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ABSTRACT
Estella Lewis’s handbook for teachers, Teaching History in Secondary Schools, published in 1960, is examined to reflect upon the teaching of history in the UK during the postwar period, a text that addresses the “problem” of teaching history to “non-academic” children attending secondary modern schools. Lewis’s ideas, attitudes, and values towards this question are explored fully in order to show her contesting history education aims, content, and methods. Her work as a history educator, alongside other authors, is significant in the way it sheds light on the largely unexamined discourse on how history teaching in postwar secondary modern schools was conceptualised. Generally presented as deserted and unchanging, the landscape of postwar history education that appears in Lewis’s text is a social practice bustling with activity.
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Notes
1 John Fines, A Select Bibliography of the Teaching of History in the United Kingdom (London: Reading and Fakenham, 1969), Printed in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd.
2 For the pre-war period, see A.C.F. Beales, A Guide to the Teaching of History in Schools (London: University of London Press, 1937).
3 For accounts of the “disciplinary turn” see David Sylvester, “Change and Continuity in History Teaching 1900–93,” in Teaching History, ed. Hilary Bourdillon (London: Routledge, 1994), 9–23; John Slater, The Politics of History Teaching: A Humanity Dehumanised? (Institute of Education, University of London, 1989).
4 The Journals cited are Adult Education, Amateur Historian, British Journal of Educational Studies, British Journal of Psychology, Bulletin for the Society for the study of Labour History, Bulletin of the General Studies Association, Cambridge Journal, Didaskalos, Educational Review, Education for Teaching, Education Outlook, Further Education, Historical Association, History, Journal of Education, Museum Journal, Teaching History, TES, TLS, Towards World Understanding, Trends in Education, UNESCO, Universities Quarterly Review, Visual Education. Articles breaking new ground include G.R. Batho, “Archive Teaching Units: An Experiment in History Teaching,” Visual Education, August (1957): 2–3; G.R. Batho, “Archive Teaching Units: The Progress of an Experiment in History Teaching,” Visual Education, December (1958): 8–10; W. Burston, “The Basis of the History Syllabus: Is Historical Knowledge Relative?” Educational Review 3, no. 1 (1950): 22–36; K. Charlton, “Source Material and the Teaching of History,” Educational Review 9, no. 1 (1956): 57–63; and M. Harrison, “The Scope of Museums in Education,” Educational Review 7, no. 1 (1954): 5–12.
5 Fines, A Select Bibliography, 34.
6 D. Cannadine, J. Keating, and N. Sheldon, The Right Kind of History: Teaching the Past in Twentieth-Century England (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
7 Ibid.
8 For accounts acknowledging writers see Richard Aldrich, “New History: An Historical Perspective,” in Learning History, ed. A.K. Dickinson, P.J. Lee, and P.J. Rogers (London: Heinemann, 1984), 201–24; Raphael Samuel, Island Stories: Unravelling Britain: Theatres of Memory, Volume II, ed. Alison Light (London: Verso, 1998).
9 Challenging the divide, in 1965 the Labour government introduced a programme of comprehensive reorganisation.
10 R. Phillips, History Teaching, Nationhood and the State (London: Cassell, 1998). For a definition of pedagogic see B. Bernstein, “On Pedagogic Discourse,” in Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, ed. J. Richardson (New York: Greenwood, 1986), 205–40.
11 I. Goodson, The Making of Curriculum: Collected Essays (London: Falmer Press, 1988), 10.
12 B. Paltridge, Discourse Analysis: An Introduction, 2nd ed. (London: Bloomsbury, 2012), 24.
13 Taking a “social practice” perspective was influenced by Stuart Hall’s, ed., Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (London: Open University/Sage, 1997).
14 L. Prior, Using Documents in Social Research (London: Sage, 2003); J. Scott, A Matter of Record: Documentary Sources in Social Research (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990); G. McCulloch, Documentary Research in Education, History and the Social Sciences (London: Routledge Falmer, 2004); and T. May, Social Research Issues, Methods and Process (Buckingham: Open University Press, 2001).
15 P. Atkinson, Language, Structure and Reproduction: An Introduction to the Sociology of Basil Bernstein (London: Methuen, 1985), 147.
16 The minutes of the LHTA are in the Newsam Library and Archives, catalogue numbers DC/LMT/A1/2 (1957–60) and DC/CMT/A1/1 (1953–57).
17 Ibid.
18 The minutes of University of London, Institute of Education Standing Sub-Committee in History are housed in the Newsam Library and Archives, catalogue number IE/PER/B/160.
