Alumni Voices: Oral History and the History of Higher Education

Andrea Jacobs

University of Winchester 

 Was it a question mark or a hammer and sickle that the students of King Alfred’s College carved into the face of the nearby chalk down in the mid 1950s? Those interviewed for the Alumni Voices project at the University of Winchester were divided on this point. Oral histories of institutions are full of such inconsistencies and highlight the debates over the ‘truth’ of past memory. Increasingly, however, these ‘bottom up’ histories are being seen as enriching our understanding of the development of the ‘soul’ of a university identified by John Henry (Cardinal) Newman in 1852. The oral history interview adds an additional layer of understanding and allows multiple narratives to exist and individual voices, of both the powerful and the powerless, to have equal weight in the historical record.

The universities established in the 1960s, the so called ‘plate-glass’ universities because of their modern architectural design have now reached, or are approaching, their 50 year anniversaries and it is significant that rather than commission a traditional ‘house history’ to celebrate the event, many have chosen instead oral history projects which have been made accessible on their websites. 

The example of the earliest of these, the University of Sussex, founded in 1961, seeks to tell the individual stories behind the institution’s history and provide an account of people’s relationship with the University, (http://www.sussex.ac.uk/fiftyyears/50voices50faces).  At the University of York, founded in 1963, they anticipate that the memories captured by their project will inform their own history , the history of post-war universities and that of education in general, (http://www.york.ac.uk/50/history/oral-history/). 

Similarly at the University of Warwick, founded in 1965, they hope that the interviews they have carried out reveal a great deal about the development of higher education and research in the UK, and in the history of student life and the social and cultural history of Britain after 1945 (http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/about/warwick50/blog/voicesoftheuniversity/).  They have therefore not only included voices not usually heard in traditional histories but have recognised that the result resists the charge of being  merely ‘parochial’ in view of the insights into the history of higher education  more generally.

The University of Winchester is a much newer name, only achieving university status in 2005. However its foundation as a Diocesan Training College dates back to 1840 and it is therefore celebrating its 175^th anniversary this year. Alumni Voices: The Changing Experience of Higher Education, written by Stephanie Spencer, Andrea Jacobs and Camilla Leach http://store.winchester.ac.uk/browse/extra_info.asp?compid=1&modid=1&deptid=7&catid=17&prodid=443  is being published on 14^th April as part of the celebration. 

Alumni Voices, while not originally intended to celebrate any specific event, uses data from an oral history project, carried out in three stages between 2004 and 2009. It focuses on the day-to-day experiences of those who studied and worked in one institution to explore a way of writing the history of higher education in the recent past and includes testimony from many perspectives across the power spectrum. 

The book reflects many of the changes in higher education within the United Kingdom as a whole over the last sixty years. It is also intended that  by reflecting on the history of people’s experience and in particular the way that the experience of being part of a higher education community has changed, the book might provide additional insight on the nature of higher education at the beginning of the 21^st century.

While ‘alumni voices’ are at its core, alongside these, the book examines the methodological dilemmas facing those who write histories of higher education and more especially the exploration of the wider implications of the contribution of the individual voice. This exploration is carried out, as we have described elsewhere, (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03054981003696721), utilising voice relational methodology (VRM) which derives from Carol Gilligan’s work.[1]

A critical period in the history of the institution, when in the 1970s, it was fighting for its survival is given particular prominence in the book as it was mentioned so many times by our respondents. In focusing on the way in which members of staff, from lecturers to administrators to the principal himself, recalled it, the book suggests that an oral history can indeed provide that understanding of the significance of relationship between the personal and political and the implications of that relationship for the direction in which an institution grows and changes. 

While our analysis using VRM, involves reading the transcript of interviews several times to capture the layers of meaning and restores some of the emotional responses which can be overlooked in a single reading of a printed page, nothing can replace listening to the interview itself:  two very short extracts from two separate interviews which discuss the period in question are therefore included here.

The book is available for a special launch price of £10 plus £4 p and p. For an order form at this price, please email andrea.jacobs@winchester.ac.uk

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[1] Carol Gilligan, In a different voice: psychological theory and women’s development (Cambridge Mass and London: Harvard University Press, 1982).

