Papers by Susannah Wright
Springer international handbooks of education, 2020
British Journal of Educational Studies, Mar 11, 2019
will also find much of interest, as the role of women religious in girls' education remains a pro... more will also find much of interest, as the role of women religious in girls' education remains a prominent one.
In this chapter, Wright considers the Association for Education in Citizenship (AEC), a pressure ... more In this chapter, Wright considers the Association for Education in Citizenship (AEC), a pressure group that aimed, through educational means, to protect parliamentary democracy against the perceived threat of totalitarianism overseas. The AEC’s founders, Ernest Simon and Eva Hubback, were agnostics but not attached to secularist organisations. They outlined a ‘humanist’ approach to education for democratic citizenship. Nevertheless, in an organisation containing many Christians, their position was stated alongside a Christian one. Christian versions of democratic citizenship won through in the form of the 1944 Education Act and its provisions for compulsory acts of worship and religious instruction, the cultural climate of the Second World War encouraging apparently widespread support for these proposals. Wright shows that secularists, by this time organisationally depleted, failed to coordinate a major opposition campaign.
History of Education, Jun 17, 2015
Rethinking peace and conflict studies, 2021
The front page of the League of Nations Union (LNU) News Sheet in November 1938 contains a striki... more The front page of the League of Nations Union (LNU) News Sheet in November 1938 contains a striking photographic image of the national British armistice commemoration ceremony at the Cenotaph memorial in London (LNU News Sheet, November 1938: 1). In black and white the Portland stone of Edwin Lutyen’s famous memorial appears vast and gleaming against the poppy wreaths and rows of smaller, darker figures. Many of those standing close to the memorial were royalty and state dignitaries from Britain and the wider Empire (or Commonwealth—both terms were popular at the time).
History of Education, 2013
History of education researcher, 2011
The research presented in this book arose out of the investigations into the history of the local... more The research presented in this book arose out of the investigations into the history of the local area by the Bellingham WEA group and their tutor, Dr Ian Robert.
History of education researcher, 2006
Ricerche Pedagogiche, 2007
This thesis examines moral education in English elementary schools from 1879 to 1918. It investig... more This thesis examines moral education in English elementary schools from 1879 to 1918. It investigates why there was widespread interest in character formation in the elementary school at this time but not support for one particular sort of programme. It investigates how moral education was perceived, approached, and implemented by the education department, the general public, School Board and Education Committee members, and teachers in schools, offering a comprehensive and detailed investigation into these issues. Much of the study focuses on one distinctive approach to moral education in this period-secular moral instruction. A range of sources are interrogated, allowing access to the different, but sometimes overlapping, perspectives of policy-makers, educationalists, the organisations and individuals who promoted moral education (particularly the Moral Instruction League, George Dixon and FJ Gould), authors of teaching material, and inspectors and head teachers in schools. Chapters One to Three have an England-wide focus. Chapters Four to Six discuss local studies of Birmingham and Leicester which allow a detailed analysis of educational policy-making, activism and practice in schools. This thesis concludes that moral educators were energetic, skilful at promotion, and engaged in innovative curriculum development. Nevertheless, they faced a range of ideological, political and practical barriers and were ultimately unable to translate generalised interest in character formation and the moralising function of the elementary school into widespread support for their programmes of moral education, or to ensure that statements of interest were translated into effective activity in schools. The issues they grappled with are being worked through still in relation to moral education and citizenship in English schools: the struggle for moral education continues today. I would like to thank all my friends for helping to see me through to the end of this thesis. Particular thanks to Kerry Davies and Simon Baalham for conversation, encouragement, and jogging, Jo Hazell, Alis Oancea, Stephanie Sturdy and Stephanie Wilde for sociable cups of tea-and a break from the thesis-at work, and Camilla Leach for chats and taking on more than her share of our joint History of Education Society duties in the last few months. I would also like to thank my supervisors Steve King and John Stewart for their invaluable advice at different stages of the thesis, and especially my Director of Studies, David Nash, for inspiration, wisdom and encouragement to have confidence in my ideas throughout, and reading hundreds of thousands of words of drafts. Carol Beadle, Harriet Irvine and Jill Organ have helped me navigate the paperwork and procedures associated with writing and submitting the thesis.
