In and out of the classroom – how pupils were taught 1918-60s
In 1956 the Historical Association celebrated its fiftieth anniversary with an exhibition, conference
and book of articles about its development. Professor of the history of education at King’s College,
London, ACF Beales, skimmed through the changes in the classroom over the fifty years:
The bad old days, of 1906, were the days of the ‘conscript army’ in the elementary schools,
sprinkled with pupil-teachers who taught all subjects, frequently to classes of over 100; and
the ‘professional army in a quite separate and privileged world of secondary schools. They
all had chalk-and-talk. But many of them had already the reality (though thank God not yet
the label) of visual aids.1
This chapter will look at what those aids were and what other ways of teaching there were besides
the ubiquitous ‘chalk and talk’. Inevitably the account will be anecdotal and impressionistic. As
Professor Beales pointed out, even looking at 1956, the year in which he was writing, it was difficult
to know what was really happening across the country in schools.
It would be highly instructive to know how widely the various new developments have in
fact ‘taken’. The [HA Celebration] Exhibition is rich in the developments – syllabuses,
charting, local and social studies, films, models, all the rest of it. But we none of us know,
quantitatively, what proportion of Modern and Grammar Schools use Lines of Development,
or teach through Patches, or base one or more terms on the neighbourhood, or have
Ancient History anywhere else but in the lowest forms…2
It is even more difficult to know what was really happening in schools before this period
Philip Gardner suggests that there were changes in the relationship between teacher and taught in
elementary schools between the beginning of the twentieth century and the outbreak of the Second
World War but they were not as great as in the subsequent forty years. During the school board
years, 1870 to 1902, the relationship between teachers and parents which he sees as “framed by
endemic conflict” gradually changed. The teachers’ principal objective was “to master the perceived
fecklessness of working-class parents in conspiring with their offspring to avoid regular attendance
at school”, and by the early 1900s the battle was won, with “the principle of regular, sustained and
universal elementary schooling passing from policy into popular culture”.3 This change had
enormous implications for the classroom experience of the taught, as did the improved social and
professional status of elementary school teachers in the first part of the twentieth century (gained
though their improved education and training) which inevitably gave them more confidence. So as
1
ACF Beales, ‘Fifty Years of Historical Teaching’, The Historical Association 1906-1956 (Historical Association,
London 1957), p100.
2
Beales, op cit, p102.
3
Philip Gardner, ‘Reconstructing the Classroom Teacher, 1903-1945’, in Ian Grosvenor, Martin Lawn, Kate
Rousmaniere, (eds), Silences and Images: The Social History of the Classroom, (Peter Lang, New York 1999),
p133.
2
classes gradually declined in size there were opportunities for more forward-thinking teachers to
move on from rote-learning and other survival techniques.
Teaching aids 1918-60
Many history teachers, it must be emphasised, continued to teach with very little help from aids of
any sort, other than blackboards and chalk. Norman Roper (born 1923) described history at a central
technical school in south London;
... you had a form master, who stayed with you as you went through, and each form master
took a different subject, obviously. And our particular one was a history master. And it was
all very formal. As far as I remember you had blackboards which slid out one behind the
other. And I don’t know how, but he would enter all sorts of notes and things on it before
you started, and then he’d pull the board down and there it was.4
Ernie Dodd was born in 1924 and left elementary school at 14. His history teacher’s main aid was a
cane:
...when Mr Andrews had a history test, normally 20 questions, if you got less marks in the
current test than you had in the previous test you received that number of cane strokes. So
everyone tried for about 18 correct answers, that way you had a little leeway as you may not
get 20 correct answers every time.