Science, Technologies and Material Culture in the History of Education - call for papers

Annual Conference of the History of Education Society (UK)
Liverpool Hope University
20th-22nd November 2015

Confirmed keynote speakers:
Professor Ruth Watts, Emeritus Professor of History of Education, University of Birmingham
Dr Claire Jones, Teacher and Honorary Fellow, University of Liverpool
Jonathan Reinarz, Professor of the History of Medicine, University of Birmingham

Too often the history of science and technology and the history of education have been written at a remove from each other despite being intimately connected. It is an important aim of this conference to bring these two significant and related areas of historiography into closer dialogue with one another. While we welcome papers which examine theoretical, methodological and historiographical aspects of the relationship between science, technologies and education, we are equally keen for speakers to focus on the interplay of these key themes in specific historical and material settings.

Papers focusing on the artefacts and material culture of science, technology and education are especially welcome. Papers should focus on one, two or all of the conference’s thematic areas, (science, technologies, material culture).

Possible topics for papers may include (but are by no means limited to) the following:Historiography of science, technology and education

• Historiography of science, technology and education
• Science and technology in the curriculum
• Scientists as public intellectuals
• Medical education 
• Technologies of the self
• Science and identity formation
• Science, technology and class
• Science, technology and gender 
• Materialities of teaching and learning
• Books, equipment, technology and the transfer of ideas
• Scientific and technological networks 
• Scientific internationalism 
• Science, technology and empire
• School and university architecture 
• Education for the scientific professions
• Popular science 
• Scientific and technological elites 
• Scientific societies
• Science as popular education/entertainment 
• Science and education in the home
• Subject and disciplinary formation 
• Medical humanities
• Educational artefacts 
• Museums as educational spaces

Abstracts (250 words max) should be sent to Heather Ellis at ellish@hope.ac.uk
Deadline: 1st June 2015

Postgraduate Panel
We are also looking for 10 minute presentations from Masters/MPhil/PhD students on aspects of their research which do not need to fit the conference theme. The Postgraduate Panel will take place on the afternoon of Saturday 21st November.

Student members of the History of Education Society (UK) are eligible to apply for bursaries which will cover the conference fee, accommodation and meals during the scheduled hours of the conference. Please mention your interest in applying for a bursary when submitting your abstract.

Abstracts (250 words max) should be sent to Lottie Hoare at chh11@cam.ac.uk
Deadline: 1st June 2015

Conference host: Faculty of Education, Liverpool Hope University
Conference venue: Liverpool Hope University (Cornerstone Campus)/Feathers Best Western Hotel, Liverpool

The effects of changes in the church on schools in seventeenth century England

By Ken Clayton

 

The church had a very close relationship with, and a tight control of English education from its inception in the sixth or seventh centuries until the 1640s. The decline in influence was slow to start with: first came the dissolution of the monasteries, then the Chantries Act and then the abolition of religious guilds. Each of these actions resulted in significant religious institutions being abolished and, where they supported schools, the schools either disappeared or had to find new sources of funding. Even so, by the seventeenth century, the church still had a significant degree of control. The Canons of 1604, section LXXVII, made it clear that:

‘No man shall Teach either in publick School, or private House, but such as shall be allowed by the Bishop of the Diocess, or Ordinary of the Place, under his hand and Seal, being found meet as well for his Learning and Dexterity in Teaching, as for sober and honest Conversation, and also for right understanding of God’s true Religion'

On the face of it, this implies that all teachers, including those at Petty Schools should have a licence. However, the evidence suggests that this rule was, in practice, applied only to grammar school teachers.       

Paragraph LXXVIII went on to dictate that if there was a curate in a parish who was able and willing to teach, nobody else was to be granted a licence until the curate had been given a job. The text also stated, very clearly, that a curate might want to teach 'for the better increase of his Living'. This paragraph differs from the earlier one, however, in that it specifically mentions teaching of grammar and therefore, it appears to refer specifically to grammar schools (Constitutions and Canons Ecclesiastical).

So by the middle of the seventeenth century the influence of the church had declined from total control of a majority of schools to, in most cases, nothing more than the bishops being able to decide who could and could not teach, at least in grammar schools.

