Inside a hall of mirrors: residential care and the shifting constructions of childhood in mid‐twentieth‐century Britain

Drawing on imagery from promotional literature produced between 1930 and 1960 by the National Children’s Home, a British child welfare charity, this article focuses upon constructions of childhood and child development in the context of residential care for children. It suggests that photographs and their related captions are rich sources through which to explore the significance of time and space for constructions of childhood and to consider the ways in which childhood constitutes and is constituted by ideas of home and family. The article examines the significance of key pieces of legislation, including the 1933 Children and Young Persons Act and the 1948 Children Act, for the representation of children in residential care and identifies the ways in which portrayals of childcare were shaped by wider social and political change. In turn, continuities in concerns about the physical health, education and employability of children in care are traced together with changes in what were understood to be the “natural” spaces and places of childhood. As a whole, the article examines the excess of meanings that were embedded in the portrayal of children without home or family and, through its readings of the imagery, foregrounds the silences, contradictions and paradoxes in the narratives of residential childcare through this 30‐year period.     

Within the European Periphery: education and labor mobility in twentieth‐century Spain

The essay presents a novel estimate of human capital in Spain during most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as measured by average years of schooling at the three main educational levels. The new estimate confirms long‐term, regional and gender trends already identified by literacy levels. It shows that most of the human capital embodied in the Spanish population until well into the second half of the twentieth century was due to expanded primary schooling rather than to secondary or university studies and it identifies the Civil War of 1936 as one of the most serious setbacks during two centuries of slow and irregular human capital accumulation. Primary schooling determined labor mobility in twentieth‐century Spain during the 1920s and the 1960s as people moved away from agriculture and into industry and services. The decision to migrate was a household rather than an individual one: the education of those who did not emigrate – elder males and females of all ages – was as relevant as that of the actual emigrants. The Civil War and the early years of the Franco regime, by contributing to the depletion of the stock of human capital, had negative effects upon labor mobility as recently as the 1960s.     

Gender,science and modernity in seventeenth‐century England

The seventeenth century in England, bounded by the scientific stimulus of Francis Bacon at the beginning and Isaac Newton at the end, seemingly saw a huge leap from the Aristotelian dialectic of the past to a reconstruction of knowledge based on inductive methods, empirical investigation and cooperative research. In mid‐century, Puritan reformers inspired both by the scientific thinking of Bacon and by the educational reforms of Comenius, hoped that educational reform at both school and university level would follow political and religious changes. In 1661, after the restoration of the monarchy, the founding of the Royal Society suggested that acceptance of experimental and practical science at the highest level had been achieved and that this would impinge on education. None of these assumptions can be accepted at face value. Indeed, the whole intellectual and educational history of the seventeenth century is far more complex than often portrayed. Various scientific and philosophical world‐views and different methods of scientific investigation jostled for supremacy and major leaps forward in scientific knowledge were often a combination of some of these. The physical sciences still came under the umbrella of ‘natural philosophy’. Nevertheless, this period is seen as the beginnings of a scientific revolution that has profoundly affected, even generated the modern world. Generally such developments have been both hailed and derided as masculinist. Earlier historians usually neither saw nor looked for women's place in scientific development: more recently, feminist historians have both tried to correct the picture and sought to explain the exclusion of women from most of it. Some have seen Western science itself in this period constructing notions of masculinity and femininity that would prevent women participating in the scientific ventures which represent modernity. This article will investigate the position of women within the scientific and educational developments of seventeenth‐century England. The development of Baconian science and its effects on Puritan reformers, especially Samuel Hartlib, John Dury and other like‐minded scholars, will be examined. It will be shown that their ideals, like those of Jan Comenius whom they admired and worked with, had positive implications for female education. Although, however, some females were affected by the educational reforming impulses of the Hartlib circle, in the changeable political and intellectual world of seventeenth‐century England, very little lasting reform was achieved. Generally women were not well educated in this period. They were excluded from formal educational institutions such as the grammar school and the university although these were not necessarily where scientific and educational reform took place. The advent of printing in the sixteenth century and the growth of scientific lectures in the seventeenth enabled upper and some middle‐ranking women to take part in some of the intellectual ferment of the day and women naturally had a place in science through their culinary and medical roles. Contemporary research has uncovered some of the scientific work done by women and stimulated significant discussion on what can be counted as ‘science’. In England, female relatives of those who espoused scientific and educational reform were themselves involved in such initiatives. On the other hand, they were shut out from membership of the Royal Society for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge, established in 1662, or any other formal institution. Some women were affected by Cartesianism and other scientific theories including those on both natural magic and more occult philosophies. This was a century, however, when unorthodox thinking could meet with frightful consequences and eminent thinkers across the continent fell foul of religious and political authorities. The period was shamed by the highest number of witchcraft trials ever in Central and Western Europe, including England, chiefly against women, albeit mainly the old and the poor. In the second half of the century, longings for stability and peace were more likely to consolidate patriarchical and conservative mores than give way to radical social ideas. Nevertheless, as this study will show, a number of women, chiefly of aristocratic lineage or at least educated above the norm, were able even to publish their scientific ideas. Two of the women mentioned here did so through translation: Lucy Hutchinson, translating Lucretius, and Aphra Benn, translating Bernard le Bouvier de Fontenelle. Hutchinson particularly revealed her own thinking through the notes she added to her edition. Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, chose to pour out the scientific and philosophical ideas she gathered through reading and conversation, in a torrent of unedited publications. Anne, Viscountess Conway, in more measured tones and timing, drew from her private form of higher education to publish The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, which influenced leading philosophers of her day, including Liebniz. Both she and Margaret Cavendish were sufficiently confident to critique Descartes, although Anne Conway's thinking was based on a sounder education. Bathsua Makin was able from her own excellent education and her contacts with the Hartlib circle at home and Anna Maria van Schurmann and others abroad to promulgate an education for girls that would enable them to learn and use a range of sciences and mathematics in an extended female role. Even so, these women were a privileged few and promoted scientific and educational ideas from a vantage point of their own fortunate educational and/or social position. For none of them was this uncomplicated, while for other women, even ones within intellectual circles such as that of Mary Evelyn, their scientific impulses were restrained by gendered notions. Thus it is shown that in both the opportunities offered by new scientific and educational ideas and in their exclusion from the mainstream the position of women was in line with conflicting modern principles that underlay a contested terrain in science for the centuries to come. In addition, this brief exploration of these gendered contradictions of the scientific revolution in England shows the benefits of understanding the large areas of learning which are outside or juxtaposed to formal education, the networks that facilitate leaning and the contemporary context of gendered and scientific beliefs pervading different forms of knowledge.     

