Old Perseans and the Great War: a study in the alumni of a minor public school

Pattenden, Hugh

doi:10.1080/0046760x.2018.1458910

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…The upper-middle-class social setting of Survivors is sketched in by indicative features such as the husband's work in the city, the wife's leisure activities, their home in "stockbroker belt" in the Home Counties and the education of their son at a minor public school. These schools, less elite than the so-called Clarendon Commission schools such as Eton and Harrow (Maclure, 1973;Mangan, 1983, p. 315), provided a means for the affluent middle classes to privately educate their offspring (Longley, 2012, p. 17;Pattenden, 2018). Resorting to television to teach, as seen in Threads, was an approach charted in educational history since the 1970s, and followed the general spread of television as a mass medium in the 1950s and 1960s.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Education in the apocalypse: disaster and teaching on British television

Harmes¹

2020

HER

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PurposeThe purpose of the study is to examine educational history through television's portrayal of educational activity in post-apocalyptic society. The paper examines how and why television drama set after a catastrophe is in dialogue with, but rejects, both contemporary government discourse of “protect and survive”.Design/methodology/approachThe paper treats television programmes as historical artefacts made during periods of heightened anxiety about nuclear and bacteriological war. This paper follows established methods for interpreting educational history by examining the representation of schooling and the discursive construction of teachers and their practices via television. This paper proceeds by tight selection of sections from two texts, examining them as documentary evidence of education in later-20th-century Britain and representations of specific types of schooling that were found in real-world Britain in the period, namely, the minor public school and educational television.FindingsTelevision drama showing education during and after an apocalyptic event was a reaction to and critique of official assurances that life would continue after a large-scale catastrophe. The representations of schooling reflect the preoccupations of the writers and depict the intersection of schooling, teachers and students with contemporary anxieties in a period where global war and large-scale catastrophe were prominent fears in popular consciousness. Representations of schooling enabled a twofold critique of education. One is critique of the industrial and civil society that had called formal schooling into existence, questioning the value of what in the 1970s and 1980s was being taught in schools. The second is the subversion of the assurances contained in “disaster” education, which promised that disaster would be a temporary setback and underlying social structures and institutions would survive. This paper suggests these sources of educational history present the need to unlearn old knowledge, urge the recourse to self-teaching and question the reliance on a television to teach.Originality/valueThis paper endorses educational, historical and popular cultural research that has found meaning and importance in popular television as a reflection of actual educational practice. Efforts to educate a civilian population about civil defence have received some scholarly attention; however, so far, the way educational practice is portrayed in television that shows the end of the world as we know it has received limited attention. These sources yield valuable insights regarding the interaction between education, disaster and popular consciousness.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Education in the apocalypse: disaster and teaching on British television

Harmes¹

2020

HER

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Review of periodical literature published in 2018

2019

The Economic History Review

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There was a wonderfully wide range of articles written this past year on British history in the post-1945 period. Political topics were among the most prevalent, with much work focused on the Thatcher and New Labour periods. Works on the Troubles and their aftermath in Northern Ireland, Scottish nationalism and devolution were also numerous. There was much analysis of other domestic political issues including electoral politics, privatisation, tax policy and constitutional matters. Foreign policy, the post-imperial Commonwealth and attitudes towards military conflicts also featured prominently. The roles of class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and religion in British society were explored in much depth, as were those of parenthood and marriage. Issues related to migration, social mobility and the labour market were also prominent. Business case studies were conducted on companies large and small, with much work done on the media industry this year. The housing and mortgage markets were assessed in some detail and there were several works which employed analyses of economic geography. Historical issues involving science and medicine also featured.

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Old Perseans and the Great War: a study in the alumni of a minor public school

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

Education in the apocalypse: disaster and teaching on British television

Education in the apocalypse: disaster and teaching on British television

Review of periodical literature published in 2018

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