Mass Education and the Limits of State Building, c.1870–1930, 2012
A range of concerns in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in England and beyond, ... more A range of concerns in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in England and beyond, led policy-makers, educational theorists, classroom teachers, churches, secularist organisations, scientists, and a range of social reformers to focus on the elementary school as an agent of moral reform. The effects of economic and social changes including urbanisation and industrialisation, new knowledge and ideas, the weakening of old traditions and beliefs all convinced contemporaries of the important role the school had to play.1 Moral reform through the school, they believed, would mould the citizens of the future. Despite a common conviction of the socialising potential of the elementary school, however, there was no one idea about how this potential could be realised, or indeed a single clear notion of what citizenship was. Contemporaries disagreed on the basis of the values to be taught in elementary schools: was it to be a Christian morality, or a ‘human’ or social morality, without reference to God? They also differed on pedagogy — were moral values to be taught via direct moral instruction, or ‘caught’, imbibed indirectly through the social relationships of the school community, or absorbed from the content of other parts of the curriculum or activities such as organised games? Schools were, of course, not the only organisations involved in transmitting values to the young. Socialisation also occurred in the home, in the church, in organised youth movements, and — to the alarm of reformers — on the street.2
History of education researcher, 2007
Cultural & Social History, Jan 25, 2018
None of the major English secularist organisations1 in the early twentieth century could boast ab... more None of the major English secularist organisations1 in the early twentieth century could boast about membership figures as an indicator of their strength and influence. Compared with most Christian churches, and as a proportion of the general population, they were small. They did, however, claim to have achieved a diffuse impact on wider societal thinking and debate. National Secular Society (NSS) leaders, for example, asserted that the ideals and ideas that they stood for had gained "a hold on the public mind". Oxford classicist Professor Gilbert Murray stated that the "spirit" of Positivism had "got abroad" at a time when only remnants of Positivist organisations remained.2 These were outcomes that secularists strove, actively, to achieve. Energetic and canny publicists, they disseminated their ideas in letters and personal conversation, on the platform, and in print. Their influence in scientific, literary and left-leaning political circles has been noted; by the early twentieth century, a growing scientific and social-scientific elite, influential in governance and welfare movements, might not have joined secularist bodies, but sympathised with some of their arguments.3 Secularists also targeted the captive audience of young people who were compelled to spend five days a week, over much of the year, in schools. Through pressure groups, they lobbied educational authorities, and produced teaching aids, aiming to shape the teaching in schools in ways that would promote their interests. Not least among these interests was the desire to instil the knowledge, values and behaviours that would prepare pupils for their future lives as adult citizens, but outside of a Christian framework. This desire sat within a broad discourse about the purposes of schooling in England, one of longstanding which pre-and postdates the timeframe of the analysis here. As well as imparting academic knowledge, schools, it was argued, should develop in pupils the knowledge, values, and behaviours that they would require as adult citizens. These were concerns which appear to have taken on a particular urgency in the early twentieth century, owing to widespread perceptions of intense, and unprecedented, social, cultural, political, and ideological change.4 Secularists sought to shape the civic morality that would be taught in schools in their own image. Through influencing policy-makers, teachers and pupils, secularist campaigners, some of whom were or had been teachers or inspectors themselves, challenged assumptions that England was inherently, and inevitably, Christian.5 But the process of shaping a non-Christian civic morality was a complex one, involving shifting alliances, dialogue, and compromises between different secularists, and between secularists and Christians.6
Paedagogica Historica, Nov 15, 2018
The League of Nations Union (LNU) was one among the many organisations, in different countries, t... more The League of Nations Union (LNU) was one among the many organisations, in different countries, that promoted internationalist education among the young in the interwar years. But it was a particularly large and prominent one and appealed to a wide cross-section of teachers and pupils in English schools. LNU junior branches were established in many English secondary schools. Occupying a space at the intersection of youth organisations, a larger political movement, and the school itself, these junior branches were part of a wider agenda of active citizenship through extra-curricular means. Their focus was a liberalinternationalist version of "world citizenship" which accommodated existing loyalties to nation and empire as well as loyalty to the wider international sphere, and which sought peace but would countenance the controlled use of armed force against breaches of international agreements. Case studies of junior branches in two girls' schools and two boys' schools draw on school magazines and other relevant sources to shed light on what world citizenship could look like in different school contexts. The traditions and cultures of these different schools, the LNU's ideals and resources, and changing international events, all emerge as important shapers of junior branch activities, and the response to what junior branches offered. Examining the micro-contexts of junior branches in schools contributes new, grounded, insights to a historiography of internationalist education, indicating ways in which ideals of liberal-internationalist world citizenship were negotiated, promoted, taken up, passed on, altered, and, sometimes, challenged or ignored.
