A Uniform Identity: Schoolgirl Snapshots and the Spoken Visual

Abstract

This article discusses the possibility for expanding our understanding of the visual to include the ‘spoken visual’ within oral history analysis. It suggests that adding a further reading, that of the visualized body, to the voice‐centred relational method we can consider the meaning of the uniformed body for the individual. It uses as a case‐study reflections on a photograph taken of a group of girls on a school outing and their adult interpretation of the meaning of the modifications to their school uniform. Extracts from oral history interviews with girls who left school in South London in the late 1950s are also used to demonstrate the frequency with which respondents refer to how they looked in order to express in more detail how they felt.

Notes

¹Griffiths, Morwenna. Feminisms and the Self: The Web of Identity. London: Routledge, 1995.

²Mauthner, Andrea, and Natasha Doucet. “Reflections on a Voice‐centred Relational Method.” In Feminist Dilemmas in Qualitative Research, edited by J. Ribbens & R. Edwards. London: Sage Publications, 1998.

³Direct Grant schools were part funded by central government, entry was by 11+. The schools were similar to grammar schools and followed primarily an academic curriculum.

⁴Abrams, Mark. The Teenage Consumer. London: Press Exchange; Springhall, John. Coming of Age: Adolescence in Britain 1860–1960. Goldenbridge, Dublin: Gill & Macmillan.

⁵Cappelletto, Francesca. “Long‐Term Memory of Extreme Events: From Autobiography to History.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 9, no. 2 (June 2003): 257–58.

⁶Grosvenor, I., M. Lawn, and K. Rousmaniere, eds. Silences & Images: The Social History of the Classroom. Canterbury: Peter Lang, 1999.

⁷This article is based on a paper given at ECER 2005, Dublin. I am grateful to the discussion following the paper and to the anonymous reviewers for their thought‐provoking comments.

⁸Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994.

⁹Plummer, Ken. Documents of Life 2: An Introduction to Critical Humanism. London: Sage Publications, 2001: 64–66; Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida. London: Vintage, 2000; Evans, Jessica. The Camerawork Essays. London: Rivers Oram, 1997; Alvarado, M., E. Buscombe, and R. Collins, eds. Representation and Photography. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001.

¹⁰Rousmaniere, Kate. “Questioning the Visual in the History of Education.” History of Education 30, no. 2 (2001): 110.

¹¹ History of Education 30, no. 2 (2001).

¹³Prosser, J., and T. Warburton. “Visual Sociology and School Culture.” In School Culture, edited by J. Prosser. London: Sage Publications, 1999: 87.

¹²Prosser, John. “Photographs within the Sociological Research Process.” In Image Based Research: A Sourcebook for Qualitative Researchers, edited by J. Prosser. London: Falmer Press, 1998; Dein, Alan, and Mark Burman. BBC radio 3, Sunday Feature, “You must remember this.” 23. October 2005.

¹⁴Perks, R., and A.Thompson, eds. The Oral History Reader. London: Routledge, 1998; Armitage, S., with P. Hart and K. Weatherman, eds. Women's Oral History: The ‘Frontiers’ Reader. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 2002.

¹⁵Summerfield, Penny. Reconstructing Women's Wartime Lives: Discourse and Subjectivity in Oral Histories of the Second World War. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998.

¹⁶Prosser, “Photographs within the Sociological Research Process”.

¹⁷Spencer, Stephanie. “From Schoolgirl to Career Girl: The City as Educative Space.” Paedagogica Historica 39, nos 1/2 (2003): 121–33.

¹⁸Gary McCulloch notes how despite the meritocratic intentions of the 1944 Education Act a majority of middle‐class children attended the grammar schools. McCulloch, Gary. Failing the Ordinary Child? The Theory and Practice of Working‐Class Secondary Education. Buckingham: Open University, 1998.

¹⁹For a more detailed discussion of these interviews and the methodology employed see Spencer, Stephanie. Gender, Work and Education in Britain in the 1950s. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

²⁰Gluck, S. Berger, and D. Patai. Women's Words, The Feminist Practice of Oral History. London: Routledge, 1991.

