The Andersonians and progressive education, 1930–1968

Strategic Uncertainties: Ethics, Politics and Risk in Contemporary Educational Research. Phyllida Coombes, Mike Danaher, Patrick Alan Danaher (Editors) Post Pressed, Flaxton Qld, 2004, pp.210 ISBN: 1876682728 (paperback) AUD$29.50

Making Hope Practical. School Reform for Social Justice. Peter McInerney. Post Pressed, Qld, 2004, 244pp. ISBN 187668271X AUD$45.00     

Pre-figurative practice and the educational leadership of Sir Alec Clegg in the West Riding of Yorkshire,England (1945–1974)

ABSTRACT

This article recalls a time when local government infrastructure was strong and a Chief Education Officer's (CEO) vision could be realised across a region, in Clegg's case the West Riding of Yorkshire, one of the largest of the pre-1974 counties in England. It is timely to revisit Clegg's educational leadership and practice from 1945 to 1974, as a valuable source of learning, and challenge to the current ideologically-informed policy rhetoric which has undermined the framework of democratic educational decision-making. The authors identify four possible areas to learn from Clegg's work. Firstly, the need for CEOs or their modern-day equivalents or successors, to consider their potential as political and community leaders; secondly, Clegg's leadership style prefigures some of the recent discussion about the leadership of public services in uncertain times; thirdly a re-evaluation of administration and bureaucracy; and lastly the need for supportive partnerships to enable schools to thrive.     

Braille,amma and integration: the hybrid evolution of education for the blind in Taiwan, 1870s–1970s

Industrialisation and mass education have long been considered two main determinants in the emergence of special education, but in many formerly colonised countries, such as Taiwan, historical development did not follow along these lines. In Taiwan, schools for the blind were initially set up by missionaries and colonisers, and were primarily designed to meet the latter’s preconceptions and needs. However, pedagogic knowledge and techniques were unexpectedly displaced and transformed as they crossed borders. This study examines the emergence and development of education for the blind in Taiwan from the 1870s to the 1970s. Documentary sources, government statistics and proclamations and oral histories were used in the analysis; they reveal how in Taiwan, education for the blind was shaped under different foreign and domestic influences within specific historical–social contexts.     

‘Embodied knowing’: exploring the founding of the Melbourne Rudolf Steiner school in 1970s Victoria,Australia

ABSTRACT

Education in Victoria, Australia not only underwent significant change in the 1970s, but was witness to a widespread educational reform project. Whilst exploration of the more widespread alternatives has been of some interest, the smaller progressive traditions that emerged in some ways ‘alongside’ the broader reforms have rarely been examined in any detail. This article explores the founding of the Melbourne Rudolf Steiner School (MRSS) in the 1970s, the first of its kind in Victoria, and the third such school nationally. Analysis is based primarily on interviews with educators directly involved. L.A. Reid’s notion of education as an ‘aesthetic’ object is drawn on to examine the collective experiences of the founders of the MRSS, and the particular expression they gave to Steiner’s educational ideas.     

Discovering tertiary education through others’ eyes and words: exploring submissions to New Zealand’s review of its tertiary education sector

A general inductive analysis was applied to 98 submissions made to a recent review of New Zealand’s tertiary education system, primarily to enable those interested to engage with multiple viewpoints about this highly complex educational system. The analysis yielded three substantial themes that reoccur throughout the submissions and that may warrant further research. The three themes relate to: competition, incorporating willingness and ability to compete at different levels in the sector; trust, incorporating expectations of being trusted to provide high-quality educational support for all learners as well as, to varying degrees, an expectation that the broad outcomes of this high-quality educational support should be trusted, rather than measured, by all stakeholders; and the purpose of the educational endeavour being considered and whether or not different parts of the sector do, or should, emphasise different purposes. The analysis yielded a model or theory about the underlying structure of the experiences illustrated by the 98 submissions that may assist those interested in tertiary education to address the new models of tertiary education being considered by the review.     

The myth of The Phoenix: progressive education,migration and the shaping of the welfare state, 1985–2015

Abstract

Since the 1970s, many western welfare states have been subject both to increased migration and to a renewed interest in progressive education. The present article addresses the question of whether these two phenomena are related and how changing notions of the welfare state shape and are shaped by this relationship. To answer the question, we concentrate our attention on the case study of Ghent (Belgium), which from the 1970s onwards has been characterised not only by a growing ethnic diversity but also by a renewed interest in progressive educational initiatives. Drawing on oral history with key figures in the local educational field and research in school archives, this article indicates that progressive initiatives in the last few decades have indeed emerged as an answer to migration patterns. But whereas initial initiatives in the 1980s arose from an endeavour to cater for the migrant child, some recent initiatives arose from an attempt to exclude the same child.     

