An 'energetic and controversial' historian of education yesterday and today: A. F. Leach (1851-1915)

History of Education

Volumn 36, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 367-380

  Simon, Joan ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34248196621     PISSN: 0046760X     EISSN: 14645130     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00467600600851185     Document Type: Article

References (59)

1. The article as published below has been edited by Peter Cunningham, following Joan Simon's death in July 2005.
2. Richardson, W. "Historians and educationists: the history of education as a field of study in post-war England. Part 1: 1945 72." History of Education 28, no. 1 (1999): 1-30.
3. Lowe, R. "History as propaganda: the strange uses of the history of education." In Trends in the Study and Teaching of the History of Education, edited by R. Löwe. Occasional Paper 7. Leicester: History of Education Society, 1983.
4. Simon, B. Studies in the History of Education 1780-1970. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1960.
5. Simon, B. "Research in the history of education." In Research Perspectives in Education, edited by W. Taylor. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973: 121-53. The paper in question was written in 1969; see p. x.
6. Cremin, L. The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education. New York: Knopf, 1961.
7. Cremin, L. American Education: The Colonial Experience 1607-1783. New York: Harper & Row, 1970.
8. Simon, B. "Research in the history of education", 1973, 123-55;
9. Cremin, L. The Wonderful World of Ellwood Patterson Cubberley: An Essay in the Historiography of American Education. New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1965.
10. Bailyn advocated that the historical study of education should cover 'the entire process by which a culture transmits itself across the generations'. It is useful to be reminded that, in 1957, American concern about postwar problems in schooling had been greatly aggravated by a Soviet sputnik.
11. Lowe, R. "Do we still need history of education: is it central or peripheral?" History of Education 31, no. 6 (2002): 501.
12. Richardson, "Historians and educationists", 1999.
13. Richardson, "Historians and educationists", 1999: 14.
14. "... he who, in 1960, articulated the first sustained consideration of educational historiography by a prominent non-educationist on either side of the Atlantic since 1914" - i.e. the date of Leach's address to the British Academy the year before his death. Richardson, "Historians and education-ists", 1999: note 78.
15. Richardson, "Historians and educationists", 1999.
16. Orme, N. English Schools in the Middle Ages. London: Methuen 1973;
17. Orme, N. Education in the West of England. 1066-1548. Exeter: University of Exeter, 1976;
18. Orme, N. From Childhood to Chivalry. London: Methuen, 1984;
19. Orme, N. Education and Society in Medieval and Renaissance England. London: Hambledon, 1989.
20. Orme, N. English Schools in the Middle Ages. London: Methuen, 1973: 7.
21. Simon, J. "A. F. Leach on the Reformation: I." BJES 3, no. 2 (1955): 128-43;
22. Simon, J. "A. F. Leach on the Reformation: II." BJES 4, no. 1 (1955): 32-43;
23. Simon, J. "Laying the Ghost of A. F. Leach." History of Education Society Bulletin 36 (1983): 12-20.
24. Miner, J. The Grammar Schools of Medieval England: A. F. Leach in Historiographical Perspective. London: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1990. Preface, p. 3. Miner died when the book was in press and colleagues completed the necessary work, with authorization of a brother, Edmund Miner of the Department of Modern Languages, King's College, London. He had retired in 1984 from the University of Windsor, Department of History, where he had been a lecturer for 17 years. A grandson, James W. Leach' provided a photograph to preface the book.
25. Born 1851, London. Educated at Winchester College and at New College, Oxford. First Class Literae Humaniores 1873. Fellow of All Souls 1874-81. Middle Temple, called to Bar 1876. Appointed to Endowed Schools Department 1884. See DNB.
26. Miner, Grammar Schools, 1990, 11 14,
27. drawing on Fifoot, G. H. S. Frederick William Maitland: A Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971: 241-43.
28. Miner, Grammar Schools, 1990, 14.
29. Miner, Grammar Schools, 1990, 328, n.97.
30. An unsigned review in Athenaeum 3618 (1897): 272-73.
31. Leach responded in 3622 (1897): 348, 417.
32. Contemporary Review. 1892: 368-84. An unreferenced note by Milner suggests that the author was Mary Bateson, authoritative editor inter alia of the Leicester Borough Records.
33. Athenaeum, Leach's responses 3622 (1897): 348, 417.
34. With the steady backing of Barrington Ward, the TES continued to campaign for reform; Simon, J. "Promoting educational reform on the home front: The TES and The Times 1940-44." History of Education 18, no. 3 (1989): 195-211
35. [for Harold Dent (1894-1995) see obituaries in The Times 26 January 1995, Independent 16 February 1995, Guardian 16 February 1995;
36. for Carr and Barrington-Ward see Dictionary of National Biography. Ed.]
