The Hearing School: an exploration of sound and listening in the modern school

Abstract

In recent years sensory history has emerged as a research topic of growing interest to historians and has been accompanied by a call to incorporate the senses into our understanding of the past. Under modernity, social direction and control were built into the infrastructure of modern life as specialist institutions emerged and multiplied in the urban landscape; institutions which were designed to discipline, control and shape urban bodies – the prison, the workhouse, the asylum, the reformatory, the children's home and the school. This paper focuses on one of these sites of childhood control: the school. Historians of education and childhood have to date paid little attention to the sensory worlds of schooling and childhood. This study focuses on one sense – hearing. Hearing, sound and aurality have been shown to be deeply implicated in modernity's daily elaboration. The study explores the sounds of modern schooling; the culture of listening in modern schools; the materiality of the modern school “soundscape”; and the influence of architectural acoustics on the culture of listening. In doing so, the study addresses the problems, sources and methodologies involved in writing a history of the hearing school.

Keywords:

• sensory history
• hearing
• listening
• school

Notes

¹Quoted in Donald J. Withrington, Going to School (Edinburgh: National Museums of Scotland, 1997), 45–46.

²John Dewey, The School and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1907), 48.

³Robert Roberts, A Ragged Schooling: Growing Up in the Classic Slum (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1976), 170.

⁴Mary Frances Greene and Orletta Ryan, The Schoolchildren Growing Up in the Slums, 1965, quoted in George Dennison, The Lives of Children: The Story of First Street School (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1972), 24.

⁵Mark M. Smith, Sensory History (Oxford: Berg, 2007).

⁶See though: C.E. Tyndale‐Biscoe, “The Imperial Touch: Schooling Male Bodies in Colonial India, Part I” and Satadru Sen, “The Imperial Touch: Schooling Male Bodies in Colonial India, Part II” in The Book of Touch, ed. Constance Classen (Oxford: Berg, 2005), 168–70, 171–76; Gary McCulloch, “Putting English Middle‐class Education in its Place: James Bryce and the Schools Inquiry Commission, 1865–1868” (paper presented at UK History of Education Society Annual Conference, Sheffield 2009).

⁷Veit Erlmann, ed., Hearing Cultures: Essays on Sound, Listening and Modernity (Oxford: Berg, 2004).

⁸Erlmann, Hearing Cultures, 3–5.

⁹See, for example, David N. Livingstone, “Texts, Talk and Testimony: Geographical Reflections on Scientific Habits,” British Journal for the History of Science 38 (2005): 93–100.

¹⁰Smith, Sensory History, 5.

¹¹Crosbie Smith and Jon Agar quoted in David N. Livingstone, “Text, Talk and Testimony: Geographical Reflections on Scientific Habits. An Afterword,” British Journal for the History of Science 38, no. 136 (2005): 93–4.

¹²See, for example, Marc Armitage, “The Influence of School Architecture and Design on the Outdoor Play Experience within the Primary School,” Paedagogica Historica 41 (2005): 535–54.

¹³Jonathan Ree, I See a Voice: Deafness, Language and the Senses – A Philosophical History (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1999), 7.

¹⁶ De Vereeniging, 1885, quoted in Depaepe, Order in Progress, 77.

¹⁴Marc Depaepe, Kristof Dams, Maurits de Vroede, Betty Eggermont, Hilde Lauwers, Frank Simon, Roland Vandenberghe, and Jef Verhoeven, Order in Progress: Everyday Education Practice in Primary Schools – Belgium, 1880–1970 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2000).

¹⁵ L'Observateur, 1882, quoted in quoted in Depaepe, Order in Progress.

¹⁷Conference report, 1885, quoted in Depaepe, Order in Progress, 77.

¹⁸Robert Finch, “English,” in The Teachers' Guide: A Practical Treatise written by Specialists, Vol. 1 (London: Gresham Publishing Company, 1930), 116.

