Working for Change Across International Borders: the Association of Headmistresses and Education for International Citizenship¹

¹ Thanks to Dr Joy of Manchester High School for her help with archival research.

Abstract

This article contributes to the retrieval of the ‘lost history’ of interwar internationalism that is increasingly receiving attention from historians of education. ² It traces the involvement of the English Association of Headmistresses (AHM) in a range of organizations that networked women educationists with women’s organizations, with educational organizations and with international organizations working towards international peace in the interwar period. The focus of the paper is the development of an international orientation in the AHM and in girls’ secondary schools through association with, and interest in, the League of Nations. Its subject matter is citizenship: the citizenship practised via the professional engagement of headmistresses through the AHM and as individuals with ideals of international understanding; and the development of an internationally oriented secondary school curriculum for girls and, in particular, the development of a history curriculum for ‘world citizenship’. Both are discussed in relation to the version of the ‘international’ that arose in the League of Nations in the aftermath of the First World War to adjudicate and resolve conflicts between nations. This was linked to a view of discrete nation‐states in a period when the borders and boundaries between nation‐states in Europe were shifting. The article adopts a transnational methodology to investigate the ‘international’ and ways in which national and transnational flows were transversed by longer‐standing colonial relations. The article begins by discussing the increasing involvement of women educationists in transnational flows of teachers, promoted initially by the AHM’s engagement with aspects of British imperial mission. It traces ways in which the Association’s increasingly internationalist orientation ran alongside and was linked to older concerns about empire but also fostered much interest in League of Nations activities and curriculum development around citizenship education for girls. This section of the article looks ‘outward’ from the AHM towards the League of Nations and the women’s organizations associated with the League. It analyses three issues that weave through the AHM’s dealings with the League of Nations: representation; disarmament and world peace; and citizenship. It moves to look ‘inward’ from the AHM to schools by examining these issues at the level of the local and the national, within the global development of international ideas and movements, through League of Nations activities at Manchester High School for Girls.

¹ Thanks to Dr Joy of Manchester High School for her help with archival research.

² Lawn, M. “Reflecting the Passion: Mid‐century Projects for Education.” History of Education 33, no. 3 (2004): 512; Nóvoa, A., and M. Lawn. Fabricating Europe: The Making of an Educational Space. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2002; Watkins, C. “Inventing International Citizenship: Badminton School and the Progressive Tradition between the Wars.” History of Education . Available from http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/0046760X.asp ; Lawn, M. “Circulations and Exchanges: Emergence of Scientific Cosmopolitanism in Educational Research.” Paper presented at the Congress of Historical Sciences (CISH), Sydney, 2005; Fuchs, E. “Towards Global Educational Politics: The role of Transnational Educational Organizations in the Twentieth Century.” Paper presented at the International Standing Conference for the History of Education (ISCHE), Sydney, 2005; Rogers, R. “Questioning National Models: The History of Women Teachers in a Comparative Perspective.” Paper presented at the International Federation for Research in Women’s History (IFRWH), Sydney, 2005.

Notes

¹ Thanks to Dr Joy of Manchester High School for her help with archival research.

² Lawn, M. “Reflecting the Passion: Mid‐century Projects for Education.” History of Education 33, no. 3 (2004): 512; Nóvoa, A., and M. Lawn. Fabricating Europe: The Making of an Educational Space. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2002; Watkins, C. “Inventing International Citizenship: Badminton School and the Progressive Tradition between the Wars.” History of Education . Available from http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/0046760X.asp ; Lawn, M. “Circulations and Exchanges: Emergence of Scientific Cosmopolitanism in Educational Research.” Paper presented at the Congress of Historical Sciences (CISH), Sydney, 2005; Fuchs, E. “Towards Global Educational Politics: The role of Transnational Educational Organizations in the Twentieth Century.” Paper presented at the International Standing Conference for the History of Education (ISCHE), Sydney, 2005; Rogers, R. “Questioning National Models: The History of Women Teachers in a Comparative Perspective.” Paper presented at the International Federation for Research in Women’s History (IFRWH), Sydney, 2005.

³ Price, M., and N. Glenday. Reluctant Revolutionaries: A Century of Headmistresses 1874–1974. Bath: Pitman, 1974.

⁴ Goodman, J. “Their Market Value must be Greater for the Experience they have Gained.” In Gender, Colonialism and Education: The Politics of Experience, edited by J. Goodman and J. Martin. London: Woburn, 2002: 175–98.

⁵ Ibid. For rules of affiliation see AHM Executive, 3 February 1923. NSW, Victoria and Queensland affiliated in 1923 and New Zealand in 1926. AHM, Annual Report (AR) 1923, 4; AHM, Proceedings of Conference 13 and 14 June 1924; AHM, AR 1924, 79; AHM Executive, 9 October 1926. AHM records were consulted at the Modern Records Office, Warwick University.

