The ‘Good Youth Leader’: Constructions of Professionalism in English Youth Work, 1939–45

Abstract

This article explores the development of professional training for youth leaders (now, youth workers) in England and Wales between 1939 and 1945. The article identifies the state's construction of young people as a problematic social category at a time of national crisis and its mobilization of youth leadership as part of the war effort. The Board of Education supported, sometimes tacitly, the development of courses in some universities and voluntary organizations for youth leaders. By 1942 full-time courses of training existed at five universities and university colleges and one voluntary organization and were recognized by the Board under Circular 1598. This article explores tensions between the discourse of voluntarism, in which youth leadership had traditionally been set, and the newly developing discourse of professionalism. The article suggests that these discourses are fundamentally ethical and tensions lay in contested definitions of the ‘good youth leader’. Little consensus existed on what counted as the good leader, animating a conflict between voluntarism and state provision. The article concludes by drawing distinctions and continuities between the war years and the present day.

Keywords:

• Second World War
• Youth Leadership
• Professional Training
• Voluntarism
• Professionalism

Notes

¹Thirteen ‘certificates’ were awarded in 1936–37 and 20 in 1937–38.

²It is not only the number of people attending the conference, nor its prestigious location at Queens College Oxford, that signifies the importance given to the issue of youth leader training, but their identity. For example, Professor Carr-Saunders, Director of the London School Economics, Professor Fred Clarke, London University Institute of Education, and Professor Barnard, University of Reading, participated, as well as others from university training departments and Social Science departments.

³As Mooney (1998) notes, nineteenth-century philanthropy—as voluntary activity—provided middle-class women with a space in which they could legitimize a public role and identity. This is so in the twentieth century and may account for some of the caution expressed by women in the NCGC, for example, about professionalization. Professionalization would inevitably have resulted in youth leadership becoming controlled by (largely male) state bureaucracies and university departments. Further research is necessary to explore this.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Simon Bradford

Simon Bradford is Director of the Centre for Youth Work Studies at Brunel University, London. His research interests include the history of professional identities in youth work, social policy affecting young people and the development of youth practices and culture, particularly cyberculture and gaming