History of Education, Nov 1, 2009
The 'Floodgate Street area'was a notorious slum district in the city of Birmingham in t... more The 'Floodgate Street area'was a notorious slum district in the city of Birmingham in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This article presents a case study, drawing on the rich archival sources available for this area, to examine the language that local authority ...
History of Education, Nov 1, 2008
History of Education, Nov 1, 2011
The articles in this special issue of History of Education are based on papers given at the 2010 ... more The articles in this special issue of History of Education are based on papers given at the 2010 annual conference of the History of Education Society, held at the Garden Halls, London, on 26-28 November, on the theme of 'Citizenship, Religion and Education'. Over ...
London Review of Education, 2008
This paper reports on the work of a six-month review project commissioned by the Higher Education... more This paper reports on the work of a six-month review project commissioned by the Higher Education Academy which aimed at mapping the research base around the student learning experience in higher education (HE). The project aimed to 1) provide an overview of the ways in which the student learning experience in HE has been and is conceptualised; 2) provide an overview of interventions aimed at producing a more effective learning experience; and 3) review the methodological approaches adopted to investigate the student learning experience. The paper outlines the review approach adopted by this project and presents an analytical map in which reviewed studies are categorised in terms of the methods they adopt and the area of investigation. Selected findings in the areas of inventory-based studies, assessment and feedback and teaching, curriculum and learning environments are discussed. The project identified a large, but broad, heterogeneous and somewhat scattered research base, dominated by a tradition of studies using inventory methods, and otherwise by small and localised studies often conducted by practitioners researching their own subject areas. The paper concludes with a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the project's methods, and recommendations for developing the student learning experience research base in the future.
In this chapter Wright examines the activities of F. J. Gould in Leicester from 1899 to 1910. Whi... more In this chapter Wright examines the activities of F. J. Gould in Leicester from 1899 to 1910. While employed as Organiser at the Leicester Secular Society (LSS), Gould was elected to Leicester’s School Board and Town Council. He promoted a programme of non-theological moral instruction in the town’s elementary schools, drawing on support from secularists, Labour allies, and a few liberal Christians. Gould’s proposals for moral instruction lessons were adopted. He also aimed to reform the educational activities of LSS itself. But teachers and many local Christians were critical, while Gould’s increasing sympathy for the Positivism of Auguste Comte alienated fellow LSS members. Wright’s analysis thus reveals both alliances and divisions between secularists and Christians, and within secularism and Christianity too.
Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, Dec 9, 2016
This chapter examines the educational activities of two Positivists, F. J. Gould and the Oxford-e... more This chapter examines the educational activities of two Positivists, F. J. Gould and the Oxford-educated Inspector of Schools, F. S. Marvin, within the League of Nations Union (LNU) between 1919 and 1939. This was a period when, wanting to avoid a repeat of the horrors of the First World War, both Christians and secularists focused on educating citizens of the world. Wright considers Marvin’s and Gould’s promotion of their Positivist-flavoured versions of world citizenship within this major pressure group, Marvin through his suggestions for internationalist history teaching, and Gould through his League lessons and his periodical for pupils, League News. Through the LNU’s influential channels their proposals reached many teachers and pupils. But Marvin and Gould were a minority within a predominantly Christian organisation.
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Papers by Susannah Wright