⁶ Goodman, “Their Market Value must be Greater.”

⁷ Nym Mayhall, L. A. E., P. Levine, and I. C. Fletcher. “Introduction.” In Women’s Suffrage in the British Empire: Citizenship, Nation and Race, edited by I. C. Fletcher, L. A. E. Nym Mayhall and P. Levine. London: Routledge, 2000: xiii, xvi.

⁸ Nym Mayhall et al., “Introduction”, xviii; Grewal, I., and C. Kaplan. “Postcolonial Studies and Transnational Feminist Practices.” [cited 11 June 2005]. Available from http://social.chass.ncsu.edu/jouvert/v5i1/grewal.htm; INTERNET.

⁹ Curthoys, A. “Does Australian History have a Future?” Australian Historical Studies 118 (2002): 140–52; Lake, A. “‘White Man’s Country’: The Transnational History of a National Project.” Australian Historical Studies 122 (2003): 346–63. Both quoted in Whitehead, K. “‘The insufficiency of the low grade teacher’: A Transnational Matter.” Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association (AERA), Montreal, 2005. Trethewey, L., and K. Whitehead. “Beyond Centre and Periphery: Transnationalism in Two Teacher/Suffragettes’ Work. History of Education 32, no. 5 (2002): 547–60.

¹⁰ Nym Mayhall et al., “Introduction,” xviii.

¹¹ Tyrell, I. “New Comparisons, International Worlds: Transnational and Comparative Perspectives.” Australian Feminist Studies 16 (2001): 356, quoted in Whitehead, “The insufficiency of the low grade teacher.”

¹² Lawn, M. “Borderless Education: Imagining a European Education Space in a Time of Brands and Networks.” In Fabricating Europe, edited by Nóvoa and Lawn, 20.

¹³ Whitehead, “The insufficiency of the low grade teacher.” See also Fletcher et al., Women’s Suffrage in the British Empire; Nolan, M., and C. Daley. “International Feminist Perspectives on Suffrage: Introduction.” In Suffrage and Beyond: International Feminist Perspectives, edited by C. Daley and M. Nolan. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1994; Trethewey, L., and K. Whitehead. “Fashioning the Country Teacher in the Interwar Years.” History of Education Review 33, no. 2 (2003): 1–14.

¹⁴ Lawn, “Reflecting the Passion,” 512.

¹⁵ Grewal, I., A. Gupta, and A. Ong. “Introduction: Asian Transationalities.” Positions 7, no. 3 (2000): 653.

¹⁶ Lake, M. “Civil Society: Citizenship, Gender and the Public Sphere.” Round Table at CISH, Sydney, 2005; Lake, M. “John Curtin: Internationalist.” [cited 13 July 2005]. Available from http://www.john.curtin.edu.au/events/speeches/lake.html; INTERNET.

¹⁷ Price and Glenday, Reluctant Revolutionaries, 80; AHM, Proceedings of Annual Conference 13 and 14 June 1919, 10; AHM Executive, 20 November 1920, 5 February 5 1921; AHM, AR 1923, 2.

¹⁸ AHM Executive, 8 May 1920; 14 July 1923; AHM, AR 1923, 2.

¹⁹ Joint 4 report international sub‐committee, AHM, AR 1931, 10. “Joint Committee of the Four Secondary Teachers’ Associations.” [cited 5 May 2005]. Available from http://www.archives.lib.soton.ac.uk/guide/MS67.shtml; INTERNET.

²⁰ AHM Executive, 10 May 1924; AHM, AR 1924, 40; Price and Glenday, Reluctant Revolutionaries, 81.

²¹ “League of Nations” [cited 29 May 2005]. Available from http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/rdleaflet.asp?sLeafletID=217; INTERNET; MacMillan, M. Peacemakers: The Paris Conference of 1919 and its Attempt to End War. London: Murray, 2001: 104; White, F. “The Constitution and Administration of the League of Nations.” In The Woman’s Year Book 1923–24. London: Women Publishers, 1924: 143–45.

²² Fuchs, “Towards Global Educational Politics.”

²³ Elliott, B. J. “The League of Nations Union and History Teaching in England: A Study in Benevolent Bias.” History of Education 6, no. 2 (1977): 131.

²⁴ Pugh, M. Women and the Women’s Movement in Britain 1914–59. London: Macmillan, 1992: 106.

²⁷ AHM, Proceedings of the Annual Conference 1919, 2. For ways in which brotherhood could be gendered as male and white, see Lake, “Civil society.”

²⁵ AHM Executive, 11 October 1919.

²⁶ Headmistress of Streatham Hill High School GPDST.

³⁰ AHM, Proceedings of the Annual Conference 1919, 3.

