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A British Childhood? Some Historical on Reflections Continuities and Discontinuities in the Culture of Anglophone Childhood A British Childhood? Some Historical Reflections on Continuities and Discontinuities in the Culture of Anglophone Childhood Anglophone of Culture the in Discontinuities and Continuities Reflections on Historical Some Childhood? British A A British Childhood? Some Historical Reflections on Continuities and Discontinuities in the Culture of Anglophone Childhood • Pam Jarvis Edited by Pam Jarvis Printed Edition of the Special Issue Published in Genealogy www.mdpi.com/journal/genealogy A British Childhood? Some Historical Reflections on Continuities and Discontinuities in the Culture of Anglophone Childhood A British Childhood? Some Historical Reflections on Continuities and Discontinuities in the Culture of Anglophone Childhood Special Issue Editor Pam Jarvis MDPI • Basel • Beijing • Wuhan • Barcelona • Belgrade Special Issue Editor Pam Jarvis Leeds Trinity University UK Editorial Office MDPI St. Alban-Anlage 66 4052 Basel, Switzerland This is a reprint of articles from the Special Issue published online in the open access journal Genealogy (ISSN 2313-5778) in 2019 (available at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/genealogy/special issues/ britishchildhood) For citation purposes, cite each article independently as indicated on the article page online and as indicated below: LastName, A.A.; LastName, B.B.; LastName, C.C. Article Title. Journal Name Year, Article Number, Page Range. ISBN 978-3-03921-934-6 (Pbk) ISBN 978-3-03921-935-3 (PDF) Cover image courtesy of Pam Jarvis. c 2019 by the authors. Articles in this book are Open Access and distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which allows users to download, copy and build upon published articles, as long as the author and publisher are properly credited, which ensures maximum dissemination and a wider impact of our publications. The book as a whole is distributed by MDPI under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND. Contents About the Special Issue Editor ...................................... vii Preface to ”A British Childhood? Some Historical Reflections on Continuities and Discontinuities in the Culture of Anglophone Childhood” ..................... ix Pam Jarvis Not Just ‘Once’ upon a Time Reprinted from: Genealogy 2019, 3, 44, doi:10.3390/genealogy3030044 ................ 1 Mark Malisa and Thelma Quardey Missedja Schooled for Servitude: The Education of African Children in British Colonies, 1910–1990 Reprinted from: Genealogy 2019, 3, 40, doi:10.3390/genealogy3030040 ................ 15 Yinka Olusoga Younger Infants in the Elementary School: Discursively Constructing the Under-Fives in Institutional Spaces and Practices Reprinted from: Genealogy 2019, 3, 37, doi:10.3390/genealogy3030037 ................ 27 Betty Liebovich Margaret McMillan’s Contributions to Cultures of Childhood Reprinted from: Genealogy 2019, 3, 43, doi:10.3390/genealogy3030043 ................ 45 Philip Hood Does Early Childhood Education in England for the 2020s Need to Rediscover Susan Isaacs: Child of the Late Victorian Age and Pioneering Educational Thinker? Reprinted from: Genealogy 2019, 3, 39, doi:10.3390/genealogy3030039 ................ 58 Claire Phillips Child Abandonment in England, 1741–1834: The Case of the London Foundling Hospital Reprinted from: Genealogy 2019, 3, 35, doi:10.3390/genealogy3030035 ................ 69 v About the Special Issue Editor Pam Jarvis is a Chartered Psychologist (British Psychological Society) and qualified teacher with additional academic qualifications in history and education. She works within a multidisciplinary research perspective, considering psychological, biological, social, and historical perspectives of childhood. Her PhD research focused upon play-based learning in 4–6 year olds. She has published extensively as an academic author, including serving as Editor of the book ‘Perspectives on Play’, which has been published in three successive English editions, and additionally in Greek and Portuguese (Brazil). The key focus of her research and writing is on the wellbeing of children, young people, and their families, as well as the development of social policies to support them. She is currently an Honorary Research Fellow of the Institute of Childhood and Education at Leeds Trinity University. vii Preface to ”A British Childhood? Some Historical Reflections on Continuities and Discontinuities in the Culture of Anglophone Childhood” This book considers the history of childhood through a focus upon continuities and discontinuities in British and affiliated Anglophone cultures. It begins with Not Just ‘Once’ upon a Time by Pam Jarvis, a reflection upon the changing nature of Western childhood, focusing upon traces that previous generations