Changing Childhoods: The Educational Experiences of Working-Class Children in the 1860s
Lead Research Organisation:
King's College London
Department Name: History
Abstract
Today it is taken for granted by most that the proper place for children to be is at school, and that schools, even if not exactly alike, should teach the same curriculum and promote similar values. This understanding comes as a result of particular socio-cultural conceptualisations of childhood, and has not always been the case. Before the advent of compulsory schooling, responsibility lay with parents to decide whether their children should stay at home, go out to work, or attend school. The most significant legislative change was the 1870 Elementary Education Act, which in effect created the modern view of childhood. This research project, therefore, intends to investigate the educational experiences of working-class children in England during the period immediately preceding it, before the range of acceptable childhood behaviours and occupations began to narrow. It takes a broad approach to the topic of education, looking not only at the full-time schooling options open to working-class children at this time, but also Sunday schools, half-time education, and the opportunity for some children to access further education and a degree of social mobility through the pupil-teacher system. Essentially, it seeks to discover how changing ideas about childhood influenced these children's experiences of education and schooling.
The project is theoretically grounded in the new sociology of childhood, social constructionism and the Foucauldian concept of discourse, distinguishing between the objective biological immaturity of children, and the culturally and temporally contingent meanings attached to that immaturity, which form notions of 'childhood'. These discursive conceptualisations shaped the policies and institutions which affected children's lives. During the mid-nineteenth century, influential discourses of childhood included the Rousseauian-Romantic view of the child as innocent and close to nature, the Lockean view of the child as tabula rasa, and the utilitarian view of the child's value lying in their future political and economic contribution to society. These, together with the older conceptualisation of the child as a productive member of an economic family unit, will be explored in this research project through their relation to the lived experiences of individual children. It will examine the school as an institution within which these varying ideological viewpoints were made manifest, trialled and tested.
The research will be carried out through document analysis, examining a wide range of primary documents from the period 1850-1870. These will include school logbooks and associated records, working-class autobiographies, transcripts of speeches and lectures, Hansard records of parliamentary debates, inspection reports, and pedagogical manuals. Together, these and other materials will present a picture both of the lived educational experiences of children, and the views of the adults shaping those experiences through policy and practice. The intention is to create a detailed picture of the complex landscape of childhood and education at this time, incorporating cognitive, sensory and emotional dimensions, and highlighting the plurality of educational options, and thus of educational experiences, open to working-class children during this period. Analysis of these experiences will be grounded in an understanding of the political, cultural, and socio-economic conditions of the time, and the discourses of childhood which arose from them.
The project is theoretically grounded in the new sociology of childhood, social constructionism and the Foucauldian concept of discourse, distinguishing between the objective biological immaturity of children, and the culturally and temporally contingent meanings attached to that immaturity, which form notions of 'childhood'. These discursive conceptualisations shaped the policies and institutions which affected children's lives. During the mid-nineteenth century, influential discourses of childhood included the Rousseauian-Romantic view of the child as innocent and close to nature, the Lockean view of the child as tabula rasa, and the utilitarian view of the child's value lying in their future political and economic contribution to society. These, together with the older conceptualisation of the child as a productive member of an economic family unit, will be explored in this research project through their relation to the lived experiences of individual children. It will examine the school as an institution within which these varying ideological viewpoints were made manifest, trialled and tested.
The research will be carried out through document analysis, examining a wide range of primary documents from the period 1850-1870. These will include school logbooks and associated records, working-class autobiographies, transcripts of speeches and lectures, Hansard records of parliamentary debates, inspection reports, and pedagogical manuals. Together, these and other materials will present a picture both of the lived educational experiences of children, and the views of the adults shaping those experiences through policy and practice. The intention is to create a detailed picture of the complex landscape of childhood and education at this time, incorporating cognitive, sensory and emotional dimensions, and highlighting the plurality of educational options, and thus of educational experiences, open to working-class children during this period. Analysis of these experiences will be grounded in an understanding of the political, cultural, and socio-economic conditions of the time, and the discourses of childhood which arose from them.
