'England Expects Every Man to do his Duty': The gendering of the citizenship textbook 1940-1966

This article is based on a pilot study investigating the representation of women in a sample of texts for citizenship education in the immediate post-Second World War era in England. The authors argue that existing research into the field of education for citizenship does not engage adequately with how the subject is taught in schools, and how citizenship education constructs the polity in line with normative and traditionalist assumptions about the role of women and men in society. By studying the texts of citizenship for the period 1940-66, the authors argue that researchers can, if they deploy a more critically engaged approach to the way in which notions of 'citizenship' and 'polity' are gendered, generate new questions and new understandings of how education for citizenship functions in schools.     

Two tales of a city: John Walson,Sr., Mahanoy city,and the “founding”; of cable TV

For the last 20 years, scholarly and popular accounts of the development of cable television have recounted the story of John Walson, Sr., who claimed to have started the first CATV system in June of 1948 in Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania. When Walson died in March of 1993, newspapers around the country credited him with starting the nation's first cable system and even “founding”; the industry. The claim, however, has always been clouded by questions and a lack of documentation. This paper reports the results of an investigation of the Walson story. It concludes that, as bright and promising as the Walson tale may be, it probably is not true. At the very least, the preponderance of evidence suggests that Walson got his start in the community antenna television business in late 1950, about the same time as many others around the country and, importantly, probably after another group of businessmen already had begun a system in Mahanoy City itself.     

Two- and Three-Year Achievement Results From the Memphis Restructuring Initiative

The purpose of this study was to analyze student achievement data from the first 3 years of the Memphis Restructuring Initiative (MRI). The MRI represents one of the first efforts by an urban school district to move past traditional top-down versus bottom-up reform debates by providing systemic support for outside-in/inside-out implementation and local co-construction of externally-developed reform designs in schools. Analyses of academic achievement focus on a state-of-the-art measure of value added assessments. At the end of 3 years the reforming schools had produced generally positive gains relative to locally matched control schools. Those results varied somewhat by reform type and by level of poverty in the communities being served. Based on the research methods used and the results, implications for future research and practice in educational reform are discussed.     

NOTES ON ONGOING RESEARCH IN SPECIAL EDUCATION

ABSTRACT

With the support of Unicef and Unesco, the Romanian Ministry of Education has since 1993 been operating a programme to promote the educational and social integration of children and young people with special needs. In a comparatively short time the programme has grown from a pair of pilot projects to comprise a number of interactive elements which include a Joint European Project within the EU's TEMPUS programme, as well as provision for networking, and for describing, monitoring and generalizing experience of good practice. In this process a ‘philosophy’ of integration has developed which is appropriate to Romanian realities and which offers the possibility of an integration project to everyone concerned with special needs. The paper stresses the importance of the voluntary organizations and their new cooperative relationship with the institutions, and of the role of the universities in professional training. The paper ends with a discussion of the barriers and supports to integration, together with some conclusions about the significance and future of the programme.     

The new ‘market‐state’ and education

This paper argues that changes at all levels of education and training (i.e., learning) policy exemplify a new capitalist state formation. This has been aptly named by US political scientist Philip Bobbitt (2002) ‘the new market‐state’, particularly with reference to its administration or ‘governance’. It can be seen especially in the governance of education and training where a new centralized system of contracting or devolving provision to ‘non‐governmental agencies’ has all but replaced the previous ‘national system locally administered’ (Ainley, ). The latter typified the administration of the classic post‐war welfare state, which Bobbitt calls the ‘nation‐state’. Like the former welfare state, the new ‘market‐state’ is also a capitalist state and, therefore, also the means to rule for a persisting capitalist ruling class (Roberts, , pp. 169–192). The new state formation is, however, as different as the former welfare state was in turn from pre‐war capitalist state forms in England. This is particularly clear when the new ‘settlement’ of education and training, imposed by the 1988 Education and 1992 Further and Higher Education Acts, is contrasted with the former welfare state ‘settlement’ established by the 1944 Education Act. In conclusion, implications for opposition to the ‘new market‐state’ are discussed.