'The citizens of the future': Educating the children of the Jewish East End, c.1885-1939

Twentieth Century British History

Volumn 19, Issue 4, 2008, Pages 393-418

  Lammers, Benjamin J ^a  

^a CALDWELL UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 56349090124     PISSN: 09552359     EISSN: 14774674     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/tcbh/hwn027     Document Type: Article

References (114)

1. See, for example, Ian Baucom, Out of Place: Englishness, Empire, and the Locations of Identity (Princeton, 1999)
2. Robin Cohen, Frontiers of Identity: The British and the Others (London and New York, 1994)
3. Chris Waters, '"Dark strangers" in our midst: Discourses of race and nation in Britain, 1947-1963', Journal of British Studies, 36 (1997), 207-38.
4. Alun Howkins, 'The discovery of rural England', in Robert Colls and Philip Dodd (eds), Englishness: Politics and Culture, 1880-1920 (London, 1980),
5. and Alex Potts, "Constable country" between the wars', in Raphael Samuel (ed.), Patriotism: The Making and Unmaking of British National Identity, Vol. III (London and New York, 1989), 166.
6. Although it does not specifically refer to the place of Jews, see Peter Yeandle, 'Lessons in Englishness and Empire, c.1880-1914: Further thoughts on the English/British conundrum', in Helen Brocklehurst and Robert Phillips (eds), History, Nationhood and the Question of Britain (Basingstoke and New York, 2004).
7. Matthew Grimley, 'The religion of Englishness: Puritanism, providentialism, and 'national character', 1918-1945', Journal of British Studies 46 (2007), 884-8.
8. Peter Mandler, '"Against Englishness": English culture and the limits to rural nostalgia, 1850-1940', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 7 (1997), 155-75.
9. For a similar argument concerning a specific figure, see John Baxendale, '"I had seen a lot of Englands": J. B. Priestley, Englishness and the people', History Workshop Journal 51 (2001), 87-111.
10. For a defence of the significance of the rural, see Alun Howkins, 'Rurality and English identity', in David Morley and Kevin Robins (eds), British Cultural Studies: Geography, Nationality, and Identity (Oxford, 2001).
11. Miles Taylor, 'John Bull and the iconography of public opinion in England, c.1712-1929', Past and Present, 134 (1992), 93-128.
12. On the diversity of images of national character in the inter-war period, see Peter Mandler, The English National Character. The History of an Idea from Edmund Burke to Tony Blair (New Haven and London, 2006), 163-71.
13. For a model study which illustrates how the specifics of state action are just as crucial for understanding national identity as public discourses, see Pat Thane, 'The British imperial state and the construction of national identities', in Billie Melman (ed.), Borderlines: Genders and Identities in War and Peace, 1870-1930 (New York and London, 1998).
14. Cohen, Frontiers of Identity, 43.
15. For an overview which argues for the significance of anti-semitism in the inter-war period, see Tony Kushner, 'The impact of British anti-semitism, 1918-1945', in David Cesarani (ed.), The Making of Modern Anglo-Jewry (Oxford, 1990).
16. Louise London, 'British government policy and Jewish refugees, 1933-1945', Patterns of Prejudice 23 (1989/90), 26-43.
17. Geoffrey Alderman, London Jewry and London Politics, 1889-1986 (London and New York, 1989), 67.
18. Sascha Auerbach, 'Negotiating nationalism: Jewish conscription and Russian repatriation in London's East End, 1916-1918', Journal of British Studies 46 (2007), 619.
19. Geoffrey Alderman, Modern British Jewry (Oxford, 1992), 256
20. Todd M. Endelman, The Jews of Britain, 1656 to 2000 (Berkeley, 2002), 198. Endelman's comments echo his earlier contention that there were 'unprecedented levels of discrimination in education, employment and social life' in the inter-war years. Radical Assimilation in English Jewish History, 1656-1945 (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1990), 194.
21. W.D. Rubinstein, A History of the Jews in the English-Speaking World: Great Britain (New York, 1996), esp. 288-314.
22. David Feldman, Englishmen and Jews: Social Relations and Political Culture, 1840-1914 (New Haven and London, 1994), 353-78, quote at 377.
23. See Peter Cunningham and Philip Gardner, Becoming Teachers: Texts and Testimonies, 1907-1950 (London, 2004), 10.
24. Adrian Wooldridge, 'The English state and educational theory', in S.J.D. Green and R.C. Whiting (eds), The Boundaries of the State in Modern Britain (Cambridge, 1996), 233.