have left in ‘folk’ and ‘fairy’ tales and rhymes. Such tales and their underpinning narratives were further disseminated across the world via British colonial culture, and currently play a large role in contemporary US multimedia products; the implications of this process are considered. The role of psychobiological and evolutionary factors in human storytelling provides an underpinning theoretical basis for this article. Mark Malisa and Thelma Quardey Missedja pick up upon the dissemination of British culture through colonisation in their article Schooled for Servitude: The Education of African Children in British Colonies, 1910–1990, pointing out that the invaders did not introduce education into their African colonies as is frequently claimed, but instead changed and channelised it so that it carried messages of conquest and colonialism. Yinka Olusoga describes a similar process of conditioning undertaken with the working classes in England in her article Younger Infants in the Elementary School: Discursively Constructing the Under-Fives in Institutional Spaces and Practices, reflecting upon how young children were reconstructed as ‘scholars’ by Victorian industrialists. In Margaret McMillan’s Contributions to Cultures of Childhood, Betty Liebovich considers a positive early twentieth century development upon this bleak, functional construction of the working-class child, exploring the work of Christian Socialists Margaret and Rachel McMillan with working-class children in London. These sisters developed a holistic pedagogy which encompassed both education and care, preparing the ground for the modern British nursery school. In their chapter Does Early Childhood Education in England for the 2020s Need to Rediscover Susan Isaacs: Child of the Late Victorian Age and Pioneering Educational Thinker, Philip Hood and Kristina Tobutt question whether 21st century Britain might have much to learn from the style of practice pioneered by the McMillans, in particular, moving away from narrow ‘information transmission’ practice in contemporary education and subsequently embracing a more holistic approach to child learning and development. They illustrate their chapter with ideas drawn from the practice of Susan Isaacs in her 1930s experimental nursery school. Finally, in her chapter Child Abandonment in England, 1743–1834: The Case of the London Foundling Hospital, Claire Phillips considers the dawning of the modern conception of vulnerable childhood, documenting the increasingly conscious recognition of children’s particular developmental needs over the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. She focuses upon the diligent work that ‘Foundling Hospitals’ undertook to nurture and protect young children who had been abandoned by their parents. Overall, the articles consider a range of perspectives upon how parents and teachers attempt to socialise young children into the adults that it aspires to produce at the relevant time, and the impacts of wider society upon this process. Pam Jarvis Special Issue Editor ix genealogy Review Not Just ‘Once’ upon a Time Pam Jarvis Institute of Childhood and Education, Leeds Trinity University, Horsforth, Leeds LS18 5HD, UK; [email protected] Received: 30 April 2019; Accepted: 31 July 2019; Published: 1 August 2019 Abstract: Multidisciplinary research indicates the importance of storytelling in child development, most recently exploring the evolved nature of language and narrative. Many questions remain about how children develop competence within such a vital but highly complex process. The ‘once upon a time’ concept is present within nearly every human language on Earth, indicating what a powerful hold ‘storying’ has over human beings and what a central role it plays within human societies. Sue Lyle proposes that human beings are above all, ‘storytelling animals’. Emergent questions include whether and how current mass-produced storytelling products and interactive media developed by Western technology impact children’s competence in the human ‘storying’ process and, in particular, whether such rapid change should be approached with more reflection and caution than is currently the case. In this article, I will consider the process of child development with respect to language and ‘storying’, the traditional role of stories and ‘make-believe’ in the fabric of children’s lives, how this has changed in the recent past in technologically advancing societies, and how such change may impact children’s learning and development. Keywords: narrative; storying; mythology; human evolution; children; play; media 1. What Do We Know about Language, Narrative, and Evolution? The role of language and culture creates a crucial separation, distinguishing human from non-human animals (Bruner 1976, 1990, 1996; Bronfenbrenner and Ceci 1994; Low 1989; Tomasello
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