Nevertheless,
... he was a good teacher... he was very political. We used to get him on to current affairs
which to us was more interesting than old history. 5
Kenneth Kelsey, born 1923, enjoyed history at his grammar school but:
there were no visual or audio aids at all. It was you listened to the master, if he had a map
over the blackboard you could look at that, but basically you took it in from what he was
saying and you read the book and you did your homework and that was it.6
However this traditional way of teaching was certainly not common to all teachers in the interwar
years. A variety of teaching aids had been available since long before the First World War and many
teachers continued to use these even if they did not adopt new methods; indeed lantern slides were
used in some schools even after the Second World War. In 1938 60,000 of the LCC’s library of half a
million slides were lent to schools every month7, and the HA maintained its collection for schools to
borrow until the 1960s. Enterprising (and well-financed) schools and local authorities invested in
more sophisticated projectors – episcopes and epidiascopes which were more versatile and could
project postcards and photographs as well as slides. These were used in some schools until the
4
History in Education Project, Norman Roper, interviewed 5/8/2010.
History in Education Project, Ernie Dodd, interviewed 14/5/2010. Survey form ED/P24/HiE131.
6
History in Education Project, Kenneth Kelsey, interviewed 24/3/2010.
7
The Times, 5/11/1938.
5
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widespread use of computers. ‘Filmstrips’ were widely used after the Second World War; despite
their name they were actually a way of projecting still pictures. By 1960 there were about 30,000
filmstrip projectors in use in schools, and about 4,500 filmstrips covering most of the subjects in the
school curriculum. They were popular as the strips were cheap enough to be purchased by schools
and the projection equipment was comparatively light and simple. Many of the history teachers
who completed our survey forms remember using them in the 1950s and 60s.
Duplicating machines had a similarly long history; the ‘gestetners’ and ‘bandas’ used from the 1950s
had ancestors dating back to the nineteenth century using mimeography or cyclostyle processes
which were a more primitive version of the post Second World War duplicating machines. However
although books of guidance for history teachers and teachers’ magazines sometimes advocated
duplicating sources or maps there was very little mention of them being used by history teachers in
the general literature, and the pupils we interviewed who were at school in the interwar years
suggested that other subject teachers made much more use of these early technologies, particularly
those teaching geography and book-keeping. For example, Kenneth Kelsey again:
the geography room was well equipped and the method of teaching geography was
completely different. I’ve got reams of cyclostyled notes that the geography master
distributed, but not for history.8
Use of illustrations remained a popular way to bring history to life; in 1930 the Historical Association
produced a pamphlet on ‘Illustrations for use in History Teaching in Schools’ which listed literally
thousands of available pictures for schools to borrow or buy. Dorothy Dymond, who edited the
pamphlet, introduced it by saying, “members of the Association who have supplied evidence of their
work agree that the ideal is not the wall picture, which is expensive and cumbersome and does not
command individual attention, but the small loose picture which can be put into the child’s own
hands”.9 She therefore particularly recommended postcards issued by museums and “good
photographers”.
Film in schools
By the 1920s the value of lantern slides in teaching history (and other subjects)had long been
accepted but that did not prevent the use of film being controversial. As early as 1919, Birmingham
LEA decided to hire cinemas to show educational films to its pupils10 but many educationalists were
8
History in Education Project, Kenneth Kelsey, interviewed 24/3/2010.
‘A list of Illustrations for Use in History Teaching in Schools’, Historical Association Leaflet No 82, (G Bell &
Sons Ltd, London 1930), p5.
10
BJ Elliott, ‘Genesis of the History Teaching Film, Teaching History, October 1977, No 19, p3.
