Jessica Gerrard - Radical Childhoods: Schooling and the Struggle for Social Change

Radical childhoods

Radical childhoods

Schooling and the struggle for social change

JESSICA GERRARD

Manchester University Press

Manchester and New York

distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave Macmillan

Copyright Jessica Gerrard 2014

The right of Jessica Gerrard to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for

ISBN 978 0 7190 9021 9 hardback

First published 2014

The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or any third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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I am indebted to many in the writing of this book. First, I owe my deepest gratitude to the many past and present teachers and students of Black Saturday Schools who so generously shared their own stories and reflections of these schools. I am thankful to these men and women for taking the time from busy schedules to talk with me, and for their openness and encouragement. I would also like to thank the many librarians and archivists who provided invaluable assistance in navigating the many collections I visited in researching these histories. I am indebted too to Rosa Campbell, who provided me with invaluable and insightful assistance with the Socialist Sunday School archives so crucially at the last hour. Second, I am grateful for the support from the Cambridge Commonwealth Trusts, the Overseas Research Scholarship, and the Poynton Cambridge Australia Scholarship at the University of Cambridge, which combined funded my research programme. Thanks also must go to Jesus College, Cambridge, for providing additional funding for travel expenses.

Third, I am particularly indebted to the many friends and colleagues across the four institutions I have resided in as I have researched and written this book the University of Sydney, the University of Cambridge, the University of Technology, Sydney, and the University of Melbourne. Rather than attempt a long list of many, I would like to express a heartfelt thanks to the constructive support of the many wise and intellectually curious critical thinkers who have assisted my own thinking, and whose work inspires my own. I feel fortunate to have found such warm and stimulating intellectual comradery and friendship, and have learnt much from our discussions and debates. I do reserve the right, however, to sneak in a couple of particular mentions. I am deeply appreciative of the critical support, invaluable advice and patient guidance of Phil Gardner and Diane Reay who saw this project through from beginning to end at the University of Cambridge. I am also indebted to Jane Martin and Bev Skeggs for their supportive, considered and insightful feedback, and to Peter Freebody for starting the research conversations with me. Thanks also to Jo Ball, Harry Blatterer, Isabelle Gerrard and Ariane Welch for their constructive advice on various drafts of this manuscript as I prepared it for publication, and to the generous advice of Lesley Farrell and Julie McLeod as I navigated the publication process. Fourth, thanks must go to Annette, Charles and Therese and the rest of my wonderful family, whose love and support I relied upon when conducting this research far from home. And to Jo in particular, for your love and encouragement, for your intellectual companionship and for sharing the radical commitment. Finally, many thanks to all at Manchester University Press for their support and assistance in preparing this manuscript for publication.

Some of the research material in this book has appeared in different form in: J. Gerrard, Gender, community and education: cultures of resistance in Socialist Sunday Schools and Black Supplementary Schools, Gender and Education, 23:6 (2011), 71127; J. Gerrard, Tracing radical working-class education: praxis and historical representation, History of Education, 41:4 (2012), 53758; J. Gerrard, Self help and protest: the emergence of black supplementary schooling in Britain, Race, Ethnicity and Education, 16:1 (2013), 3258; J. Gerrard, Little soldiers for socialism: childhood and socialist politics in the British Socialist Sunday School Movement, International Review of Social History, 58 (2013), 7196; and J. Gerrard, Counter-narratives of educational excellence: free schools and practices of success in community education, British Journal of Sociology of Education (in press).

Socialist Sunday Schools: list of abbreviations

Socialist Sunday Schools: Archives

Black Saturday/Supplementary Schools: list of abbreviations