²¹Grosvenor, I., and M. Lawn. “Ways of Seeing in Education and Schooling: Emerging Historiographies.” History of Education 30, no. 2 (2001): 106; Silver, Harold. “Knowing and Not Knowing in the History of Education.” History of Education 21, no. 1 (1992): 97–108.

²²Cunningham, P., and P. Gardner. Becoming Teachers: Texts and Testimonies 1907–1950. London: Woburn, 2004.

²³With the wider acceptance of oral history within academic research the methodology has become increasingly nuanced and theorized. See Oral History Society website, available from http://www.ohs.org.uk; INTERNET; Yow, V. R. Recording Oral History: A Guide for the Humanities and Social Sciences. 2nd ed. California: AltaMira Press, 2005.

²⁴Cortazzi, Martin. Narrative Analysis. London: Falmer Press, 1993.

²⁵Summerfield, Reconstructing Women's Wartime Lives.

²⁶Mauthner and Doucet, “Reflections on a Voice‐centred Relational Method.”

²⁷Mauthner and Doucet, “Voice relational analysis”, 119.

²⁸Brown, L. M., and C. Gilligan. “Meeting at the Crossroads: Women's Psychology and Girls' Development.” Feminism and Psychology 3, no. 1 (1993): 11–35.

²⁹Mauthner and Doucet, “Voice relational analysis”, 126.

³⁰Ibid.

³¹Shilling, Chris. “Physical Capital and Situated Action: A New Direction for Corporeal Sociology.” British Journal of Sociology of Education 25, no. 4 (2004): 473–87.

³²Shilling, Chris. The Body and Social Theory. London: Sage Publications, 1993: 5.

³³Young, Iris. “Lived Body vs. Gender: Reflections on Social Structure and Subjectivity.” In On Female Body Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. See also Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London, New York: Routledge, 1990.

³⁴Paechter, Carrie. “Reconceptualizing the Gendered Body: Learning and Constructing Masculinities and Femininities in School.” Gender and Education 18, no. 2 (2006): 121–35.

³⁵Summerfield, Penny. “Cultural Reproduction in the Education of Girls: A Study of Girls' Secondary Schooling in two Lancashire Towns, 1900–1950. In Lessons for Life: The Schooling of Girls and Women, 1850–1950, edited by F. Hunt. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

³⁶Dussel, Ines. “School Uniforms and the Disciplining of Appearances.” In Cultural History and Education, edited by. S. Popkewitz, B. Franklin and M. Pereira. London: RoutledgeFalmer, 2001: 206.

³⁷Dussel, Ines. “The Shaping of a Citizenship with Style: A History of Uniforms and Vestimentary Codes in Argentinean Public Schools.” In Materialities of Schooling Design, Technology, Objects, Routines, edited by M. Lawn and I. Grosvenor. London, Oxford: Symposium, 2005: 98.

³⁸Swain, Jon. “The Right Stuff: Fashioning an Identity through Clothing in a Junior School.” Gender and Education 14, no. 1 (2002): 53–69; Meadmore, D., and C. Symes, “Keeping Up Appearances: Uniform Policy for School Diversity?” British Journal of Educational Studies 45, no. 92 (June 1997): 174–86.

³⁹Swain, “The Right Stuff: Fashioning an Identity through Clothing in a Junior School”, 53.

⁴⁰Women replied to a request for interview participants in the South London Press. They were asked to discuss their career choices on school leaving. Although the area was chosen because of the variety of schools, a majority of those who replied had attended grammar secondary schools.

⁴¹The gradual introduction of uniform into schools is difficult to trace but can be found in the governing body minutes of individual schools. Some governing bodies included uniform sub‐committees to deal with this issue. (This research was made possible by a grant from the Spencer Foundation for ‘Women and the Governance of Girls' Secondary Schools 1870–1997’. The data presented, the statements made, and the views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author.) Other sources of information may be school magazines, and school photographic archives.

⁴²The ban at Broadstone Middle School in Poole, Dorset, was scheduled to be introduced in January 2006, after governors decided skirts were not suitable for some lessons. The headteacher said the ban was ‘to give girls the same opportunities as boys’ and to ‘maintain their modesty’ (Guardian 22 June 2005).

⁴³Epstein, D., and R. Johnson. Schooling Sexualities. Buckingham: Open University Press, 1998: 114.