Clare Soper's hat: New Education Fellowship correspondence between Bloomsbury and New Zealand, 1938–1946

Broadening horizons beyond nations, transnational histories trace global flows connecting people and places. Historians have studied the New Education Fellowship (NEF) as a global network. Focused within the nation, research on New Zealand's involvement with NEF has emphasised how its activities before the Second World War impacted on the Labour Government's postwar policies. This paper's focus is NEF's transnational networking during the war. While previous discussions of correspondence between NEF's Headquarters and New Zealand have emphasised its New Zealand side, my focus is on its London correspondent, Clare Soper, NEF's International Secretary. Historians have studied NEF's theorists, leaders and progressive teachers, but office staff who effected its circulation of texts, objects and people have not been researched. Locating Soper in her Bloomsbury Headquarters at the hub of NEF's global web, I trace what her correspondence with two New Zealand Branch Secretaries reveals about everyday operations of NEF as a wartime educational resistance movement.     

Young New Zealanders and the Great War: exploring the impact and legacy of the First World War, 1914–2014

Drawing on school histories, published adult recollections, oral interviews and children’s letters, this article explores how the lives of young New Zealanders were affected by contemporary attitudes and activities during World War I in a country far removed from the actual theatre of war. Particular emphasis is given to school‐related experiences.     

Beyond the domestic sphere? A home science education at the University of New Zealand, 1911–1936

International developments in the field of household science, debates about women’s rights to a higher education and changes in workforce demographics came together in the first decade of the twentieth century to facilitate the establishment of a School of Home Science at the University of Otago. The early years were characterised by struggles over the nature of the curriculum, conflicts with university administrators and difficulties maintaining a commitment to high academic standards while meeting the competing expectations of the public, university administrators and the Department of Education that students would become technically proficient in the practical household arts. Despite the ongoing struggle for academic and scientific credibility and its location in a low‐status ‘domestic’ sphere of higher education, a home science qualification provided an alternative pathway to an increasing range of professional and academic careers, at a time when most women graduating with arts and science degrees entered teaching.     

Secrets and lies: sex education and gendered memories of childhood's end in an Australian provincial city, 1930s–1950s

There are few historical studies about the sex education of Australian youth. Drawing on a range of sources, including the oral histories of 40 women and men who attended two single‐sex, selective high schools in a provincial Australian city (Newcastle, New South Wales) in the 1930s–1950s, this paper explores the adolescent experience of sex education and gender relations. First, it outlines attempts by the New South Wales State Government and the Newcastle community to introduce sex education, especially during the moral panic about sexuality generated during World War Two. Second, it charts the experiential realm of growing up for adolescent females and males. Hegemonic gender ideology meant that sexual knowledge was mostly kept secret from adolescent girls, and that frightening lies about sexual matters proliferated in the vacuum created by sexual ignorance. For adolescent males, sexual knowledge, while still shrouded in myth and mystery, was more readily available. Indeed sex education classes were introduced at the boys' school in the 1950s, while the girls' school remained silent on the matter for the entire time. At the theoretical level, the paper suggests that the dominant ideology of femininity included sexual ignorance and was allied to the ideology of childhood innocence. Both ideologies were artefacts of patriarchal power.     

State formation and the rise of elementary education at the periphery of Europe: the cases of Finland and Turkey 1860–1930

This article addresses the role of the state and state formation in the establishment of national education during the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. Through a comparative case analysis of two countries at the European periphery (Finland and Turkey), this article shows how national educational systems, in both instances, were driven by periods of intense state building. In the nineteenth century, military defeats sparked educational reforms, and in the early nineteenth century school laws were enacted due to the establishment of the republics of Finland and Turkey. Nevertheless, these examples also show the limits of a state formation perspective. Despite changes in educational policy, neither state reached high enrolment levels in the nineteenth century, and only in Finland schooling for all was realised in the 1930s. Thus, this work encourages further comparative analyses of the social, economic and political circumstances in which these states acted.     