²⁸ MacMillan, Peacemakers, 94, 107–08, 116.

²⁹ Sinha, M. “Suffragism and Internationalism: The Enfranchisement of British and Indian Women under an Imperial State.” In Women’s Suffrage in the British Empire, 231.

³¹ Offen, K. European Feminisms 1700–1950. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000: 348.

³² Rupp, L. Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women’s Movement. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997: 213, 215.

³³ This paragraph draws on Alberti, J. Beyond Suffrage, Feminists in War and Peace 1914–28. London: Macmillan, 1989: 194ff; Offen, European Feminisms, 350, 362; Bussey, G., and M. Tims. Pioneers for Peace: Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom 1915–1965. Oxford: George Allen & Unwin, 1965: 73; Rupp, Worlds of Women, 215.

³⁴ Coombe Tennant, W. “Women and the League of Nations.” In The Woman’s Year Book 1923–24, edited by E. Gates. London: Women Publishers, 1924: 141. See also Woman’s Year Book 1923–24, 159–60.

³⁵ Coombe Tennant, “Women and the League of Nations,” 142, lists women who held office in the Commissions in 1922.

³⁶ Alberti, Beyond Suffrage, 197.

³⁷ AHM Executive, 5 February 1921, 11 October 1924; AHM, Proceedings of Annual Conference 13 and 14 June 1924.

³⁸ AHM, AR 1928, 40.

³⁹ AHM, AR 1928, 40; Bussey and Tims, Pioneers for Peace, 73, 75.

⁴⁰ Coombe Tennant, “Women and the League of Nations,” 142.

⁴¹ AHM, AR 1932, 35.

⁴² Women’s exclusion was regulated by an Order in Council made on July 22 1920, followed by Regulations made by the Civil Service Commissioners with the approval of the Lords Commissioners of His Majesty’s Treasury on 23 August 1921. Women’s exclusion was discussed by the Tomlin Commission in 1930 and again in 1934 by an Inter‐departmental Committee on the Admission of Women to the Diplomatic and Consular Services. The recommendation of the two women members of the latter committee that women should be admitted to both services was contained in the minority report of the committee in 1936. Martindate, Hilda. Women Servants of the State. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1938: 187–97.

⁴³ Rupp, Worlds of Women, 350; see also Miller, C. “‘Geneva—the key to equality’: Inter‐war Feminists and the League of Nations.” Women’s History Review 3, no. 2 (1994): 219–46.

⁴⁹ AHM, Proceedings of Annual Conference 1930, 2.

⁴⁴ Caine, B. English Feminism 1780–1980. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997: 217–20.

⁴⁵ White, F. “The League at Work.” In The Woman’s Year Book 1923–24, 148.

⁴⁶ Alberti, Beyond Suffrage, 210.

⁴⁷ “Kellogg–Briand Pact 1928” [cited 29 May 2005]. Available from http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/kbpact.htm; INTERNET.

⁴⁸ Bussey and Tims, Pioneers for Peace, 86.

⁵¹ AHM, AR 1931, Report of the Executive, 6.

⁵⁰ Headmistress of Francis Holland School London.

⁵² Headmistress of Preston Park School.

⁵³ AHM, AR 1932, 35.

⁵⁴ AHM, AR 1933, 34. For the Sino–Japanese dispute see: “1932” [cited 29 May 2005]. Available from http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/events/1932.html; INTERNET.

⁵⁵ Betts, R. “Parliamentary Women: Women Ministers of Education, 1924–1979.” In Women, Educational Policy‐making and Administration in England: Authoritative Women since 1800, edited by J. Goodman and S. Harrop. London: Routledge, 2000: 275–92.

⁵⁶ Atholl, Duchess of. Working Partnership. London: Arthur Barker, 1958: 149; id. Women and Politics. London: Philip Allan, 1931: 69; Stocks, M. D. Eleanor Rathbone: A Biography. London: Gollancz, 1949: 220, 230ff; Alberti, J. Eleanor Rathbone. London: Sage, 1996: 130–31.

⁵⁷ Nym Mayhall et al., “Introduction,” xiv. For further disparate views see Jones, Helen. Women in British Public Life, 1914–50. Longman, 2000: 140–1.

⁵⁸ Manning, L. A Life for Education: An Autobiography. London: Victor Gollancz, 1970: 141–2; Pethick‐Lawrence, Lord. Fate has been Kind. London: Hutchinson, 1940: 186.

⁵⁹ Offen, European Feminisms, 365.

⁶⁰ ‘World Citizenship’ was defined by the AHM ‘externally as membership and service of a commonwealth of nations (rather than of individuals) and internally as an international outlook and habit of mind’. AHM, AR 1931, 20.

⁶¹ Elliott, “The League of Nations Union,” 134.

