ork today, I would like to outline some history of state-provided schooling.
In 1870, Forster's Education Act made school compulsory in Britain, for all children between the ages of 5 and 13. Although it was a legal requirement that all children attend, though, schooling was not provided free of charge. Evidently, poor families were disadvantaged by this, and although the Act ensured that children were educated after a fashion, it did little to narrow the gap between the calibre of educations received by rich and poor.
Since the 17th Century, the church had been the only provider of formal education for poor children. Church-schooling had been pioneered in London, where the population was densest and so the need for education was highly visible. At this time, critics of the move to educate the poor argued that schooling was wasted on the working class. Children from poor families, the critics said, must get used to hard work and having to pay their own way. Even champions of schooling for poor children, seemed to be preoccupied with its advantages for the upper classes. Rather than being concerned with giving poor children a more equal chance in life, education was seen as a way of maintaining social control over the poor, and to ensure that poor children adhered to the desired social norms. (Bash et al:1985:14)
Parliamentary enquiries in the mid 1800s, indicated that the poor did want their children to be educated, and that as Britain's cities grew and grew, the churches simply could not cope with the number of children to be schooled. And so, as the result of Acts like Forster's, the government did become more active in ensuring all young people went to school. However, in Bash et al's opinions, the system of schooling, by which the type of schools attended and the amount of education received depended on what the parents could afford, only perpetuated a culture in which working class children and middle/upper class children were poles apart. The authors state that, in their view, the British schools of the 1900s simply taught:
The urban working class child to accept his or her position in life.
2. A belief that urban schools for the working class were generally bad schools, with unintelligent children and uncaring parents.
3. A curriculum that discouraged independence of thought, encouraged nationalism (and by implication racism) and confirmed gender stereotypes. (Bash et al:1985:16)
The field of Urban Studies saw developments in both the USA, across Europe and in Britain during the 1960's, and this was tied closely to the rise in urban education. The book Education and the City, edited by Gerald Grace, brings together essays from both Britain and the US, based on a number of cities including London and New York.
In 1975, urban sociologist Ray Pahl wrote that in all societies, metropolitan cities can be seen as an arena in which various social and cultural conflicts are played out. These conflicts appear in terms of economic and political factors, as well as in social and cultural interactions. Gerald Grace follows this argument in stating that metropolitan education is a crucial area of discussion, as urban schools are a space in which these conflicts have become clearly visible. Working class inner city schools make visible a wide range of cultural and pedagogic conflicts and contradictions. (Gr