25. For a discussion of 'audience history' see Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (New Haven, 2002), 1-11.
26. As Peter Mandler has put it, we cannot jump 'from an ideology to an identity'. What is "national identity"?: Definitions and applications in modern British historiography', Modern Intellectual History, 3 (2006), 288.
27. Joanna Bourke, Working-Class Cultures in Britain, 1890-1960: Gender, Class and Ethnicity (London and New York, 1994), 186
28. Stephen Heathorn, For Home, Country, and Race: Constructing Gender, Class, and Englishness in the Elementary School, 1880-1914 (Toronto, 2000), 85-114.
29. SBL, 'Report on examination in scripture knowledge' (1894). London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) LCC/EO/PS/12/B2/17.
30. Baker Street School, 'Managers' Yearly School Report' (1902). LMA LCC/EO/ PS/12/B2/41.
31. Baker Street School, 'Managers' Yearly School Report' (1896):[1]. LMA LCC/EO/PS/12/132/28.
32. Baker Street School, 'Managers' Yearly School Report' (1901). LMA LCC/EO/ PS/12/132/39.
33. LCC, 'Copy of H.M. Inspector's Report' (1910). LMA LCC/EO/PS/12/B48/5.
34. Heathorn, For Home, Country, and Race, 101.
35. See Yeandle, 'Lessons in Englishness and Empire'.
36. Andrew Thompson, The Empire Strikes Back?: The Impact of Imperialism on Britain from the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Harlow, 2005), 117.
37. See also Bernard Porter, The Absent-Minded Imperialists: Empire, Society, and Culture in Britain (Oxford, 2004), 263.
38. For a general critique of the argument that schooling inculcated an imperial mentality among working-class children, see Rose, Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, 321-64.
39. Thompson, Empire Strikes Back, 117-21.
40. See also Porter, Absent-Minded Imperialists, 208-10,
41. and Rose, Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, 338.
42. Harold Rosen, Are You Still Circumcised? East End Memories (Nottingham, 1999), 14.
43. Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism (London, 1995).
44. See also Andrew Thompson, 'Nations, national identities and human agency: Putting people back into nations', Sociological Review 49 (2001), 19.
45. John Gross, A Double Thread: Growing Up English and Jewish in London (Chicago, 2001), 67-8.
46. Ena Abrahams, 'I had this other life', in Jewish Women in London Group, Generations of Memories: Voices of Jewish Women (London, 1989), 100.
47. Abrahams, 'I had this other life', 86.
48. Abrahams, 'I had this other life', 86, 87.
49. See Chris Waters, 'Autobiography, nostalgia, and the changing practices of working-class selfhood', in George K. Behlmer and Fred M. Leventhal (eds), Singular Continuities: Tradition, Nostalgia, and Identity in Modern British Culture (Stanford, 2000).
50. Heathorn, For Home, Country, and Race, 24-55.
51. G.A. Christian, 'Elementary education', in L. Hayden Guest (ed.), The New Education: A Critical Presentation of the Education Scheme of the London Education Authority, October, 1920 (London, 1920), 71.
52. LCC, Education Act, 1918: Scheme of the Local Education Authority (1920), 14.
53. E.D. Simon and Eva M. Hubback, 'Preface', in Education for Citizenship in Elementary Schools (London, 1939), xiii.
54. Board of Education, 'Report of Inspection' (1927). LMA LCC/EO/PS/12/NP/ C7/1.
55. LCC Education Committee, Elementary Education Sub-Committee, 'Copy of a Report (dated 22 Dec 1926) made by H.M. Inspector, E.E. Kemble'. LMA LCC/ EO/PS/12/W57/13:[1].
56. LCC, 'Copy of H.M. Inspector's Report' (1912). LMA LCC/EO/PS/12/NP/J2/ 5:[2].
57. Kenneth Lindsay, Social Progress and Educational Waste: Being a Study of the 'Free-Place' and Scholarship System (London, 1926), 67.
58. Lindsay, Social Progress, 7.
59. Lindsay, Social Progress, 110.
60. Susan Crosland, Tony Crosland (London, 1982), 148.
61. David Feldman, 'Jews and the state in Britain', in Michael Brenner, Rainer Liedtke and David Rechter (eds), Two Nations: British and German Jews in Comparative Perspective (Tübingen, 1999), 146-49.
62. Stuart Maclure, A History of Education in London, 1870-1990 (London, 1990), 66.
63. Hilda Waterman, interview with the author, 8 Aug 1994.
64. In 1905, schools were given one day for Purim, ten days for Passover, five days for the Feast of Weeks and one day for the Day of Atonement. LCC Education Committee, Minutes (1905), 1755.
65. LCC Education Committee, Minutes (1907), 88.
66. Sylvia Levene, interview with the author, 6 Apr 1995.