19 Connections between university, schools, museums, art galleries, records offices, teacher training colleges, and the Historical Association are reflected in the early career of Margaret Elizabeth Bryant, who in 1957 took the post of Senior Lecturer in Education with special reference to the teaching of history at the University of London, Institute of Education. Bryant had read history at Girton College, Cambridge (1935–1938) and trained to be a history teacher, taking the Cambridge Certificate in Education in 1939. Her first post was in the independent sector as “history mistress” at Walthamstow Hall School Girls Day and Boarding School. She then worked for the British Council (1944–1946) and was Education Officer for the Essex Records Office (1946–1948). Between 1948 and 1956, she moved into the state sector where she taught history at Dunraven secondary modern school in Streatham. At this time, she worked at the Geffrye Museum and devised an experimental course in Museum Studies for schools. In 1961, she published The Museum and the School, a Teaching of History pamphlet for the Historical Association. In, The Museum and the School, Bryant reported that the relationship between schools and museums had undergone rapid change during the 1950s. She wrote: “From the school side, teachers are more aware than ever before of the part which museums can play in purposeful and enjoyable study and experience.” For Bryant’s CV, see IOE Library reference IE/PER/B/160, and for her career: M. Bryant, “My Life in the History of Education,” History of Education Society Bulletin 51 (Spring 1993): 33–9.
20 In 1952, the Ministry of Education’s Teaching History, Pamphlet No. 23; and W.H. Burston, Social Studies and the History Teacher, Historical Association, Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd. (London: Fakenham and Reading, 1954).
21 The Newsom Report, Half Our Future (London: HMSO, 1963), 163.
22 Estella Lewis, Teaching History in Secondary Schools (London: Evans Brothers Limited, 1960), 3.
23 Ibid., 2.
24 Ibid., 3.
25 Ibid., 3. In 1963, the Newsom Report, Half Our Future, took a similar view when it wrote that: “there is much unrealised talent especially among boys and girls whose potential is masked by inadequate powers of speech and the limitations of home background. Unsuitable programmes and teaching methods may aggravate their difficulties, and frustration express itself in apathy or rebelliousness. The country cannot afford this wastage, humanly or economically speaking” (4).
26 Lewis, Teaching History, 3.
27 Ibid., 11.
28 Ibid., 4.
29 Ibid., 20.
30 Ibid., 4.
31 Ibid., 6. When highlighting the importance of “pleasure”, Lewis drew upon A.L. Rowse, who wrote in The Use of History (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1946): “Let us begin with what is to me the most obvious, and perhaps the most appealing, pleasure it gives: the way a knowledge of history enriches and fills out our appreciation of the world around us under our eyes. It gives an interest and a meaning to things which perhaps we should not have noticed before, not only villages and towns and buildings, a church, an old house, a bridge, but even the landscape itself” (31). Rowse further wrote: “An uneducated man has no sense of history. He does not know whether the house he sees is Victorian or Georgian, Elizabethan or medieval; or what it means if told” (191).
32 Lewis, 1960, 3.
33 Ibid., 11.
34 Ibid., 55.
35 Ibid., 4.
36 Ibid., 5.
37 Ibid., 45.
38 Her bibliographies included “collections of original source materials”, which recommended the series Picture Source Book for Social History: M. Harrison and M.A. Bryant, Picture Source Book for Social History:The Sixteenth Century (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1951); M. Harrison and A.A.M. Wells, Picture Source Book for Social History: Seventeenth Century (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1953), M. Harrison and A.A.M. Wells, Picture Source Book for Social History: Eighteenth Century (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1955), and M. Harrison and A.A.M. Wells, Picture Source Book for Social History: Early Nineteenth Century (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1957). Molly Harrison influenced Lewis’s approach to using visual sources. Hinting at an earlier period of source-work activity at the beginning of the twentieth century, Lewis remarked: “Out of print is a very useful series entitled English History Source Books, ed. R.B. Morgan and E.J. Balley (Blackie, 1907). I have twice found the various volumes of this series lying at the back of classroom cupboards, long disused. They might be obtained second hand” E.M. Lewis, Teaching History in Secondary Schools (London: Evans Brothers Limited, 1960207).
39 Lewis, 1960, 39.
40 The phrase “parity of esteem” was used at this time to describe the relationship between grammar school and secondary modern provision as implemented by the Education Act 1944. Although, the status, curriculum and opportunities that each represented was markedly different they were to receive, according to the Education Act 1944, parity of financial provision. This was to suggest that though “different” grammar and secondary modern schools were of equal value.
41 Lewis 1960, 130.
42 A work that took a similar “investigative” approach was Molly Harrison and Margaret Bryant’s Picture Source Book for Social History: Sixteenth Century, published in 1951, in which the authors set out their case for pupils to learn about the past through a study of source material. They wrote:
“I am sure you have wondered when you have read or have been told something that happened a long time ago, How Do We Know? Nobody living now could possibly have seen it happen and if they merely heard someone else tell about it – well, we can imagine how the story would have been altered in the telling.
“No – nobody living in the 20th century can possibly know by their own personal experience how a grand lady dressed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, what furniture a merchant would have had in his home then, how people travelled about or what they ate. So how do we know? Can we be sure about it, or is it all just guesswork?