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unconvinced, and by the mid 1920s there was considerable debate about the value for teaching of
the ‘cinematograph’. Various committees sought to find out how far film was used in education; one
of these, the Imperial Education Conference (representing educationalists across the Empire who
met for conferences in London every few years), set up a committee, chaired by Lord Gorell, to look
at the issue. Its 1924 report concluded that, “more use is being made of the cinematograph in
connection with educational purposes than has been generally known” either in schools, or in
‘picture-houses’ where special screenings were provided for children. On the whole the report was
positive about the potential for film in education in general although more dubious about its use for
history which it felt might be better served by the ‘magic lantern’. The report also felt that many
questions remained to be answered about the practical dilemmas of how film should be used by
schools.11
Teachers’ associations were divided over the use of film in history teaching. GT Hankin, an HMI and
prominent member of the Historical Association who was an enthusiastic advocate for all the ‘new
media’ of the time ( see below for his important role in school radio broadcasting)12, persuaded the
Historical Association to set up a Cinema subcommittee in 1923 and went as far as publishing in
History magazine his own scenario for an educational film which would deal with woollen
manufacturing in Yorkshire.13 A dry comment in the journal said: “we do not believe that real history
could ever be taught be such means; but the historical imagination might be awakened, and a
certain amount of useful information acquired”.14 On the whole the historical establishment
remained unconvinced: Professor Pollard was quoted doubting “the demand for illustration in
schools – even the cinema. They are alright in their own way so long as you remember that you
cannot make visible to the eye the really vital things. You can portray the King, but not the
monarchy”.15 Although whether elementary school teachers of under 14 year olds were able to
convey the concept of ‘the monarchy’ to their pupils by any means is doubtful. The debate which
followed the showing of a League of Nations film ‘The Star of Hope’ at the Historical Association
11
FA Cavenagh, ‘Report on the Use and Value of the Cinematograph in Education’, The Forum of Education, Vol
III, No1, Feb 1925, pp62-65.
12
In 1944 Mr Hankin married Mary Field who was a pioneer producer of educational films and later chief
executive officer of the Children’s Film Foundation.
13
GT Hankin, ‘The Cinematograph in the Class-room: Scenario of a Film dealing with the Industrial Revolution,
History, Vol VIII, Jan 1924, pp275-283.
14
History, Vol VIII, Jan 1924, p285.
15
Quoted in History, Vol XI, April 1926, p38.
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AGM in 1926 was largely negative although GT Hankin did his best to keep the discussion
constructive.16
The real drawbacks remained the lack of equipment in schools to show films, and the lack of suitable
films. In 1930 only 268 schools had cinema projectors17 and seven years later the estimated figure
was still only 657 to 1000, (figures vary). In 1931 a report commissioned by the Historical Association
into the value of films in teaching history was largely favourable and gradually there was more
interest and support for film; however there were still very few appropriate films – in 1937 the
British Film Institute’s list of educational films contained twenty eight historical ones out of a total of
2,250 for all subjects.18 As far as equipment was concerned, support from the Board of Education
began to change the situation, at least in regards to projectors: in 1937 it announced it was
encouraging the use of film and offered a 50% grant towards equipment. By early 1940 the number
of projectors in schools had doubled.19 As with schools radio, the War was to prove a boost for
schools film; film generally, like radio, proved enormously valuable for the war effort in terms of
instruction as well as entertainment for a rationed population. Educationally, film shows proved
useful as a way of bringing information and novelty to schools which were short of teachers and
overcrowded with evacuees. A respondent to our survey described her school:
It was war-time and spare cash for schools was almost non-existent, but if there was a film
at the cinema depicting an event relevant to the curriculum, we were taken, eg when we
reached William Pitt there was a film about his life produced at that time, which we all saw
together and discussed in school. (female, born 1927, attended grammar school) 20
Admittedly she is quite unusual – most respondents make no mention of ever seeing films except
‘Henry V’ which was more for English than History.
In 1945 HE Dance of the Board of Education is reported saying the Ministry hoped shortly to have
20,000 projectors in schools and 150,000 in ten years time.21 In fact in 1960 the Yearbook of
Education suggested the number of schools in 1960 with projectors (and some schools might have
several), was over 11,000. By then the Educational Foundation for Visual Aids, which was established
in 1948 by the Ministry of Education in conjunction with local authorities, had a catalogue listing
16
History, Vol XI, April 1926, pp37-40.
The Times, 29/10/1930.
18
Elliott, op cit, p4.
19
Elliott, op cit, p5.
20
HiE Project Survey, AW/P27/HiE3.
21
The Times, 4/6/1945.