Westward bound? Dutch education and cultural transfer in the mid-twentieth century

This article discusses the transition from philosophy to psychology as the main source of inspiration for education during the mid-twentieth century in the Netherlands, situated between Germany in the east and the English-speaking world in the west. Claims have been made that educational theory in the Netherlands was dominated by German philosophy before 1945 and subsequently turned westward for inspiration. The transnational transfer of ideas and concepts to the Netherlands is studied using textbooks on childhood and education for teachers-to-be, published between 1925 and 1970, as sources. Did the Dutch indeed turn from the east to the west for inspiration, and if so when and along the lines of which theories? This article shows that the authors of the textbooks did not simply copy theories from abroad, but gave them a reading of their own and selected what they liked. A shift from the east to the west as a source of inspiration did not occur before the 1970s. Developmentalism, personalism, phenomenology, characterology and individual psychology were all imported from German-speaking countries. It is true that some of these theories were brought to the west as their founders fled Nazism, but that does not undo their continental European origins.     

Dimensions of Eighteenth‐century Educational Thinking in Germany: Rhetoric and Gender Anthropology

The development of pedagogical science in eighteenth‐century Germany unfolded in close connection with the emergence of the modern bourgeoisie and its emancipation from a still absolutist society. While social and political structures in Britain and France were changed by revolutions, the relative weakness of the German bourgeoisie led to the adoption of a reformist strategy to effect social modernization. In this context, pedagogics, education, schools and schooling became a vital means of political and economic transformation towards a modern, bourgeois‐capitalist society. Therein the emergence of modern pedagogical thought and the development of the bourgeoisie were mutual preconditions: several initially quite disparate strands of thought coalesced to form a new pedagogical thinking in Germany during the later Enlightenment. The essay reconstructs how new thinking emerged by charting the integration of two bodies of knowledge into this renewal and refounding of pedagogics: the transformation of elements of rhetoric into building blocks of modern pedagogical thought, on the one hand, and of gender anthropology as its foundation, on the other.     

Why women are progressive in education? Gender disparities in human capital,labor markets,and family arrangement in the Philippines

This paper shows mutually consistent evidence to support female advantage in education and disadvantage in labor markets observed in the Philippines. We set up a model that shows multiple Nash equilibria to explain schooling and labor market behaviors for females and males. Our evidence from unique sibling data of schooling and work history and from the Philippine Labor Force Survey support that family arrangement to tighten commitment between daughters and parents keeps a high level of schooling investments in daughters. Because wage penalty to females in labor markets means that education is relatively important as a determinant of their earnings, parental investments in their daughters’ education has larger impacts on the income of their daughters than on their sons. Parents expect larger income shared from better-educated adult daughters. In contrast, males stay in an equilibrium, with low levels of schooling investment and income sharing. Our results also imply that the above institutional arrangement is stronger among poor families.     

Teacher education policy in Ireland and the challenges of the twenty‐first century

In line with the principles of the Bologna Process, teacher education systems across Europe are converging along a common path. Taking the Republic of Ireland (Ireland) as a case study, this paper examines the European agenda in relation to teacher education and asks how individual nation states are coping with the demands of greater comparability and compatibility. It suggests that while structurally, teacher education in Ireland has undergone significant reform in order to conform to a wider European agenda, significant gaps remain in existing teacher education policy particularly in relation to continuous professional development which will, if not addressed, impede Ireland’s capacity to adequately prepare teachers for the challenges of the twentieth‐first century.     