¹⁹Peter Cunningham and Philip Gardner, Becoming Teachers: Texts and Testimonies 1907–1950 (London: Woburn Press, 2004), 42.

²⁰Birmingham Archives and Heritage (BA&H), S68/1/1 Floodgate Street Infant School Log Book, HMI Report May 1928.

²¹BA&H S68/3/1 Floodgate Street Junior Mixed School Log Book, HMI Report, May 1936. For further details about the Floodgate Street schools see: See Susannah Wright, “The Work of Teachers and Others in and around a Birmingham Slum School 1891–1920,” History of Education 38, no. 6 (2009): 729–46; and Ian Grosvenor, “The School Album: Images, Insights and Inequalities.”

²²Billie Melman, The Culture of History: English Uses of the Past 1800–1953 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 203.

²³See Anne‐Marie Chartier, “Cultural Perspectives on Literacy Teaching and Methods for Young Readers,” Paedagogica Historica 44, nos. 1&2 (2008): 7–30. This article is in a special issue on “Technologies of the Word: Literacies in the History of Education” edited by Daniel Lindmark, Per‐Olof Erixon, and Frank Simon.

²⁴Walter Benjamin, “Berlin Childhood around 1900,” (1938) in Walter Benjamin Selected Writings Volume 3 1935–1938, trans. Edmund Jephcott and Howard Eiland, and ed. Howard Eiland and Michael Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2002), 354. Peter Schemihl is a character in a story by Albert von Chamisso in 1914 and sells his shadow to the devil in exchange for an inexhaustible purse, losing his peace of mind in the process; ibid., 409.

²⁵Smith, Sensory History, 41.

²⁶Oral testimony of Brian Sawkin quoted in Cunningham and Gardner, Becoming Teachers, 161.

²⁷Les Back, The Art of Listening (Oxford: Berg, 2007), 7.

²⁸Quoted in Chris Otter, The Victorian Eye: A Political History of Light and Vision in Britain, 1800–1910 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 92.

²⁹Henry Allnutt quoted in Otter, The Victorian Eye, 93.

³⁰Alexander Patterson, Across the Bridges; or, Life by the South London Riverside (London: Edward Arnold, 1911), 59.

³¹See Phillip Prodger, Darwin's Camera: Art and Photography in the Theory of Evolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), Chapter 8 “Darwin's Eyes and Ears” Hugh Aldersey‐Williams, “Francis Galton,” in Identity and Identification, ed. Hugh Aldersey‐Williams et al. (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2009), 148–65.

³²Sir Cyril Burt, The Backward Child (London: University of London Press, 1937), 4th ed. 1959, 472.

³³Ibid., 472.

³⁴R. Gamlin, Modern School Hygiene (Welwyn: Nisbet and Company, 1935; revised edition 1959), 191–93.

³⁵Richard Palmer, School Broadcasting in Britain (London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1947), 18–20.

³⁶Palmer, School Broadcasting, 32.

³⁷Palmer, School Broadcasting, 132

³⁸ School Broadcasting (Paris: League of Nations, 1933), 55–56, 59, 65, 83, 111, 173–75, 132, 186. For an extension to this story in the American context see Sevan G. Terzian, “‘Adventures in Science’: Casting Scientifically Talented Youth as National Resources on American Radio, 1942–1958,” Paedagogica Historica 44, no. 3 (2008): 309–25. See also Malja Runcis and Bengt Sandin, Neither Fish nor Fowl: Educational Broadcasting in Sweden 1930–2000 (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2010).

³⁹See School Broadcasting, 128–42.

⁴⁰ School Broadcasting, 33–34.

⁴¹ School Broadcasting, 137.

⁴² School Broadcasting, 139.

⁴³The British Academy in 2009–2010 funded a series of research seminars on “Documentary Film and Educational Research”. The results of this research will be published in a special issue of Paedagogica Historica under the title “Education in Motion” in 2011.

⁴⁴ Children at School is available in the British Film Institute collection, Lands of Promise: The British Documentary Movement 1930–1950 (2008). The film was the focus of a workshop organised by Catherine Burke at ECER 2008 Göteborg, Sweden.