What remained of the bishops’ control of schoolmasters began to disintegrate during the period of the Civil Wars. Parliament first undermined the bishops in 1642 and then, in 1646, abolished the episcopate altogether.

This meant that the church no longer had any control over education and, indeed, it seems that there was no control of any sort by any organisation for a few years. One consequence of this was a rise in the number of private schools run by individuals who would never have been given a licence to teach by a bishop. Bromsgrove in Worcestershire was one place in which this happened with William Suthwell being installed in 1650 without the blessing of a bishop (Icely, 1953, p17).

This situation did not last long because schoolmasters became caught up in Parliament’s determination to crack down on any remaining Royalists. Much of this activity was aimed at clergymen who refused to toe the Puritan line but the fact that there was significant crossover between schoolmasters and clergymen meant that schoolmasters were caught up in the net. According to Durston, in August 1654, the County Commissioners were told 'to receive information against any […] schoolmaster who was suspected of having committed one or more of a long list of offences including [...] using the Book of Common Prayer, encouraging traditional festivities and dancing, harbouring Ranter or popish opinions' (Durston, 2001, p158).

Six years later, after the restoration of the Monarchy, the Act of Uniformity of 1662 not only re-introduced the issuing of licences by bishops, it also reversed the instructions to County Commissioners by introducing a requirement that schoolmasters accept publicly the new Book of Common Prayer. Those who refused were denounced as dissenters and usually removed from their posts. Helen Jewell maintains that around 150 Dons and schoolmasters were ejected as dissenters (1998, p37) while Edmund Calamy, writing in 1713, reckoned that 39 schoolmasters were ejected as a result of their refusal to comply with the Act. In the preface to his book he admitted that it had been difficult to compile a list of those ejected and referred to earlier reports of around 2,000 clergymen, Dons and schoolmasters having been ejected (Calamy, 1713, p iv).

The preface to Calamy's book provides an interesting insight to attitudes to dissenters, even forty years after the event. 'To write of Nonconformists and Dissenters, is in the Esteem of some Men, to write of Schismatics and Rebels; To commend them is little better than to write in praise of Nero' he wrote, adding that 'They have born all the obloquy of the stage, the tavern, the press, or the pulpit could well vent against them' (1713, p iii). However, Calamy cannot be regarded as an entirely dispassionate observer, given that his father and grandfather were both clergymen who were ejected from their livings and Calamy himself was keen to restore the reputations of the ejected individuals (Wykes, 2004). That said, there is no doubt that schoolmasters who would not conform were usually removed from their posts.

So by 1662 the church had re-established a degree of control over schools following the upheavals of the Commonwealth period but it was still a long way from the grip that it had over schools prior to the Reformation.

 

References

Calamy, Edmund (1713) An Account of the Ministers, Lecturers, Masters and Fellows of Colleges and Schoolmasters who were Ejected or Silenced after the Restoration in 1660 London.

Constitutions and Canons Ecclesiastical of the Church of England para. LXXVII (available at http://www.anglican.net/doctrines/1604-canon-law/#p1-4, accessed 12 Feb 2015).

Durston, C. (2001) Cromwell's Major-Generals: Godly Government During the English Revolution Manchester, Manchester University Press

Icely, H.E.M. (1953) Bromsgrove School Through Four Centuries Oxford, Basil Blackwell.

Jewell, Helen M. (1998) Education in Early Modern England, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.

Wykes, David L. (2004) ‘Calamy, Edmund (1671–1732)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 (Available at http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/4357, accessed 6 July 2014).

Nikolay Neplyuev's Social and Pedagogical Experiment in the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th century

By Pavel Bilichenko

Investigating the original historical pedagogical experience in the activity of the distinguished enthusiasts of the world education development in period of 19^th – beginning of the 20^th centuries is of great scientific interest for us.

My research focuses on the history of my country in accordance to its status of the part of the Russian Empire at that period. In my opinion, pedagogical experience of Nikolay Neplyuev can be of serious interest for researcher.

He was born in 1851 in a very famous noble family. His father was close to the Royal House and headed the nobility in Chernigov province. 

