Gender, community and education: cultures of resistance in Socialist Sunday Schools and Black Supplementary Schools

Abstract

This paper compares the ways in which gender was articulated and experienced through the construction of children’s education in two very different community-led educational initiatives in Britain: turn-of-the-century Socialist Sunday Schools and late-twentieth-century Black Supplementary Schools. Exploration of these historical examples of practice assist to challenge dominant representations of inactive working-class and Black parents, and provide content and form to the complex cultural processes involved in the development of counter-education. Whilst responding to markedly distinct social circumstances, a comparison of the experiences of teachers and students in both of these historical cases reveal powerful uses of gender, class and ‘race’ narratives in which to build and defend their respective school movements. Drawing on oral-history interviews and textual accounts of practice I examine the ways in which normative constructions of femininity and masculinity were both challenged and confirmed in the development of these alternative educational practices. In particular, both of these school movements blur and redefine the public/private distinction through the interpellation of their educational practice into the political field and the relationships they established between children’s education and the challenge to social, educational and economic inequality.

Keywords:

• social class
• critical pedagogies
• equality
• race and ethnicities
• femininities
• masculinities

Acknowledgements

This research would have not been possible without the doctoral funding of the Cambridge Commonwealth Trusts and research grants from the Faculty of Education and Jesus College, University of Cambridge. I would like to thank Diane Reay, Phil Gardner and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful advice on earlier versions of this draft. I also gratefully acknowledge the contribution of the men and women from the Black Supplementary Schools who were interviewed for this project.

Notes

The official NCBSSS 1921 census recorded just over 8,000 participating children and adults (6210 and 1932 respectively). However, with only 93 of the known 140 SSSs contributing to the census data, actual involvement is more likely to be closer to 10,000. LHA/SSS/16&7 – National log book and annual conference minutes.

Brian Harrison interviews with Suffragettes 1974–81, The Women’s Library, London Metropolitan University, WL/8/SUF/B/157;82;29;146;143.

Institute of Race Relations, IRR/01/04/04/01/05/01-7.

The Women’s Library, London Metropolitan University, WL/8SUF/B/129.