Antecedents and Alternatives

The epistemology and institutionalised system of State schooling briefly described above was in sharp contrast to antecedent forms of education. Rothblatt for instance describes education in Georgian England as follows:

The State was not interested in 'national education' - indeed the idea had not yet occurred. The Church, which was interested in education, because of its continuing rivalry with Dissent, still did not have a firm policy and left the direction of studies to local or personal initiatives, or to the forces of the market. The demand for education and the demand for particular levels of education varied radically from period to period and from group to group, depending upon social and economic circumstances, occupational distributions, and cultural values. Countless persons, lay as well as clerical, opened schools, tried out various educational experiments and programmes in an effort to retain a fickle or uncertain clientele. And home tuition, where adjustments in curricula could be made quickly and easily according to the learning ability of the pupil, certainly remained one of the most important means of elementary and secondary education throughout the nineteenth century.(15)

Such a personal and local mode of educating could well have allowed response to the experience and culture of the pupils even in situations less ideal than home tuition "where adjustments could be made quickly and easily according to the learning ability of the pupil". But among working class groups certainly in the sphere of adult education such respect for life experience in curriculum was a feature at this time and later. This contribution can be summarised as: 'the students' choice of subject. The relation of disciplines to actual contemporary living and the parity of general discussion with expert instruction'.(16) Above all there is the idea of curriculum as a two-way conversation rather than a one-way transmission.

Likewise with the working class private school, which turned in the first half of the nineteenth century and confirmed with the second half in many places even after the 1870 act. Harrison has described these schools and the views of the State held of them:

Government inspection and middle class reformers condemned such schools as mere baby-minding establishments. They noted with strong disapproval the absence of settled or regular attendance. The pupils came and went at all times during the day. School hours were nominal and adjusted to family needs - hence the number of two- and three- year olds who were sent to be 'out of the way' or 'kept safe'. The accommodation was over-crowded and sometimes stuffy, dirty and unsanitary. The pupils were not divided into classes, and the teacher was a working man or woman . . .

As well as not being arranged in classes, the curriculum was often individualised rather than sequential. Harrison describes 'Old Betty W's School' where; On five days the little forms were taken outside her cottage and placed under the window. The children had their books, or their knitting and the old lady, knitting herself incessantly marched backwards and forwards hearing lessons and watching work,

These working class schools were effectively driven out by the version of State schooling which followed the 1870 Act.

Thompson has argued that the watershed for such styles, certainly styles of working class education, was fears engendered by the French Revolution. From now on the State played an increasing role in the organisation of schooling and of curriculum:

attitudes towards social class, popular culture and education became 'set' in the aftermath of the French Revolution. For a century and more most middle class educationalists could not distinguish the work of education from that of social control: and this entailed too often, a repression or a denial of the life experience of their pupils as expressed in uncouth dialect or in traditional cultural forms. Hence education and received experience were at odds with each other. And those working men who by their own efforts broke into the educated culture found themselves at once in the same place of tension, in which education brought with it the danger of rejection of their fellows and self-distrust. The tension of course continues.(17)