Nikolay Nikolaevich Neplyuev

Neplyuev was an extremely religious person since his youth. Having received an excellent educational at the university (he graduated from St. Petersburg university), he soon came to the conclusion that the Russian society was not perfect and fell short of high ideals of orthodox Christianity. His searching for the ways to creating the new and highly humane society led him to conducting the famous and successful social experiment through organizing the community “Крестовоздвиженское трудовое братство” (“Exaltation of the Cross labour brotherhood"). The activity of this community was researched by many scientists: historians, sociologists, theologians. My research seeks to present Nikolay Neplyuev’s pedagogical investigations results.

The practical result of Nikolay Neplyuev’s educational activity consisted in opening two agricultural schools (one for boys and one for girls) in 1881, and a prep school in his estate in Chernigov province. The founder considered them to be a basis for forming since childhood the future ideal society. 

Children in the Prep School

Summing up the results of Nikolay Neplyuev's and his like-minded colleagues attempts, the fact of appraising the successful activity of these educational establishments is generally admitted. There were some peculiarities of these schools working far from big noisy cities in the silence of patriarchal village.

The first obvious condition of Neplyuev's work efficiency was his confidence in the deep religiousness of the rural population. He easily gained respect of the rural population by his views on upbringing their children grounding on deep respect of Christian values.

According to his views, the founder of the schools could effectively connect the process of teaching children with raising them on the basis of Christian moral tradition. Neplyuev himself actively taught boys in the boys’ school while his mother and sister conducted lessons in the school for girls. One of the traditions of the boys’ school was to hold weekly classes (on Saturdays) about the real sense of Christian study.

Using understandable for children examples from the Holy Writing Neplyuev tried to make bring them understand the sense of human brotherhood and human love to close people. The founder's experience of introducing to the school practice two circles: groups of senior and junior pupils (Rus. − "круг" (circle)) was a success. The first one united children and teachers in discussing pupil's behaviour, and second one included only children.

The experience of moral teaching was positive, when every new pupil could choose his own mentor amongst the senior pupils. Every mentor had a copybook where he noted his ward's behavior. Later, at the meetings, this was discussed and everybody could share his own opinions regarding the behaviour of different children and even of the mentor. 

General Meeting in Girls' School

The activity of these schools during the whole history of their existence formed the basis for their founder’s developing his idea of forming the labour community. More than half of school leavers joined the community voluntarily after graduating from school.

During his pedagogical explorations, Nikolay Neplyuev had to overcome the most serious in his view problem of providing qualified staff for his schools. The trouble was that most teachers couldn’t grasp the essence of founder’s deep educational ideas and they often did not share his views. After some years of efforts, Neplyuev obtained the authorities’ permission to employ the graduates of his schools as teachers. Later he considered it to have significantly improved the situation.

We consider it to be a great confirmation of Neplyuev’s project success that even after his death in 1908, the community as a social institute its household and schools existed for several more decades. Their liquidation in the late 1920s was caused by Soviet authorities’ policy.

We managed to restore a lot of different pedagogical innovations of Nikolay Neplyuev both in the sphere of upbringing and teaching.

A more detailed account of our research will soon be published in History of Education Researcher.

‘My First Coup': autobiographies of childhood

By C E Hastings

"My auntie and the headmistress tried as best they could, with smiles and toffee, to shield me from their rising anxiety, but I could feel it bouncing off the quick sideways glances they shot each other and taking flight like some dark, winged creature on the breath of their long, exhausted exhales. It was rumoured that people had been executed. I knew the headmistress and my auntie were worried my father might have been among them. I was worried too…"

 John Dramani Mahama’s autobiography, My first coup d’etat: Memoirs from the lost decades of Africa is not the typical political autobiography. Thankfully.

The first chapter is the title story and presents him as a small boy of 7, how he hears of Nkrumah’s ousting, and the personal consequences. As the school holidays start, he is the last pupil left, waiting for his father to come.

He doesn’t come, and he and a school matron travel to the city centre to find his home surrounded by troops and his father jailed by the coup leaders. He writes that the ‘course of my future’ was changed by an ‘unspeakable period of violence’ that followed.