⁴⁶ Suggestions for Teachers (London: English Board of Education, 1937), 76.

⁴⁵Joy Parr, “Notes for a More Sensuous History of Twentieth Century Canada: The Timely, the Tacit, and the Material Body,” Canadian Historical Review 82 (2001): 740.

⁴⁷ Suggestions for Teachers, 146.

⁴⁸David and Mary Medd, “Eveline Lowe Primary School London,” Building Bulletin 36 (Department of Education and Science, 1967), 45.

⁴⁹ Building Bulletin, 36, 13, Notes from a day's visit to schools observing a range of activities in one classroom area.

⁵⁰ Building Bulletin, 36, 31.

⁵¹ Building Bulletin, 36, 56.

⁵² Building Bulletin, 36, 58.

⁵³ The Times Educational Supplement, November 6, 2009.

⁵⁴Steve Higgins, Elaine Hall, Kate Wall, Pam Woolner, and Colin McCaughey, The Impact of School Environments: A Literature Review (London: Design Council, 2005), 18–19.

⁵⁵L.E. Maxwell and G.W. Evans, “The Effect of Noise on Pre‐school Children's Pre‐Reading Skills,” Journal of Environmental Psychology 20 (2000): 91–97.

⁵⁶See Malcolm Seaborne, The English School: Its Architecture and Organization, Vol 1: 1370–1870 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul), plate 120.

⁵⁷Joyce Goodman and Andrea Jacobs, “Musical Literacies in the English Inter‐war Secondary School Classroom,” Paedagogica Historica 44, nos. 1&2 (2008): 153–166.

⁵⁸Jean‐Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or Education (1762) quoted in Robert Jűtte, A History of the Sense: From Antiquity to Cyberspace (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005), 157.

⁵⁹Penelope Gouk, “Raising Spirits and Restoring Souls: Early Modern Medical Explanations for Music's Effects,” in Erlmann, Hearing Cultures, 90.

⁶⁰See Jo May and John Ramsland, “The Disenchantment of Childhood: Exploring the Cultural and Spatial Boundaries of Childhood in Three Australian Films, 1920s–1970s,” Paedagogica Historica 43, no. 1 (2007): 135–50.

⁶¹See, for example, Donal O'Donaghue, “Classrooms as Installations: a Conceptual Framework for Analyzing Classroom Photographs from the Past,” History of Education 39 (2010), forthcoming.

⁶²David Toop, Sinister Resonance: The Mediumship of Listening (London: Continuum, 2010), 37–38.

⁶³Steven Connor, “Edison's Teeth: Touching Hearing,” in Erlmann, Hearing Cultures, 154.

⁶⁴Harold Silver, “Knowing and Not Knowing in the History of Education,” History of Education 21, no. 1 (1992): 97–108.

⁶⁵See, for example, Kate Rousmaniere, City Teachers: Teaching and School Reform in Historical Perspective (New York: Teachers' College Press, 1997); Kate Rousmaniere, Kari Dehli, and Ning de Conick‐Smith, eds, Education and Moral Regulation: A Social History of Schooling (London: Routledge, 1997); I. Grosvenor, M. Lawn, and Kate Rousmaniere, eds, Silences and Images: The Social History of the Classroom (New York: Peter Lang, 1999); Depaepe et al., Order in Progress; Ian Grosvenor and Martin Lawn, eds, “Ways of Seeing Education and Schooling: Emerging Historiographies,” History of Education 30, no. 2 (2001); Martin Lawn and Ian Grosvenor, eds, Materialities of Schooling (Oxford: Symposium Books, 2005); Agustin Escolano Benito, ed., La cultura material de la escuela (Berlanga de Duero: Centro Internacional de la Cultura Escolar, 2007); Elsie Rockwell, Hacer escuela, Hacer Estado. La Educación Posrevolucionara vista desde Tlaxcala (Michoacan: CIESAS, 2007).