New Releases by Pamela Horn

Describes the effect of the Elementary Education Act of 1870 upon the lives of the vast majority of English and Welsh children, the offspring of the working and lower middle classes, who attended elementary school during that period. Some 130 photographs, many not previously published, complement the text. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This book traces the nature of change within the country community of England and Wales between 1870 and 1918--a period that was, in many respects, a watershed in British history. Horn reveals the powerful underlying stresses and tensions of rural life: people experienced the anxieties of agricultural recession, the declining influence of the landed classes, the diminishing support for religious institutions, and the disruption of many traditional aspects of rural life.

Schools and teachers of the old type -- The monitorial system -- Pupil-teachers -- Training college life -- The daily round -- Life at the school house -- Tenure problems and old age -- Bread and butter issues -- Combination and trade unionism -- The turn of the century -- Appendices : Rules of the Haslingfield School for Girls c. 1840s ; Conditions at the Central Schools of the National Society for Masters and Mistresses in training, 1833 ; Specimen correspondence concerning entrance to the Borough Road Training School in the 1840s ; A petition against state intervention in education, 1839 ; Education in Wales, 1847 ; The student''s point of view ; Child workers in agriculture and their teachers, in the 1860s ; Extracts from the diaries of William Wright ; Memories of the early twentieth century as a scholar and teacher.