17
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about 6000 films and filmstrips made specifically for teaching purposes. It held copies of all of them
and by 1958-59 it was making 60,000 loans of films to schools every year.22
Schools radio
In 1924 John Reith, the ‘general manager ‘ of what was then the British Broadcasting Company Ltd23,
appointed JC Stobart, an HMI at the Board of Education, to be Director of the BBC’s new Education
Department. Under Stobart’s leadership (he died in 1933), “between 1927 and 1933 a most
successful system of schools broadcasting was devised by the BBC which soon became the envy of
educationalists in every other country”.24 Over its first fifteen years it became increasingly popular:
“in 1927, at a generous estimate, 3000 schools were listening to the BBC’s schools broadcasts in
England and Wales, as against 220 in late 1924: at the outbreak of war in 1939 the figure had risen
to 9,953.”25 A Central Educational Advisory Committee, with representatives from various education
associations across the country, was appointed to guide the department. Schools broadcasting was
initially run from local radio stations with their own local committees; in 1925 ‘educational
transmissions’ went out from eight ‘main stations’ and four ‘relay stations’. These generally provided
their own weekly programme; in autumn 1925, the Leeds relay station had, “Fridays from 3.30 to
4pm to pupils of the ages from 10-15 years. Talks will be given by Leeds University speakers on
History and Travel”.26 A year later Charles Quennell, the architect and co-author with his wife
Marjorie of extremely successful illustrated social history books, gave a series of thirteen talks on
‘Everyday Life in Wessex in Ancient Times’ for Bournemouth Radio. The following year he and
Marjorie gave a more general series of talks which were broadcast nationally.
The early years were not all plain sailing: schools radio was the particular responsibility of Mary
Somerville, and after two years of producing school programmes she and the members of the
Department “became uneasily aware that a good many teachers in the listening schools, who…had
been altogether ready to welcome the help of a broadcasting colleague with gifts and experiences
they knew themselves to lack, were somewhat disappointed with school broadcasting”.27 The
22
JA Harrison, ‘Films and Filmstrips’ in George ZF Bereday, Joseph A Lauwerys (jt eds), The Year Book of
Education 1960: Communication, Media and the School, (Evans Bros Ltd, London 1960), pp296-297.
23
It became the British Broadcasting Corporation in 1927.
24
Asa Briggs, The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom: Vol II: The Golden Age of Wireless, (OUP,
1965), p189.
25
Briggs, op cit, p189.
26
The British Broadcasting Company, Ltd, ‘Programme & Syllabus of Transmission to Schools, September 21 st
to December 17th, 1925’.
27
Mary Somerville, ‘How School Broadcasting grew up’, in Richard Palmer, School Broadcasting in Britain (BBC
1952), p11.
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programmes tended either to talk down to children or be way above what they could understand.
This realisation led to a major study of schools and their reaction to school broadcasting, using a
sample of seventy two schools in Kent28:
It was a year of eating humble pie, of noting what worked with the children and what did
not, of discussing what we thought we had learned with the teachers, the Kent Education
officials, and the HMIs; a year of rapid modification of programme plans, and innovations in
studio technique. At the end of the year a sufficient number of Kent teachers confirmed our
faith in the educational possibilities of our medium. We had come very near to failure, but
we had at least begun to work as pioneers in radio education.29
The BBC Schools Department took these lessons to heart; over the next twenty years they spent a
remarkable amount of time consulting with teachers and inspectors and schools, carrying out
numerous surveys every year to find out what pupils and teachers thought of their programmes.
They started to extend their publication of illustrated pamphlets to accompany programmes – even
in 1927, 233,000 were distributed to schools. They had also learnt that the most successful
programmes, especially where younger children were concerned, were stories rather than lectures.
“We watched in a Kent school the delighted response of the children to the first of Rhoda Power’s
dramatized history lessons”.30 This was the start of Power’s ‘Boys and Girls of Other Days’ series of
programmes which was extremely successful. It grew out of the school books she and her sister, the
medieval historian Eileen Power, had started writing entitled Boys and Girls of History.31 At first the
BBC staff had to act out the dramatised programmes, but as the BBC’s income grew professional
actors could be employed.