⁶² Shropshire, O. E. The Teaching of History in English Schools. New York: Teachers College, 1936: 67, 85.

⁶³ The Schools of Britain and the Peace of the World. A Memorandum from the National Union of Teachers, the Educational Institute of Scotland, the Headmasters’ Conference, the Incorporated Association of Assistant Masters in Secondary Schools, the Incorporation of Assistant Mistresses in Secondary Schools, the Training College Association, the Council of Principals of Training Colleges and the League of Nations. June 9 1927; Elliott, “The League of Nations Union”, 132, 134, 137.

⁶⁴ Major, S. Doors of Possibility: the Life of Dame Emmeline Tanner, 1876–1955. London: Lutterworth Press, 1995: 207–08, 293.

⁶⁶ Ibid., 108.

⁶⁵ AHM, AR 1931, 20.

⁶⁷ Ibid., 109.

⁶⁸ Ibid.

⁶⁹ AHM, AR 1923, 48; AR 1926, 46; AR 1931, 34l; AR 1932, 34; AR 1933, 34.

⁷⁰ Shropshire, The Teaching of History, 85. See Stray, C. “Murray, (George) Gilbert Aimé (1866–1957).” In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [cited 11 June 2005]. Available from http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/35159; INTERNET.

⁷² “First Model Assembly at the High School.” Magazine of the Manchester High School (July 1928): 2–3.

⁷¹ “Junior League of Nations. Model Assembly at the High School” [1928], source unknown, newspaper cutting MCGHS archives; Christian Science Monitor, Boston, 7 September 1928.

⁷⁴ “Manchester High School for Girls. Twelfth Assembly of the League of Nations’ typescript, MCGHS archives.

⁷³ “League of Nations Union.” Magazine of the Manchester High School (June 1933): 16. This was similar to the model assembly at Sheffield Central Secondary School for Girls, which gave the girls ‘a clear impression of the procedure at Geneva’. “The League of Nations Union.” The Wayfarer (June 1932): 5.

⁷⁵ “League of Nations Union.” Magazine of the Manchester High School (June 1931): 26.

⁷⁶ Elliott, “The League of Nations Union”, 134.

⁷⁷ “League of Nations Union.” Magazine of the Manchester High School (June 1932): 16.

⁷⁸ MCGHS, Register of teachers. Entries for Ruby Denison, Mary Fisher, Mabel Hurford, Eleonore Tiano, Dorothy Whiteley, MCGHS archives. “League of Nations.” Magazine of the Manchester High School (July 1930): 21; ibid. (December 1930): 21.

⁷⁹ Notice of Public Meeting for the League of Nations Union Withington Branch to be held in the Withington Town Hall, on Monday 9 January 1933, MCGHS archives. Thanks to Dr Joy of MCGHS for the information from governors’ minutes about Mary Clarke’s advocacy with the school governors.

⁸⁰ Pupils aged 14 plus.

⁸¹ “The League of Nations Union.” Magazine of the Manchester High School (December 1928): 25; (July 1929): 22. “League of Nations Union.” Magazine of the Manchester High School (December 1934): 32.

⁸² “The League of Nations Union.” Magazine of the Manchester High School (July 1929): 22; (March 1930): 26; (July 1930): 21; (December 1930): 21.

⁸³ “The League of Nations Union.” Magazine of the Manchester High School (December 1928): 25; (July 1929): 22; (March 1930): 26; (December 1932): 21.

⁸⁴ Pupils aged 15 and above.

⁸⁵ “The News Society.” Magazine of the Manchester High School (December 1938): 33.

⁸⁶ Macmillan, The Peacemakers, 93.

⁸⁷ Nóvoa, A., and M. Lawn. “Fabricating Europe: The Formation of an Educational Space.” In Lawn and Nóvoa, Fabricating Europe, 12.

⁸⁸ Fletcher, I. C. “‘Women of the Nations, Unite!’ Transnational Suffragism in the UK, 1912–14.” In Women’s Suffrage in the British Empire, 101.

⁸⁹ Elliott, “The League of Nations Union,” 131.

⁹⁰ Bonakdarian, M. “British Suffragists and Iranian Women, 1906–1911.” In Women’s Suffrage in the British Empire, 157.

⁹¹ AHM, Proceedings of the Annual Conference 1919, 3.

⁹² Oram, A. Women Teachers and Feminist Politics, 1900–1939. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996.

⁹³ See for example Swanwick, H. M. The Future of the Women’s Movement, with an Introduction by Mrs Fawcett. London: Bell, 1913. For contested interpretations of the shifting nature of interwar feminism see Kingsley Kent, S. Making Peace: The Reconstruction of Gender in Interwar Britain. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993: 124–25; Jones, Women in British Public Life, 132–33.