‘An instruction in good citizenship’: scouting and the historical geographies of citizenship education

Abstract

This paper examines informal citizenship training for youth and the historical geographies of education over time through analysing the Scout Movement in Britain and its activities in the first half of the twentieth century. In doing so, it highlights the complexity of youth citizenship and the significance of non‐school spaces in civil society to our understandings of young people’s positioning as citizen‐subjects. Drawing on archival research, I demonstrate how a specific youth citizenship project was constructed and maintained through the Scout Movement. I argue that various processes, strategies and regulations were involved in envisioning ‘citizen‐scout’ and developing both duty‐bound, self‐regulated individuals as well as a wider collective body of British youth. This analysis speaks to broader debates on citizenship, nationhood and youth, as well as highlighting how the historical geographies of citizenship education are an important area of study for geographers.

Digital citizenship? Narrative exchange and the changing terms of civic culture

“…This focus on the making of citizens was not unusual in late nineteenth and early twentieth century youth movements (Mills 2013). What is striking is that far from being regarded today as an archaic survival, the motto is the object of ongoing reflection in interviews by individuals of all ages associated with the club.…”

Introduction: Geographies, Histories and Practices of Informal Education

“…On the latter, important research by geographers and others has critically examined the relationships between schools and their communities, and in particular the articulation of pedagogic linkages between home and school that may, frequently, be implicitly class-biased (see, in particular, Holloway and Pimlott-Wilson, 2011;Wainwright and Marandet, 2011). Here, there are clear parallels with the ways in which informal educators seek both to carve out spaces within formal/mainstream settings and to transcend boundaries between environments designated for learning and those apparently outside that design (Mills, 2013). In other words -as Cartwright (2012) has ably shown -an understanding of spaces within and beyond formally designated schools is arguably central for any analysis of informal education.…”

Youth on Streets and Bob-a-Job Week: Urban Geographies of Masculinity, Risk, and Home in Postwar Britain

“…And yet, geographers have been relatively silent on debates surrounding post-war youth culture(s), despite the growth of children's geographies as a subdiscipline over the last decade (Holloway and Valentine 2000;Skelton 2009). This paper therefore firstly makes an important contribution to work in children's geographies on these themes and addresses the lack of geographical research on this important time-period and the historical geographies of childhood, education and youth spaces more broadly (although, for exceptions, see Gagen 2000Gagen , 2004Ploszasjka 1994;Mills 2013). …”

“…I have argued elsewhere that scouting in the UK functioned as a youth citizenship project (Mills 2013) that has been negotiated over time by adults and young people in terms of its policies and practices (Mills 2011). Here, I want to argue that the regular activities of the organisation such as Bob-a-Job Week were a vital part of that training in 'good citizenship' with youth 'doing their duty' at a local scale, but that furthermore, these activities also reveal wider attitudes towards youth in post-war Britain and their engagements with public urban space (if 'public' is indeed an appropriate term to describe streets and suburbs, see Valentine 1996a).…”