This opening does not reflect the almost idyllic childhood Mahama recounts in the remaining chapters. The reason for this opening can be related to his introduction.  Here, he suggests that he views his book as a paedagogic project, a way to educate his readers. He is going to be as specific as possible, because he is tired of people generalising about Africa, creating a ‘monolithic’ viewpoint. In this way, for example, he stresses the difference between growing up in Accra (with his father, and attending the elite boarding school Achimota) and in a small northern village that is difficult to reach and (he suggests) considered by many Ghanaians as foreign. He is keen to establish that there is purpose in writing: this is not an ego project, but an important way to generate understanding, believing that survival despite difficult political and economic situations ‘must be somewhere in our stories, in the seeming minutiae of the day-in and day-out’. There are clear echoes here of the Christian biographical narrative, the focus on what can be learned, improved upon over a lifetime: the belief that there is meaning in everyday experience. For Mahama the adult, as much as Mahama the small boy faced with intimidating soldiers and a father who disappeared (to prison) for a year, the coup has educative potential.

It is this focus on minutiae, the small parts of life, which is of great interest to me in his descriptions of history, and of school as I develop a project looking at West African autobiographies. I am particularly interested in childhood memories of school, given the focus in so many sources and studies on the experiences of teachers, parents and policy makers. Mahama’s account of facing a playground bully, in contrast to these top-down texts, presents the school as a community in which teachers know little of their charges’ life. Mahama (briefly) attended Achimota, a school that stressed cooperation, yet the author describes a systematic theft of food by a bullying pupil that went unnoticed by teachers. This may seem insignificant, but shouldn’t: a key way in which African pupils showed their opposition to school authorities was the so-called ‘food strike’. Protest could grow from young people’s concerns over what was available on the meal table.

Achimota Badge: The keyboard image symbolises cooperation

In the reverse of this process, large, globally significant events become small parts of everyday lives through the prism of the school. Politics (in the shape of the coup) is discussed in school.   Even if for the smallest boys it is in confusing, new terms, that are not fully understood, that seem to offer exciting possibilities.

The autobiography also provides insight into the ways in which families strategically managed educational opportunity. In his description of a family divided between different schools, it becomes clear just how some parents attempted to systematically improve the odds of their children’s success (separating them across different institutions). This is even though Mahama recalls his father’s attitude to schooling:

"He saw it as one of the few risk-free endeavours in life. There was nothing to be lost from it and everything to be gained."

Children’s views of the school concerned, not to mention separation from siblings and home do not seem to have mattered from Mahama’s account. The author makes clear that the ‘tradition’ and prestige of Achimota did not prevent him from hating the experience. Again, it is suggested here that we have the child’s eye view of school.  This contrasts to the fuzzy, often minimally defined, claims to ‘reputation’ which dominate many accounts of African schools I have read in the archives. Despite this apparent disempowerment, Mahama’s account also includes key moments in which school enabled him to shine in front of his father. Even before he is selected for Achimota, his father is called in to meet with his first teacher, who has spotted his potential.

She tells his father that Mahama: ‘has the potential to make you really proud’. He goes on to win prizes at Achimota, recalling of this experience that

"even considering all the accolades I have been blessed to receive thus far in my life, nothing can ever top those few precious moments of hearing my name called, of climbing up on that stage and having all the parents clap for me."

Education here is a publicly rewarded activity, but also one seen as all the more rewarding in retrospect. I connect this retrospective focus on the benefits of education to Mahama’s introduction, his goals for expanding his readers’ knowledge and understanding. For me, Mahama’s autobiography sparks important questions. How valuable are memories of school, if they are recalled to argue for the value of education?  How do we interpret the discordant notes (his hatred of much of life at Achimota) in the light of this focus?

 John Dramani Mahama, My first coup d’etat Memoirs from the lost decades of Africa (Bloomsbury, 2012)

Available to buy from Bloomsbury’s online store

With thanks to Liverpool City Library, where I loaned my copy.