⁴⁴Steedman, Carolyn. Past Tenses: Essays on Writing, Autobiography and History. London: Rivers Oram, 1992: 22.

⁴⁵Davies B., S. Dormer, S. Gannon, C. Laws, S. Rocco, H. L. Taguchi, and H. McCann. “Becoming Schoolgirls: The Ambivalent Project of Subjectification.” Gender and Education 13, no. 2 (2001): 167–82. Bronwen Davies explores the making of collective memory with her colleagues in order to interrogate the place that memories of education play in the formation of the individual adult subject.

⁴⁶The author would like to thank the women who are the subject of the photograph who have consented to its use in this article.

⁴⁷Uniform list c.1967, Sutton High School (SHS GDST archives).

⁴⁸Kuhn, Annette. Family Secrets: Acts of Memory and Imagination London: Verso, 1995: 92.

⁴⁹Also in common with their age cohort three of the five, including the photographer, married soon after finishing their education or training and two were subsequently divorced.

⁵⁰Osgerby, Bill. Youth in Britain since 1945. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998.

⁵³Evans, Mary. Life at a Girls' Grammar School in the 1950s. London: Women's Press, 1991: 68.

⁵¹Kuhn, Family Secrets, 92.

⁵²Dussel, “The Shaping of a Citizenship with Style”, 97.

⁵⁴Board of Education. Curriculum and Examinations in Secondary Schools (The Norwood Report) London: HMSO, 1943.

⁵⁵McCulloch, Gary. Educational Reconstruction. London: Woburn, 1994: 79.

⁵⁶Evans, Life at a Girls' Grammar, 55.

⁵⁷Gardiner, Juliet. From the Bomb to the Beatles: The Changing Face of Post‐War Britain. London: Collins & Brown, 1999.

⁵⁸Dussell, “Shaping of Citizenship”, 98.

⁵⁹Evans, Life at a Girls' Grammar, 54.

⁶⁰Kuhn, Family Secrets, 93.

⁶¹Rowbotham, Sheila. Threads through Time. London: Penguin, 1999: 39.

⁶²Plummer, Documents of Life, 234.

⁶³Dussell, “The Shaping of a Citizenship with Style”, 99.

⁶⁴Interview transcripts are in the author's possession.

⁶⁵Ministry of Education. 15–18, A Report of the Central Advisory Council for Education (England), (The Crowther Report), vol. 1. London: HMSO, 1959.

⁶⁷Interview transcript in the author's possession.

⁶⁶Spencer, Gender Work and Education.

⁶⁸McCulloch, Failing the Ordinary Child?

⁶⁹Transcript in the author's possession.

⁷¹Transcript in the author's possession.

⁷⁰Riley, Denise. ‘Am I that Name?’ Feminism and the Category of ‘Women’ in History. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988; Scott, Joan. “Experience.” In Feminists Theorise the Political, edited by J. Scott and J. Butler. London: Routledge, 1992.

⁷²Transcript in the author's possession

⁷³Ministry of Education. A Report of the Central Advisory Council for Education (England) (The Crowther Report). London: HMSO, 1959, 15–18, vol. 1, Table 1:6.

⁷⁴Plummer, Gillian. Failing Working Class Girls. London: Trentham, 2000: 174.

⁷⁵Dussel notes how in Argentina, where the uniform consists of a white smock, pupils still manage to find ways to modify it according to fashion: Materialities of Schooling Design: 118.

⁷⁶Head Mistresses Association Records, Reports of Annual Conferences‐MSS.188/4/1/16; MSS.188/4/1/17; TBN 50. University of Warwick Modern Records Centre

⁷⁷Martin, J., and J. Goodman. Women and Education 1800–1980. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004: 9.

⁷⁸Ibid., 11.

⁷⁹Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 1.

⁸⁰Ibid.

⁸¹Ibid., 2.

⁸²Fyvel, T. R. The Young Offenders: Rebellious Youth in the Welfare State. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963.

⁸³Carter, Michael, P. Home School and Work: A Study of the Education and Employment of Young People in Britain. Oxford: Pergamon, 1962.

⁸⁴Bhabha, Location of Culture, 2.

⁸⁵Ibid., 66.