cultures of geographical travel, and seeks to supplement the existing historiography of Cold War geography