“A Home for Poets”: The Liberal Curriculum in Victorian Britain's Teachers' Training Colleges

2014 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Robert Bischof
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
General Knowledge ◽  
Victorian Britain ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Original Thinking ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Teachers Training ◽  
To Receive ◽  
Pedagogical Learning

In the 1850s, at St. Mark's training college in Chelsea, London, ten students regularly violated the “lights out” rule in the evening at the end of long, exhausting days. Desirous of increasing their culture and general knowledge, they gave over half an hour every evening before sleep to what they styled, after the working-class clubs of the same name, “a mutual improvement society” in which they took turns giving lectures on a wide range of topics. They were not alone: throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, teachers-in-training across Britain supplemented their already daunting workload by writing poetry, reading novels, discussing Shakespeare, and holding debates about pressing social and political questions. From the perspective of many Victorian observers and historians today, this anecdote is an anomaly, an aberration that carries little weight in telling the story of the training colleges in which the majority of teachers in Victorian Britain eventually came to receive an education. For them, training colleges were the sites of rote memorization and pedagogical learning. Though some educationalists called for a more liberal curriculum for teachers, according to this view, teachers' education only began to emphasize expansive reading, original thinking, the cultivation of the individual, and general curiosity beginning in the 1890s with the rise of day training colleges affiliated with universities.

The Americanisation of C. L. R. James

Race & Class ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Scott
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Global Impact ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Cultural Climate ◽  
The Us ◽  
Political Activist ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Individual ◽  
To Receive

The writings of the Black Marxist-Leninist thinker and activist C. L. R. James are now widely known and studied, although most of his long career was passed in obscurity. His two most influential books, The Black Jacobins (1938) and Beyond a Boundary (1963) now have a global impact. But his work did not begin to receive wide recognition until the 1980s and 1990s. And it is the nature of that recognition, and the ends to which his work has been put in the US academy, that this article explores. In critiquing a wide range of influential theoretical approaches to James’ work, the author relates current interpretations of it to the wider political and cultural climate engendered by neoliberalism, with its emphasis on the individual not as a historical agent, but as primarily concerned with self-fashioning and cultural identity. In the process, the article demonstrates how the political activist thrust of James’ analyses and work, and its concerns with imperialism and resistance, has been set aside as part of the corporate world’s continuing appropriation of the ‘alternative and adversarial culture of the 1960s’.

The Colonial State and Wage Labor in Postwar Sierra Leone, 1945–1960: Attempts at Remaking the Working Class

1997 ◽  
Vol 52 ◽  
pp. 87-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ibrahim Abdullah
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
Wage Labor ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Working Class History ◽  
To Receive

The elaborate “remaking” of the African working class that took off in earnest in the period after 1945 has only recently begun to receive the attention of scholars working on African labor and working-class history. This process of remaking, as in nineteenth-century England, essentially involved the incorporation of the African working class into a system of industrial relations which would guarantee it a stake in society with regard to jobs, wages, housing, and general working conditions.

A Nineteenth-Century Musical Career

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Warfield
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Technical Education ◽  
Musical Life ◽  
Wide Range

This chapter examines two Washington-based figures who provided John Philip Sousa with examples of just how expansive a nineteenth-century musical career could become. Indeed, the most important lessons of Sousa's youth did not come from formal apprenticeships or professional employment; they were found in the careers of musicians who lived in the Navy Yard. The first model was George Felix Benkert, who provided Sousa with a technical education in composition. However, the most remarkable of these models was, no doubt, John Esputa—a working-class musician who found employment where he could, wrote what must have seemed financially prudent at the time, and had a wide range of musical talents. Esputa's musical career seems quite remarkable in its specifics, but its outlines were perfectly typical of American musical life in the nineteenth century.

Bread Winner

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Griffin
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Real Wages ◽  
Victorian England ◽  
Victorian Britain ◽  
The People ◽  
Working Class Women

Nineteenth-century Britain saw remarkable economic growth and a rise in real wages. But not everyone shared in the nation's wealth. Unable to earn a sufficient income themselves, working-class women were reliant on the ‘breadwinner wage’ of their husbands. When income failed, or was denied or squandered by errant men, families could be plunged into desperate poverty from which there was no escape. This book unlocks the homes of Victorian England to examine the lives — and finances — of the people who lived there. Drawing on over 600 working-class autobiographies, including more than 200 written by women, the book changes our understanding of daily life in Victorian Britain.

Radical Dining, Toasting and Symbolic Expression in Early Nineteenth-Century Lancashire: Rituals of Solidarity

1988 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-291 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Epstein
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Radical Politics ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Symbolic Expression ◽  
Public Role ◽  
Distinguished Career ◽  
To Receive ◽  
Northern Star

In 1869 William Aitken looked back over a long and distinguished career as a radical activist in the Lancashire factory town of Ashton-under-Lyne. In a letter to the Ashton Reporter, he recalled his introduction to the ranks of radicalism: “My earliest remembrances of taking a part in Radicalism are the invitations I used to receive to be at ‘Owd’ Nancy Clayton's in Charlestown, on the 16th of August to denounce the Peterloo Massacre, to drink in solemn silence ‘To the immortal memory of Henry Hunt’.…” In November 1838 the Northern Star, Chartism's great newspaper, made what would appear to be the first mention of Aitken's public role in radical politics. The twenty-four year-old Aitken, former piecer and cotton spinner turned school master, attended a dinner held in the working-class suburb of Charlestown at the home of John and Nancy Clayton to commemorate the birthday of the hero of Peterloo fields.