The Department was also helped by the establishment in 1929 of the Central Council for School
Broadcasting32 which replaced the old Advisory Committee. Its first Chairman was HAL Fisher, its
second (from 1932), Lord Eustace Percy, both former Presidents of the Board of Education and the
former a distinguished historian. Subject sub-committees were set up at its first meeting to provide
guidance on programmes and accompanying publications, with a majority of members being
teachers from listening schools to ensure that the needs of the children were kept foremost rather
28
‘Educational Broadcasting: Report of a Special Investigation in the County of Kent during the Year 1927’
(Carnegie United Kingdom Trustees, Dunfermline 1928).
29
Somerville, op cit, p12.
30
Somerville, op cit, p12.
31
Rhoda Power worked on a freelance basis for the Schools Department until July 1937, when she was
officially appointed to it as a part-time assistant and scriptwriter. She developed school broadcasting with the
idea of the illustrated history lesson, using sound effects, music and dialogue: much of this work was
undertaken in collaboration with her sister Eileen - they both shared a belief in the importance of teaching
world history. Rhoda became a full-time member of the school broadcasting department in 1939.
32
Reorganised in 1947 as The School Broadcasting Council for the United Kingdom.
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than the enthusiasms of the experts. The History subcommittee’s first chairman was GT Hankin, the
HMI mentioned above who was passionate about using the new technologies – cinema and radio –
in history lessons. He was also an influential member of the Central Council.
In 1931, at the initiative of the History Committee a new kind of history course was introduced called
‘Tracing History Backwards’; it was “an attempt to deepen knowledge of current problems by
examining them in historical perspective”.33 It was initially written and presented by Commander
Stephen King-Hall of the Institute of International Affairs who went on to broadcast for schools for
many years. His first topics included ‘The Budget’, ‘The British Empire’ and ‘Disarmament’; they were
aimed for the top classes in elementary schools who had already completed a chronological study of
history. That year also saw the beginning of programmes on ‘World History’ – the first series entitled
‘Empires, Movements and Nations’.
After 1935 changes in the way schools broadcasting was organised left the subject committees with
less initiative than before but they continued to advise and monitor the programmes. GT Hankin
remained deeply involved, and consistently worked to keep the programmes down to earth and
appealing to ordinary children. The BBC’s official historian, Asa Briggs, quoted him commenting on
an English history pamphlet: “The whole attitude in the script seems to me middle-class. Our History
is for the children of the workers”.34
By 1935 problems with radio reception, which had been endemic in the early years of broadcasting
in schools, were greatly reduced. The main difficulty now was how to finance the provision of
wireless sets for the schools who did not have them. Lord Eustace Percy and BBC officials tried to
persuade the Board of Education or the BBC itself to provide the money (estimated at £420,000 in
193535) but it was not a good time financially for either organisation and it was left to local
authorities or individual schools to provide funding. By 1935, 973 schools were listening to British
history programmes (cf 555 to world history) although by 1938 this had risen considerably - 3,739
schools (pupils aged 9-11) were listening to world history courses and 3,531 to British history (pupils
11-14).
During the Second World War the schools radio broadcasting kept going, although production
moved around the country and the pamphlets accompanying programmes had to be discontinued.
The broadcasts were seen as particularly crucial as children were evacuated or kept at home with
33
Briggs, op cit, p198.
GT Hankin, Oct 1938, quoted in Briggs, op cit, p41,
35
Briggs, op cit, p206.
34
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very limited schooling: an official directive drew attention to their value in keeping young minds
active in air-raid shelters.”36 The long-running series ‘How Things Began’ which dealt with life on
earth up to the first settled civilisations was started during the war. After the Second World War
schools radio became increasingly popular: there were 9,121 listening schools in England in 1938-39
– by 1952-53 there were 21,180 and by 1960-61 there were 23,44837, and over 9 million pamphlets
accompanying them were sold to schools in 1960.38 Throughout the 1950s there were four weekly
history programmes running every term aimed at different age groups between eight and fifteen.
The series were usually ‘Stories from World History’, ‘Stories from British History’, ‘How Things
Began’ and ‘Modern History’ for older children.39
Asa Briggs lauded “the impact of the BBC on the quality of effort and imagination inside the schools.