“This book is partly an answer to that sort of question. For it is not by an author who is going to tell you about the 16th century; the actual 16th century people are going to tell themselves. How? – by letting you see some of the paintings, carvings, buildings, writings and so on which they made or created when they were alive” (5).
43 Lewis, 1960, 22.
44 Ibid., 20.
45 Ibid., 27.
46 Ibid., 22.
47 Lewis, Teaching History in Secondary Schools, 83.
48 Ibid., 78.
49 Lewis cites and evidently drew upon the work of museum educator Molly Harrison, who presented her case for source-work in Learning Out of School, published in 1954. Written for teachers, it provided advice on organising a museum visit and was reprinted throughout the postwar period. Harrison criticised the practice that confined pupils to gathering facts from information cards when encountering museum objects. She promoted an intimate engagement with the object through careful observation that invoked a personal and emotional response. The aims of her source-work were personal and social development rather than the discipline of history. She suggested that the museum was a place of wonderment where encountering museum objects widened pupils’ experience, lifting them out from their limited drab home environments. In her view, museum visits developed pupils’ whole personality. They inspired, stirred the imagination, cultivated sensitivities and sensibilities, and gave pleasure.
50 Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy: An Essay in Political and Social Criticism (1869).
51 The IAAM was founded in 1891 by a small group of London schoolmasters. It was then known as the Association of Assistant Masters in Secondary Schools. Its main objects were the promotion of professional status and standards for secondary school masters, including conditions of service, security of tenure, salaries, and pensions. It also took an interest in wider educational policy including the school curriculum and examinations. In 1978, it merged with the Association of Assistant Mistresses to form the Assistant Masters and Mistresses Association.
52 Incorporated Association of Assistant Masters in Secondary Schools, The Teaching of History (Cambridge: University Press, 1950), 4.
53 Ibid., 6.
54 C.F. Strong, History in the Primary School (London: University of London Press, 1950). R.J. Unstead, Teaching History in the Junior School (London: A & C Black, 1956).
55 Strong, History in the Primary School, 21.
56 Ibid., 79.
57 R.R. Reid, and S.M. Toyne, The Planning of a History Syllabus for Schools (Pamphlet: Historical Association, 1944), 128. www.history.org.uk/file_download.php?ts=1291892835&id=7212 (accessed). Reid and Toyne’s The Planning of a History Syllabus for Schools, published by the Historical Association in 1944, drew on the following publications from the Board of Education: The Hadow Report, The Education of the Adolescent (HMSO, 1926); Report on the Teaching of History (HMSO, 1927); The Hadow Report, The Primary School (HMSO, 1931); The Hadow Report, Infant and Nursery Schools (HMSO, 1933); The Spens Report, Secondary Education with Special Reference to Grammar Schools and Technical High Schools (HMSO, 1938). These references provide strong evidence of an interchange of ideas taking place between “official” and “unofficial” publications.
58 Board of Education, Handbook of Suggestions for the Consideration of Teachers and Others Concerned in the Work of Public Elementary Schools (London: HMSO, 1946), 403; and Board of Education, Handbook of Suggestions for the Consideration of Teachers and Others Concerned in the Work of Public Elementary Schools (London: HMSO, 1927), 139.
59 K. Charlton, “Source Material and the Teaching of History,” Educational Review 9, no. 1 (1956): 57–63. Aged 31 in 1956, Kenneth Charlton was a young lecturer in Education at the University College of North Staffs. Previously he had, between 1950 and 1954, taught history at Dalziel High School in Motherwell and Uddingston Grammar School in Glasgow. See R. Aldrich, “Kenneth Charlton: 1925–2008,” History of Education: Journal of the History of Education Society, 38, no. 5 (2009), 601–3; G. Batho, “Sources,” in Handbook for History Teachers, ed. W.H. Burston and C.W. Green (University of London, Institute of Education, 1962), 95–109. Earlier, Batho had published two shorter articles on source-work: “Archive Teaching Units: An Experiment in History Teaching,” Visual Education, August (1957), 2–3; and “Archive Teaching Units: The Progress of an Experiment in History Teaching,” Visual Education, December (1958), 8–10.
60 DfE (Department for Education), National Curriculum in England: History Programmes of Study – Key Stage 3 (London: Department for Education, 2013). www.gov. uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/239075/SECONDARY_ national_curriculum_-_History.pdf/ (accessed July 10,2020).
61 Cited in D. Cannadine, G.M. Trevelyan: A Life in History (London: HarperCollins, 1992).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Christopher Edwards
Christopher Edwards is Doctor in History Education of the University College London Institute of Education. He is a specialist in history education Initial Teacher Training with special interest in the development of pupils’ procedural knowledge. His research is being developed in the politics of history education in England, the aims of history education, and the development of pupils second order conceptual understanding of history. His PhD examined the contribution postwar authors made to the development of history education in England. His publications are on the use of oral testimony, textbooks, and popular songs in the teaching of history.