* This post is cross-posted from Africa in Words, a blog that focuses on cultural production and Africa. We cover books, art, film, history, music, theatre, ideas and people and the ways they interact, through their publication and circulation, with societies, economies and space. Our name is intended to recognise that there are as many Africas and ways of talking about it as there are words to do it with. It reflects our shared understanding of the diverse networks across the continent that generate thought and action, that provoke people to produce, to curate, and to write, and that cross political, generic, and disciplinary limits. Ours is a collective space made up of regular authors and guest contributors, edited by Kate Haines, Charlotte Hastings, Nara Improta, Rebecca Jones, Katie Reid and Stephanie Santana. The post forms part of an ongoing project looking at a autobiographical work and the study of childhood in West Africa. The goal of cross-posting is to reach an audience who might not have found the original site of the post, despite an interest in childhood, memory, colonial schooling and/or Africa. *

The Peter Gosden Fellowship

Introduction

In 2015, the History of Education Society will fund the second annual Peter Gosden Fellowship. The purpose of this Fellowship will be to build upon the achievements associated with the first Fellowship, in terms of establishing a higher public profile for the History of Education Society, its associated publications and conferences, and other activities concerned with the study and teaching of the history of education both in the UK and abroad. In particular, the Fellow will be tasked with maintaining a social media presence utilising a weblog (on the Society's website), Twitter and Facebook. This online activity will continue to develop an interactive web-presence in the period leading up to the 50th anniversary of the Society.

The Fellowship will start on 1^st February 2015 and finish on 31^st January 2016.

The Fellow will be mentored by the Society's publicity/website officer Dr Rob Freathy (University of Exeter).

Responsibilities

• The Fellow will be responsible for the following:
• Ensuring that a weblog is posted on the Society’s website at least once a month;
• Ensuring that regular Tweets are posted as and when necessary/appropriate/requested by the Society’s publicity/website officer;
• Ensuring that regular entries are added to the Facebook page as and when necessary/appropriate/requested by the Society’s publicity/website officer;
• Liaising on a regular basis with the Society’s postgraduate represent to maximise efficiency and effectiveness when publicising news and events pertaining to postgraduate students;
• Liaising with the organisers of the annual conferences (student and main conferences) to ensure appropriate and timely publicity over calls for papers, Tweeting of conference content, blogging of conference reports, book prizes, and similar;
• Consulting with the Society’s publicity/website officer on a regular basis, to be mutually agreed, with regard to the frequency, content and style of the ‘posts’, Tweets and Facebook entries; and
• Attending History of Education Society Executive Committee meetings (when necessary).

Note: So long as the authorship of all ‘posts’, Tweets and Facebook entries is appropriately acknowledged, so as to avoid any contravention of copyright law, it will be permissible for the Fellow to simply co-ordinate the social media activity rather than write all of the content his or herself.

Package

The Fellow will receive:

• £1,000 as an honorarium
• a year’s membership of the Society
• free attendance at the Society's annual conferences (i.e. the student and main conferences).

Notes:

• The honorarium will be paid in four instalments (each of £250).
• The year’s membership of the Society will entail receipt of free copies of History of Education Researcher and History of Education. (The second is additional to standard membership.)
• Payment for attendance at the Society's conferences will include the conference fee (including conference meals if these are additional costs), accommodation costs (to be agreed in advance) and standard class travel expenses.

Application information

Applications are welcome from anyone interested in furthering the missions and aims of the History of Education Society. These include the promotion of the study and teaching of the history of education; promoting the public profile and an informed public understanding of the history of education by engaging in relevant debates; providing collaboration and exchange among those interested in the history of education in the UK and around the world; and promoting links with the study and teaching of history at all levels. Previous recipients of a Peter Gosden Fellowship are welcome to re-apply.

Applicants should ideally be undertaking or have completed a postgraduate degree in the history of education or a cognate field of enquiry. Personal or professional experience of utilising social media, such as weblogs, Twitter and/or Facebook, would be desirable. Applicants should also be able to name two referees whom we may approach for references.

Location: The Fellow can be based in any locality, but must have ready access to the relevant Information Technology and to a reliable internet connection.

Application closing date: 31^st December 2014.

Short-listed applicants will be interviewed via Skype on a date and time to be arranged. Unsuccessful applicants will not be contacted.

Interested applicants should contact the President of the History of Education Society, Dr Cathy Burke, on cb552@cam.ac.uk.