It played a key role in a still unfinished ‘silent revolution’, in part a revolution of educational
provision and technology – books, pianos, projectors, and materials for art and crafts as well as
wireless sets – in part a revolution of educational aspiration and ambition, associated with the
widening of curricula, the use of experimental teaching methods, and the relaxation of purely
external discipline”.40
Schools television
The BBC began its general television service in 1936 (suspending the service during the Second
World War until 1946), and potentially television could have been offering school television
programmes much earlier than it did; there was some interest in it doing so – but even more
mistrust. Eventually it was not until 1952 that it finally set up a pilot project, under the aegis of a
School Television Sub-committee. The conclusions from the pilot project – twenty programmes of
20-30 minutes (none apparently on history), each transmitted to six schools in Middlesex – appear
to have been mixed, but in any event the BBC was reluctant to go ahead with more unless a
minimum number of schools had television sets. These were still very expensive and the Ministry of
Education made it plain that no money would be forthcoming for such purposes. In fact by the end
of 1953 it appeared that many local authorities would be prepared to meet the costs but the
Ministry of Education remained reluctant about the whole idea.41 Eventually it was AssociatedRediffusion, one of the ITV (Independent Television) companies, which first started broadcasting
36
Kenneth Fawdry, Everything but Alf Garnett: A Personal View of School Broadcasting, (BBC 1974), p49.
BBC Annual Reports.
38
Asa Briggs, The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom: Vol V: Competition, (OUP, 1995), p468.
39
BBC Annual reports.
40
Briggs, op cit, p189.
41
Briggs, ‘Sound’, pp831-838.
37
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school television with one programme a day for secondary schools in the summer of 1957. Both ITV
and the BBC then started an extended service from September 1957 although even then they were
still called ‘experimental’: and the BBC did not drop this description until 1959. In autumn 1960 still
only 2000 of the country’s 23,000 schools had television sets but by now there were nine weekly
schools programmes running each term. The BBC ran its first schools history broadcasts in autumn
1959 with a series called ‘The Twentieth Century’ for 13 to 15 year olds. In summer 1960 ‘Men of the
Past – From the remotest past to Roman times’ was shown for 11 to 15 year olds. The following year
it ran ‘A Century of Change – 1860 – 1960’for 13-15 year olds, a series “designed to illustrate the
major changes in the social history of Britain and her relationships with other countries during the
last hundred years”.42
Museums and schools
School visits to museums had been encouraged by the Board of Education since the turn of the
century but Gaynor Kavanagh suggests that during the First World War a number of them took a
more pro-active role in educational activity. In Manchester, twenty schools had had their buildings
appropriated for ‘military purposes’ so they had to double up with other schools and do a ‘half-time’
system. To help the situation, pupils were taught in some of the museum galleries on the ‘off halfdays’ by trained teachers using the collections. (Manchester, it should be said, already had a long
history of encouraging school children to come to its museums; before 1901 the Art Museum was
running weekly series of courses for elementary school children.43) A number of other areas also
used their museums directly for education. HAL Fisher and other government ministers were very
interested in these developments and after the War there were moves to link museums and local
authorities much more closely. The museum organisations rejected them, concerned that their role
in conservation and research would be jeopardised.44
By the Second World War a number of museums were running thriving educational services– John
Elliott described services at Norwich Castle Museum, Leicester, Hull and the Royal Naval Museum at
Greenwich. However earlier, the 1928 report on museums by Sir Henry Miers , mineralogist and
former Vice Chancellor of Manchester University, had showed that only twelve museums in the
British Isles provided specific services for schools, and only 20% of provincial museums were
regularly visited by school parties. Miers’ report –funded by the Carnegie United Kingdom Trustees
42
BBC Annual Report, 1961-62, p34.
The Museums Journal, Vol 1, No 6, Dec 1901, p171.
44
Gaynor Kavanagh, ‘The first world war and its implications for education in British museums’, History of
Education, Vol 17, No 2, 1988, pp163-176.