The role of education in nineteenth‐century doctrines of political economy

Human Characteristics and School Learning. By B. S. Bloom. Pp. 284. New York. McGraw‐Hill, 1976. £8.20.

Child Language, Learning and Linguistics. By David Crystal. Pp. 106. London: Edward Arnold, 1976. £4.25. Paper £1.95.

Schools Council Working Paper No. 60: Examinations at 18+—The N and F Studies. Pp. 272. London: Evans/Methuen Educational, 1978. £4.50.

In and Out of School (The ROSLA Community Education Project). By R. White &; D. Brockington. London: RKP, 1978. 200pp. Hardback £4.50, Paperback £2.25.

County Grammar School: A History of Ludlow Grammar School Through Eight Centuries Against its Local Background. By David J. Lloyd, 1977.

Adolescence and Youth in Prospect. Edited by John P. Hill and Franz J. Monks. Pp. 216. IPC Science and Technology Press, Ltd., Guildford; 1977. £6.80.

Resource‐Based Learning. By N. Beswick. Pp.xiv+264. Heinemann, London, 1977. £6.50.

Instead of Education. Ways to help people do things better. By John Holt. Pp. 252. Penguin Books, 1977. 8op.

Philosophical foundations for the curriculum. By Allen Brent, pp. 233. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1978. £7.50 hardback, £3.50 paperback.

The Politics of Curriculum Change. By Tony Becher and Stuart Maclure. Pp. 192. London: Hutchinson, 1978, £2.95.

Power and the Curriculum: Issues in Curriculum Studies. Edited by Colin Richards. Pp. 170. Driffield: Nafferton Books. 1978. £2.95.

The Nineteenth Century Woman: Her Cultural and Physical World, Edited by Sara Delamont and Lorna Duffin. Pp. 213. London: Croom Helm 1978: £7.50.

The training of teachers in England and Wales 1800—1975. By H. C. Dent. Pp. viii, 163. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1977. Paperback £2.35.

American Education: An Introduction to Social and Political Aspects. By Joel Spring. Pp. vi, 234. New York and London: Longman, 1978: £4.50.     

Literacy,schooling and modernity in twentieth‐century Portugal: what population censuses can tell us

While working on the development of literacy in Portugal and comparing it with other European societies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, I not only saw how late Portugal had been in achieving this process, but also how inaccurate the available numbers about it were. I decided that as part of securing a better understanding of the Portuguese literacy and schooling acquisition processes and the way they related to modernisation in the nineteenth and twenty centuries, I had to review, organise and criticise the main sources that provide us with access to them.

Although often looked down on, one of the main sources in this field are modern population censuses, which in the Portuguese case have been carried out since 1864. These population censuses, which, to the extent that they offer an account and measure of a country's life, are in some respects true birth certificates of modern nation‐states, supply an enormous amount of information, most of which is in a raw condition and are capable of being organised so as to pursue defined objectives.

I therefore put together a research team which analysed the thirteen population censuses that were conducted between 1864 and 1991 and which organised the information gathered from a content analysis of the total of 120 volumes in such a way as to make it easier to read and understand. As part of this work we constructed literacy charts for each census, broken down by age group and gender, so as to better understand the different paths taken by Portuguese society on its way from a predominantly orally based society to a modern literate one.

This article is a brief summary of some of what I believe to be the more interesting conclusions that can be drawn from this broader research project.     

An aristocracy of talent? Describing self and other at an early twentieth‐century high school

This paper is a reading of early twentieth‐century government high school culture as it was expressed through a twenty‐year run of one Australian high school’s student‐authored magazines. From its first issue the editors of The Parramatta High School Magazine were keen to promote its role in the making of a community. The idea that high school people belonged to a special and exclusive group was reiterated in a number of ways. Writing in the magazines described the features of a shared culture – whiteness, literacy, good taste, rational behaviour – and implicitly defined high school students as different from other categories of people, including non‐English speaking foreigners and ‘the uneducated’. Central to the process of classification and identification were statements of ‘who we are’ and ‘who we are not’ which were grounded in the language of meritocracy, and encompassed particular contemporary understandings of social class, race and gender.     

Exploring women faculty's experiences and perceptions in higher education: the effects of feminism?

This study analyses women faculty's discourse about feminism, themselves, and their professional experiences as scholars in the North American university context. This case study pushes at the boundaries of what we believe we know about ‘the gender question' in the academy, opening a discursive space for scholars to examine university policies and practices. Poststructuralist emphasis on the complexity and changing nature of power relations offer a framework that makes sense of the ways in which women are simultaneously affected by power relations and engage in power relations. I use feminist poststructuralist discourse analysis to analyse women's talk about their experiences in order to carve a path for moving beyond the deconstruction of discourse in order to unpack how it marginalises and silences women, even within and to themselves.