Bilingual primary schools,decorative art and psychotechnics: Luxembourgian education at international exhibitions and congresses, 1870s–1930s

Building upon an expanding literature on world exhibitions and international conferences as vehicles for the transnational circulation of educational knowledge during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, this article discusses the participation of Luxembourg at these events. It focuses on three thematic strands: the representation of Luxembourgian education at world exhibitions during the late nineteenth century, when organisers showcased the allegedly advanced state of primary instruction; the activities of the director of the École d’artisans de l’État Antoine Hirsch who took the representation of Luxembourgian education into his hands during the first three decades of the twentieth century; and the Grand-Duchy’s participation in the Seventh Biennial Conference of the World Federation of Education Associations in Tokyo in 1937, when Luxembourgian education was first represented overseas. These episodes reflect the ongoing industrialisation of the country and the growing influence of the steel industry on the educational sector.     

Portuguese,French and British discourses on colonial education: Church–State relations,school expansion and missionary competition in Africa, 1890–1930

This article draws a comparison between the Portuguese in relation to British and French discourses on overseas educational policies at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century until the 1930s. It focuses on three main colonial educational dynamics: school expansion (comparing the public and private sectors); State–Church relations (comparing these relationships at the European and colonial levels); and missionary competition (comparing Catholic with Protestant strategies towards educational incorporation). Colonial discourse is seen here as a power‐knowledge discourse aimed at constructing the colonial subjects as individuals, enabling them to imagine themselves as belonging to a particular cultural polity. The article intends to show how cross‐national discourses on education affect the principles on which theories of schooling are built and the ways in which they influence the first attempts to systematize pedagogical and school models in the colonial peripheries. On the other hand, it tries to understand, within government technologies of domination, the conflicting views, negotiations and ambiguities between global policy formulation and local school system implementation. In this sense, the author sought to analyse the different ways in which concepts such as ‘assimilation’, ‘civilizing mission’, ‘adapted education’, and ‘learning by doing’ were mobilized and appropriated into the colonial education discourses in order to legitimize particular governmental strategies. Two main ideas run through the text: the first attempts to demonstrate the existence of discontinuities between official educational ideologies at home and local system and school expansion strategies in the colonies. The second claims that educational borrowing from other colonies at the Empires' peripheries was, more often that is thought, a crucial feature of colonial educational discourse.     

The education of women for citizenship: the National Federation of Women’s Institutes and the British Federation of Business and Professional Women 1930–1959

This article focuses on how citizenship education was built into the organisational practices as well as the formal instructional programmes of women’s organisations in Britain in the pre‐ and post‐Second World War period. It compares the efforts of two such organisations, the National Federation of Women’s Institutes (NFWI) and the British Federation of Business and Professional Women (BFBPW), to train women in the skills of citizenship. Despite their differences in constituency and structure, these two organisations had remarkably similar views on citizenship education and shared similar educational approaches until the end of the 1950s. This article argues that the NFWI and BFBPW’s understanding of political engagement and their efforts to educate the woman citizen are important historical examples of how women have negotiated issues of involved versus informed citizenry. The educational model they used is relevant today given the renewed interest in the strengthening of civic society as a key mechanism for political engagement.     

Population policies and education: exploring the contradictions of neo‐liberal globalisation

The world is increasingly characterised by profound income, health and social inequalities (Appadurai, 2000 Appadurai, A. 2000. Grassroots globalisation and the research imagination. Public Culture, 12(1): 1–19. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] [Google Scholar]). In recent decades development initiatives aimed at reducing these inequalities have been situated in a context of increasing globalisation with a dominant neo‐liberal economic orthodoxy. This paper argues that neo‐liberal globalisation contains inherent contradictions regarding choice and uniformity. This is illustrated in this paper through an exploration of the impact of neo‐liberal globalisation on population policies and programmes. The dominant neo‐liberal economic ideology that has influenced development over the last few decades has often led to alternative global visions being overlooked. Many current population and development debates are characterised by polarised arguments with strongly opposing aims and views. This raises the challenge of finding alternatives situated in more middle ground that both identify and promote the socially positive elements of neo‐liberalism and state intervention, but also to limit their worst excesses within the population field and more broadly. This paper concludes with a discussion outling the positive nature of middle ground and other possible alternatives.     

‘Oh no,nothing, we didn’t learn anything’: sex education and the preparation of girls for motherhood,c.1930–1970

This article investigates how girls were educated about sex, pregnancy and childbirth during the years 1930 to 1970. Based on the results of 92 oral‐history interviews with Oxfordshire women, it explores how national debates surrounding sex education influenced what girls in Oxfordshire were taught. In addition, it examines how successful the women themselves thought this education had been in equipping them for maternity and whether they believed women could indeed be educated for motherhood.