Urban elites in Victorian Britain

Urban History ◽  
1985 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Trainor
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Urban Society ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Victorian Britain ◽  
Urban Elites

After years of concentration on the working class, social historians of nineteenth-century urban Britain have recently rediscovered the upper and middle classes. Various writers have recognized these groups, and elites within them, as significant subjects in themselves and as major influences in urban society generally.

“Be what you would seem to be”: Samuel Smiles, Thomas Edward, and the Making of a Working-Class Scientific Hero

2003 ◽  
Vol 16 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 147-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Secord
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Victorian Britain

ArgumentThis paper examines the effort that was involved in sustaining the nineteenth-century middle-class ideological fabrication of the image of the working-class scientific autodidact. The construction and reception of Samuel Smiles’ biography of the Scottish cobbler and naturalist Thomas Edward provides a way to investigate this process in detail and to show how Smiles’ conception of the scientific persona related to the “politics of character” in mid-Victorian Britain. Edward’s own response to the biography offers an unusual opportunity to analyze the making of a Victorian scientific hero, who, in the process of being fitted to Smiles’ notion of a scientific persona, came to feel that he had been robbed of his life.

scholarly journals Working-Class Visibility in Rachel Seiffert's The Walk Home

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Monnickendam
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Orientation ◽  
Social Class ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Literary Fiction ◽  
Contemporary Fiction ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Individual

Driscoll argues that contemporary fiction and current criticism are no longer concerned with social class in general and the working class in particular. Identity now uses more flexible parameters, such as sexual orientation, a term that defines the individual as agent. He analyses a wide range of literary fiction and film in order to highlight that ‘class’ often means middle class. When authors do focus on the working class, their angle is predominantly negative.The second half of this article strives to see to what extent the Driscoll hypothesis is valid through applying his findings to Seiffert’s very recent novel. It refutes the argument that postmodern techniques necessarily produce apolitical texts, and puts into question other assumptions. 

scholarly journals Innovation, Recreation, Interpretation? A Case Study on the Origins and Implementation of Transversal Core Competencies in Finnish Basic Education Core Curriculum Reform 2016

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 180
Author(s):  
Jyrki Loima
Keyword(s):  
Curriculum Reform ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Core Curriculum ◽  
Basic Education ◽  
Core Competencies ◽  
Learning To Learn ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
American Society ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Teachers Training

This qualitative study on the Finnish basic education curriculum (2016) had two goals. First, to survey the origins of first two new curriculum competences: 1) thinking and learning to learn, and, 2) cultural competences. Second, to analyse the local curricular implementation and comprehension in a rapid socio-cultural change. To reveal the possible data trends, two research questions were addressed: 1. What was the background of first two 2016 transversal core competencies? 2. How were those competencies implemented into a local curriculum 2016-19? The Data included basic education curricula (1985-2016), and a local curriculum. Relevant legislation, official information (e.g. PISA), parental feedback, and a questionnaire to an anonymous implementing principal comprised the curricular data. The Data triangulation was completed with a wide range of educational, cultural and ideological research. Regarding ethics, the individual sources and educational provider remained anonymous. Findings were surprising. “Modern” thinking and learning skills were created in early 20th century American society by Deweyan comprehension. However, an immigration had changed the long-lasting interpretation on the origins of Finnish culture. Moreover, local curriculum implementation was more successfully comprehended and supported. Conclusions were obvious: more identifiable research and teachers’ training were needed for curricular reforms and competences. The socio-cultural comprehension in the era of AI asked for sound arguments.

scholarly journals The 1887 Survey of the London Working Class

1975 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. J. Cullen
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
European Society ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
Continuous Series ◽  
Unemployment Benefit ◽  
Victorian Britain ◽  
Similar Elements

For the historian of modern European society the problem of the extent and nature of unemployment at any particular time and in any particular place is a challenging and even frustrating one. It is clearly an important question to ask and yet, except for very recent times, it is almost impossible to answer satisfactorily. Where there are data they are incomplete and their reliability doubtful. This is true even of such a society as Victorian Britain, which might be thought to have a considerable amount of useful material. The early Victorian social investigators in Britain seldom dealt with the problem of unemployment, preferring to focus on educational, sanitary, and similar elements of working-class living standards. Admittedly, from the middle of the nineteenth century continuous series of unemployment figures become increasingly available relating to particular trades and from these aggregate figures have been calculated.1 But the defects of these returns, made by various trade unions and based upon the numbers receiving unemployment benefit, have been recognized almost from the time that they began to appear. As for official labour statistics in general, those for the period before 1886 have recently been described as “deficient, chaotic, and unmanageable”.2 The unemployment statistics improved little after 1886. They continued to be derived from the same sources as before, though a much greater number of unions made returns. But the very nature of the returns means that they were biassed towards the unionised workers in industries like heavy engineering.

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