43
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who also funded the reports mentioned above on schools radio in Kent and the Historical
Association’s commissioned report on film and history teaching. – was fairly damning about many
provincial museums. “In a fair number of museums a class of school-children might be hearing a
lecture from their teacher, or from the Curator, and busily making notes and sketches of exhibits”,
but in “less important and less prosperous museums” a visitor would find them, “deserted, the
caretaker would be asleep, and the side rooms would be locked lest stray children should get into
them unobserved”; and in the “worst and most neglected”, the visitor would see “dark and
dilapidated rooms with old cases full of decaying curiosities, among which he would descry a certain
number of rare and valuable objects perishing irretrievably”. 45
Ten years later the Carnegie Trust funded another report by SF Markham, Museums and Art
Galleries of the British Isles, which was more encouraging. It described an increase in museums
“actively encouraging school visits and also in those providing special facilities with extensive school
loan collections”.46 Of the nearly 800 museums in the UK, nearly 400 received visits from school
parties and of these about 150 made arrangements for the parties to be accompanied by a curator
or staff member.47 Eighty had some form of loan service for schools. By now a few local education
authorities were taking a direct interest in museums; Derbyshire and the LCC in particular developed
extensive educational services. The Geffrye Museum in East London, first under the curatorship of
Marjorie Quennell, and then Mollie Harrison, pioneered the approach of involving children in all
aspects of the museum’s activities. In 1952 another report, this one prepared for the International
Council of Museums, listed thirty seven museums doing intensive educational work with children,
half of these having a full-time organiser for the purpose and providing special classrooms equipped
with relevant visual aids – charts, illustrations, slides, filmstrips and film.
Interviewees and respondents who were at school during the Second World War unsurprisingly
reported that they never went on any trips, or visits to museums. Some at school before and after
the War did remember visiting local museums with the school although David Newham (who was
born in 1938 and went to a secondary modern and then a grammar school) said “...we never went
on outings or anything like that. It just wasn’t... It was unheard-of. Unheard-of”48; and Miss Rosa
Major (born 1920, attended grammar school) wrote that:
45
Sir Henry A Miers, ‘Museums and Education’, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, Feb 22nd 1929, pp370-371.
Barbara Winstanley, ‘The Use and Development of Museum Services for Schools’ in George ZF Bereday,
Joseph A Lauwerys , op cit, pp296-297
47
Samuel Thompson, ‘Museum Services for Schools’ in George ZF Bereday, Joseph A Lauwerys, op cit, p300.
48
HiE Project, David Newham, interviewed 12/5/2010.
46
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There were no outside activities except visits to museums & these all cost our parents
money. This meant that these trips were impossible for pupils who, like me, had parents
who could not possibly afford the cost.49
Whereas for Christine Jackson (born 1937), at grammar school in the late 1940s, a museum visit was
a revelation:
I’d never been in a museum, I didn’t know what they were like... Our teachers at Grammar
School said, “Yes, you must go, you must see this, you must see that”. We did go and I went
to the Pitt Rivers Museum, which deals with things like sarcophagus... Which, of course, I
mean, at 13, you think it’s, you know, really interesting.50
Pupils at school after the Second World War generally remembered going on at least one school trip
to an archaeological site or historic town or castle. Ceril Little (born in 1938), who attended a small
girls’ grammar school, went on several including a long weekend, when she was about sixteen:
...just a small select group of us. I think there were eight of us went with two teachers, our
history teacher and our art teacher, and spent the February half-term weekend in York. That
further increased my fascination with the Middle Ages.51
A teacher who taught from 1946-84 described how every year each form would go on a day visit to
somewhere like ‘Verulanium and St Albans’ and there were also a few residential trips to places like
Norwich, staying in youth hostels. After the grammar school she taught in joined with another
school in 1973 to become a comprehensive these trips became less frequent – partly because there
were so many pupils, but also because “more families had cars, so outings were less of a treat!”52
Jenny Keating
History in Education Project
Institute of Historical Research
University of London
April 2011
49
Rosa Major, interviewed 5/8/2010. Survey form RM/P20/HiE4.
Christine Jackson, interviewed 4/5/2010.
51
Ceril Little, interviewed 13/5/2010.
52
HiE Project, MP/T24/HiE1.
50
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