Younger Infants in the Elementary School: Discursively Constructing the Under-Fives in Institutional Spaces and Practices
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Method
3. Infants Schools versus Dames’ Schools: Discursively Constructing Schools for Children in Infancy in 1861
3.1. The Royal Commission on Popular Education, 1861
3.2. The Working-Class Parent and the Need for Schools for Children in Infancy
the sort of instruction which in the wealthier classes of society is conveyed almost imperceptibly by constant intercourse with educated persons.
In the family of a mechanic or day labourer, to say nothing of the ignorance of the parents, the father is usually at work from six in the morning till six at night. The mother has to perform personally all household operations. Stationery and books are too valuable to be made into toys. The house is not furnished with objects which awaken intelligence, nor has anyone leisure to form the manners and temper of the child.
the only means of keeping the children of such families out of the streets in towns, or out of the roads and fields in the country.
3.3. The Dames’ Schools versus the Infant Schools
their school is usually their kitchen, sitting and bed-room and the scene of all their domestic occupations.
3.4. The Purpose and Outcomes of Schooling for the Working-Class Infant
not only aim at, but in fact accomplish, a great deal more than the simple objective of keeping children out of mischief.
Churches are good, and ordinary schools are good, but they only modify bad habits already contracted. Infant schools prevent bad habits been formed.
training in obedience, attention, observation, and facility of comprehension, which distinguishes them at a glance from children who have not had the advantage of an infant school training.
4. Public Elementary Schools versus Nursery Schools: Discursively Constructing Provision for Under-Fives in 1908
in regard to the desirability, or otherwise, both on educational and other grounds, of discouraging the attendance at school of children under the age of (say) five years.
It would seem that a new form of school is necessary for poor children. The better parents should be discouraged from sending the children before five, while the poorer who must do so, should send them to nursery schools rather than the schools of instruction.
4.1. ‘Imperfect Homes’: Maternal Duty and Poverty
high national importance to preserve and to strengthen, … which educational policy should be careful not to impair.
steady decrease in the number of those homes in which little children fail to receive the inestimable advantage of right parental care.
4.2. ‘Minders’, Crèches and Nursery Schools: Care and/or Education for Under-Fives
It is a well-proved fact that it is a common practice in such places for children to be drugged in order to keep them quiet.
the special needs of small children are met by the provision of special rooms, special curriculum and special teaching.
4.3. Describing the Younger Infant: Characteristics and Needs
Cleanly habits and ready obedience should be secured by a discipline which is kindly, but not unduly repressive.
4.4. Advantages of Nursery School: Moral, Physical and Mental
to be truthful, kindly, and honest; to be cleanly and tidy in their persons; to be disciplined and obedient in their habits.
4.5. Constructing the Nursery School as a Site of Surveillance
in the case of the children under consideration their attendance at school might be a useful means of bringing home to their mothers a livelier sense of their parental duties.
5. Under-Fives in Nursery Schools and Nursery Classes in 1933
5.1. The 1933 Report on Infant and Nursery Schools
should not be ‘institutional’ in character, but as far as possible of a light and open ‘garden pavillion’ type. It will consist of a number of class (or play) rooms, rooms for the staff, a room for observation and medical treatment, a kitchen, lavatories and offices. The ideal school is the light single-storey building of the open-air type set in a garden playground; the playground is centrally placed between the classrooms.
5.2. The Aims, Functions and Outcomes of Nursery Provision
inspections by the school doctor not less than once a term and sometimes once a month; frequent visits by the school nurse; the systematic measuring and weighing of the children; the exercise of great care in the detection and isolation of cases of infectious illness; and the keeping of a medical record for each child.
Most causes of moral abnormality and perversion, of nervous disorder and faulty habit-formation, have their roots in these initial years of life.
5.3. Nursery Provision and the Development of Parental Responsibility
Directly or indirectly the mothers gain through these organisations fuller knowledge of their children’s needs and possibilities.
The gratitude of the parents is displayed in many ways, for instance mothers help in washing school linen and overalls, and fathers construct toys, and attend to the garden. The sense of parental responsibility is increased, rather than diminished by the attendance of young children at the nursery school.
5.4. The Limitations of Nursery Provision
a remedial agency affording partial compensation for unfavourable home environment, and should therefore be provided first in districts where home conditions are bad.
Bad housing, bad home environment, and economic hardship may be palliated and even ameliorated to nursery schools and classes; but the remedy calls for other action by the state and local authorities. The provision of schools, whatever be the scale on which is made, so long as these conditions survive, leaves untouched the problem of the child’s early environment.
require careful attention to their physical welfare, and need to spend longer hours at school and to be provided with meals.
6. Under-Fives in School in the 21st Century
6.1. The Report of the Independent Review on Poverty and Life Chances
to consider how home circumstances impact on children’s life chances, and in particular how this home background determines a child’s readiness for school.
It is family background, parental education, good parenting and the opportunities for learning and development in those crucial years that together matter more to children than money.
while income is still important, it is not the exclusive or necessarily the dominant cause of poverty being handed on from one generation to another. The fact that non-income factors, such as the home learning environment and quality of childcare, are so important in deciding the fate of children has led us to construct a set of Life Chances Indicators.
Children need nurturing far longer than any other species and the quality of this nurturing has a major impact on how well children develop and then fulfil their potential. This task is not primarily one that belongs to the state. We imperil the country’s future if we forget that it is the aspirations and actions of parents which are critical to how well their children prosper.
The Foundation Years brings together all of the current services for children, from the womb until they go to school. The aim is that the Foundation Years will become, for the first time, an equal part of a new tripartite education system: the Foundation Years leading to the school years, leading in turn to further, higher and continuing education.
believed that services must do much more to effectively engage parents who have traditionally been harder to reach.
Geoffrey Gorer, the sociologist, noted in the early 1950s that the spread of a tough love style of parenting had been the agent that changed England from a centuries long tradition of brutality into what was remarked upon by visitors to these shores in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as one of the most peaceful European nations. The tough love tradition of parenting did more than turn England into what was until recently a peaceful self governing kingdom… But that tough love tradition has recently been in retreat.
The circumstances that made them most happy and contented are having a husband or partner in work so that they can combine their work and their family responsibilities in a pattern that gives primacy to their families.
6.2. The Revised Early Years Foundation Stage Framework and ‘School Readiness’
The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) sets the standards that all early years providers must meet to ensure that children learn and develop well and are kept healthy and safe. It promotes teaching and learning to ensure children’s ‘school readiness’ and gives children the broad range of knowledge and skills that provide the right foundation for good future progress through school and life.
7. Discussion
7.1. The Nature and Role of School Provision for Under-Fives
7.2. Changing Conceptualizations of the Young Child
7.3. Changing Conceptualizations of Parental Responsibility
Funding
Conflicts of Interest
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Olusoga, Y. Younger Infants in the Elementary School: Discursively Constructing the Under-Fives in Institutional Spaces and Practices. Genealogy 2019, 3, 37. https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy3030037
Olusoga Y. Younger Infants in the Elementary School: Discursively Constructing the Under-Fives in Institutional Spaces and Practices. Genealogy. 2019; 3(3):37. https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy3030037
Chicago/Turabian StyleOlusoga, Yinka. 2019. "Younger Infants in the Elementary School: Discursively Constructing the Under-Fives in Institutional Spaces and Practices" Genealogy 3, no. 3: 37. https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy3030037