Remembrance Day practices in schools: meaning-making in social memory during the First World War centenary

ABSTRACT

Each November, commemoration of the First World War armistice (and subsequent military events and conflicts) is almost ubiquitous in UK schools and has been given increased importance during the centenary years of the First World War. Yet as seemingly isolated occasions outside the regular curriculum, school practices of remembrance, and the understandings and perceptions surrounding them, have been subject to surprisingly little scrutiny. The Remembrance in Schools project (2013–19) investigates armistice commemoration in primary and secondary schools in three counties in southern England. This paper considers the theorisation of public commemorative rituals and relates this to teachers’ reports of school-based events. It analyses teachers’ accounts and perceptions, from survey and interview data, of the ways in which the First World War and subsequent conflicts are remembered, presented and discussed through school commemoration events. We conclude that such events mirror the ‘social technologies’ of public remembrance rituals. However, behind almost ubiquitous practices (the two-minute silence) and symbols (the poppy), these accounts reveal nuanced variations in teachers’ views of the knowledge and values children gain from armistice commemoration in schools. These variations are inflected by individual schools’ histories, community contexts, and pupil demographics, as well as teachers’ own histories, values and ideals.

KEYWORDS:

• First World War
• remembrance
• teachers’ perceptions
• social memory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Annie Haight

Annie Haight is a senior lecturer in the School of Education at Oxford Brookes University. Her research interests centre on the sociology and philosophy of education, and the ways in which debates in the sphere of education reflect and illuminate aspects of wider culture and society.

Susannah Wright

Susannah Wright is a Senior Lecturer in Education Studies in the School of Education, Oxford Brookes University, Her key research interests and publications focus on moral education and citizenship, and local studies of education and welfare in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Britain. In addition to the research on remembrance in schools represented in this article, other current research projects focus on young people, commemoration, and engagement with internationalism and pacifism from the 1920s to the 1960s.

David Aldridge

David Aldridge is Reader and Director of Research in the Department of Education at Brunel University London. His research interests include philosophy of education, religious and moral education, and the relation between literature and education.

Patrick Alexander

Patrick Alexander is Research Lead and Director of the Centre of Educational Consultancy and Development in the School of Education, Oxford Brookes University. Patrick’s research interests lie at the intersection of education, anthropology, and youth studies, focusing on the sociology of schooling and youth transitions.