37. A first serious article in 1949 was published with the aid of Christopher Hill in the Historians Group of the Communist Party: Simon, J. "Educational policies and Programmes." Modem Qitarterly 4, no. 2 (1949) [Special Issue for Tercentenary of 1649]: 154-68.
38. There is an extensive bibliography in Powicke, Sir Maurice. The Thirteenth Century 1216-1307 (1953). Under a major heading for the Church of England comes the sub-heading "Schools and Universities'. Here a reference to the Cambridge Medieval History of 1926 carries an appended note: 'on A. F. Leach, The Schools of Medieval England, 1915,
39. see Little, A. G. English Historical Review xxx (1915): 525-29'.
40. Letter from R. L. Poole to A. G. Little, 3 April 1915. By coincidence and good fortune the educationist historian Peter Wallis discovered correspondence between Little and his editor in Little's review copy of the Leach book, purchased second-hand: Wallis, P. "Leach, past, present and future." BJES 12, no. 2 (1964): 184-94.
41. Jacob, E. F. The Fifteenth Century 1399-1485. The Oxford History of England vol. 6. Oxford: Clarendon, 1961: 667.
42. Undated letter [Autumn 1953] from Joan Simon to A. C. F. Beales. [Briefer extracts from this correspondence appeared in History of Education Society Bulletin 36 (Autumn 1985). The documented correspondence, preserved in Joan Simon's personal archive, reveals in its detail the kinds of factors that journal editors at this time, and in changing circumstances before and since, considered in relation to personalities and the politics of the academic field: Ed.]
43. Letter from A. C. F. Beales to Joan Simon, 9 November 1953.
44. Letter from Joan Simon to A. C. F. Beales, undated [November 1953].
45. Letters from A. V. Judges to A. C. F. Beales, 23 November 1953, and from A. C .F. Beales to Joan Simon, 6 December 1953.
46. The most notable example, retained in the final text of the paper, was that of Sir Cyril Norwood, former headmaster of Harrow, who as Chair of the 'Norwood Report' was one of the educationists most clearly responsible for implementation of the selective tripartite system of 'secondary education for all' following 1945.
47. Tate later drew on amended Leach contributions for a book on Yorkshire Schools edited with Peter Wallis. See Täte, W. A. F. Leach as a Historian of Yorkshire Education: With an Index of the Yorkshire Schools, c.730 to c.1770 York: St Anthony's Press, [1963] St Anthony's Hall publications, Borthwick Institute of Historical Research: 23.
48. Letter from Joan Simon to Beales, 22 November 1954.
49. Letter from Beales to Simon, c.22 November 1954.
50. Letter from Elton to Simon, 29 November 1955.
51. The first, and only, challenge to my 1955 articles came from a writer who knew little about the subject, was apparently a grammar school headmaster who resented the questioning of established history and who complained that the single review by Little in 1955 formed the backbone of my condemnation of Leach as a historian. But by this time there were sufficient instances of support from early modern historians to end an unprofitable exchange and defend the right of educationists to grow out of dependence on Leach: see Chaplin, W. "A. F. Leach: a Re-Appraisal." BJES 11, no. 2 (1963): 99-124;
52. Simon, J. "A. F. Leach: a Reply." BJES 12, no. 1 (1963): 41-50;
53. Chaplin, W. "A. F. Leach: Agreement and Difference." BJES 12, no. 2 (1964): 173-83.
54. Elton, G. R. The Tudor Constitution: Documents and Commentary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1960. Elton G. R., ed. The New Cambridge Modem History, vol. 2: The Reformation, 1520-1559. Cambridge: University Press, 1962. To publicize the revision of Leach, Elton made particular reference to a further article: Simon, J. "The Reformation and English Education." Past and Present II (1957): 48-65. The friendly acceptance at Cambridge of an argument addressed to educationists, based on evidence and toning down the attack on Leach's loyal adherents, may have had something to do with Elton's own road there. Aged 17 when removed from a Prague school to accompany his family to England, without a word of English, schooling was quickly completed in a Cumbrian school, but rejected for entrance to Oxford, this boy turned pupil-teacher and studied for an external London BA. In army service Gottfried Ehrenburg acquired an English name and on demobilization a first post at Glasgow University. Cambridge followed with a fellowship at Clare and in due course the chair of constitutional history and regius professorships. Following on his eminent standing as a Tudor historian he acquired a new reputation in the closing decades of the twentieth century as a defender of traditional historical method against the questionings and assaults of postmodernists.
55. Simon, J. Education and Society in Tudor England. Cambridge: University Press, 1966.
56. Letter from David Knowles to Joan Simon, 6 June 1963.
57. Neale, J. "Review of Simon, J. Education and Society in Tudor England 1966." English Historical Review 82, no. 323 (1967): 384.
58. Cremin, L. Traditions of American Education. New York: Basic Books, 1997. Merle Curti lectures, 1976: 84.
59. For recent comment on the 1960s see Gaither, M. American History Revisited: A Critique of Progress. New York: Teachers College Press, 2003.