Changing Childhoods: The Educational Experiences of Working-Class Children in the 1860s

改变童年：1860 年代工人阶级子女的教育经历

• 批准号: 2239325
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: King's College London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2019 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2239325
• 关键词: Changing; Childhoods; Educational; Experiences; Working

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.

今天，大多数人理所当然地认为孩子们最适合的地方是在学校，学校即使不完全相同，也应该教授相同的课程并宣扬相似的价值观。这种理解是童年特定社会文化概念化的结果，但情况并非总是如此。在义务教育出现之前，父母有责任决定孩子是否应该留在家里、外出工作或上学。最重大的立法变革是 1870 年的《初等教育法案》，该法案实际上创造了现代的儿童观。因此，本研究项目旨在调查在可接受的童年行为和职业范围开始缩小之前的一段时间内英国工人阶级儿童的教育经历。它对教育主题采取了广泛的方法，不仅着眼于目前向工薪阶层儿童开放的全日制学校教育选择，还着眼于主日学校、半日制教育，以及一些儿童通过师生制度获得进一步教育和一定程度社会流动的机会。从本质上讲，它试图发现关于童年的观念的变化如何影响这些儿童的教育和上学经历。该项目在理论上以新童年社会学、社会建构主义和福柯的话语概念为基础，区分了儿童客观的生物不成熟性，以及与这种不成熟性相​​关的文化和时间上的偶然意义，这些意义形成了“童年”的概念。这些话语概念塑造了影响儿童生活的政策和机构。十九世纪中叶，关于儿童的有影响力的话语包括卢梭-浪漫主义的儿童天真且接近自然的观点、洛克的儿童白板观点以及儿童价值在于其未来对社会的政治和经济贡献的功利主义观点。这些，连同儿童作为经济家庭单位的生产性成员的旧概念，将在本研究项目中通过它们与个别儿童的生活经历的关系进行探索。它将把学校作为一个机构来考察，在这个机构中，这些不同的意识形态观点得到了体现、试验和检验。这项研究将通过文献分析进行，审查 1850 年至 1870 年间的大量主要文献。这些将包括学校日志和相关记录、工人阶级自传、演讲和讲座的笔录、议会辩论的会议记录、检查报告和教学手册。这些材料和其他材料将共同展示儿童的生活教育经历，以及成年人通过政策和实践塑造这些经历的观点。其目的是详细描绘此时童年和教育的复杂景观，纳入认知、感官和情感维度，并强调这一时期向工人阶级儿童开放的教育选择的多样性，从而强调教育经历的多样性。对这些经历的分析将基于对当时政治、文化和社会经济条件以及由此产生的童年话语的理解。