67. LCC Education Committee, Minutes (1926), 110.
68. LCC Education Committee, Minutes (1907), 1947.
69. LCC Education Committee, Minutes (1918), 551, 552.
70. Philip Gardner, 'Reconstructing the classroom teacher, 1903-1945', in Ian Grosvenor, Martin Lawn and Kate Rousmaniere (eds), Silences and Images: The Social History of the Classroom (New York, 1999), 135.
71. Gardner, 'Reconstructing the classroom teacher', 140.
72. Gardner, 'Reconstructing the classroom teacher', 125, 126.
73. Uncovering the attitudes of teachers is a problem for any historian of education, as noted by Phil Gardner in 'Deciding to teach: The making of elementary school teachers in the early twentieth century', in Malcolm Chase and Ian Dyck (eds), Living and Learning: Essays in Honour of J.F.C. Harrison (Aldershot, 1996), 237. Through examining accounts of students, however, Gardner argues that the teaching profession was becoming less authoritarian in the early twentieth century ('Deciding to teach', 244-8). It is impossible to say, however, if a less authoritarian classroom also meant a more welcoming attitude for Jewish students.
74. LCC Education Committee, Elementary Education Sub-Committee, 'Copy of a Report (dated 25 Nov 1926) made by H.M. Inspector, H.J.R. Murray' LMA LCC/EO/PS/12/G38/38, 2.
75. See Waters, 'Autobiography, nostalgia, and the changing practices of working-class selfhood', 180.
76. W. Victor Sefton, 'Growing up Jewish in London, 1920-1950: A perspective from 1973', in Dov Noy and Issachar Ben-Ami (eds), Studies in the Cultural Life of the Jews in England. Folklore Research Center Studies V (Jerusalem, 1975), 316, 317.
77. Barnet Litvinoff, A Very British Subject: Telling Tales (London and Portland, OR, 1996), 33.
78. Sid Berg, interview with the author, 21 Apr 1994.
79. Ralph L. Finn, Grief Forgotten: The Tale of an East End Jewish Boyhood (London, 1985), 161.
80. Harry Blacker, East Endings: Drawings, Cartoons, and More Memoirs of London's East End (London, 1989), 15, 16.
81. Emanuel Gross, interview with the author, 18 May 1994.
82. Bernard Kops, The World is a Wedding (New York, 1963), 35.
83. Stephen Humphries, Hooligans or Rebels: An Oral History of Working-Class Childhood and Youth, 1889-1939 (Oxford, 1981), 28-120. For a challenge to Humphries's view of the working-class attitude to education, see Jonathan Rose, 'Willingly to school: The working-class response to elementary education in Britain, 1875-1918', Journal of British Studies, 32 (1993), 114-38.
84. Waterman, interview with the author, 8 August 1994.
85. Commercial Street School, 'Managers' Yearly School Report, School Year Ended February, 1901'. LMA LCC/EO/PS/12/C88/10:[2].
86. LCC, 'Copy of H.M. Inspector's Report' (1913). LMA LCC/EO/PS/12/NP/J2/ 7:[1].
87. Gerry Black, J.F.S.: A History of the Jews' Free School, London since 1732 (London, 1998), 115.
88. Carolyn Kay Steedman, Landscape for a Good Woman: A Story of Two Lives (New Brunswick, 1987), 122.
89. Cyril Spector, Volla Volla Jew Boy (London, 1988), 45.
90. Harold Rosen, 'Not yet', in Venetia Murray (ed.), Echoes of the East End (London, 1989), 141.
91. Rosen, 'Not yet', 141 (emphasis in original).
92. An issue which has received a great deal of attention, beginning with the work of Richard Hoggart. The Uses of Literacy: Aspects of Working-Class Life with Special Reference to Publications and Entertainments (Harmondsworth, 1986, first published 1957), 291-304.
93. Abrahams, 'I had this other life', 88.
94. Feldman, 'Jews and the state', 154-9.
95. David Cesarani, 'Anti-alienism in England after the First World War', Immigrants and Minorities, 6 (1987), 15.
96. LCC Education Committee, Minutes (1928), 331.
97. Ian Grosvenor, Assimilating Identities: Racism and Educational Policy in Post 1945 Britain (London, 1997), 10.
98. Grosvenor, Assimilating Identities, 41.
99. Grosvenor further argues that the commitment to assimilation remained in place even after Labour Home Secretary Roy Jenkins seemed to signal a shift to a policy of 'integration' in 1966. For Grosvenor this shift was 'more apparent than real' as the ultimate goal of policy remained the transformation of immigrant children so that they could 'fit in' with British society. Grosvenor, Assimilating Identities, 50.
100. Grosvenor, Assimilating Identities, 53, 54.
101. Peter Gordon, Richard Aldrich and Denis Dean, Education and Policy in England in the Twentieth Century (London, 1991), 88.
102. Maclure, History of Education, 166.
103. Gerd Baumann, Contesting Culture: Discourses of Identity in Multi-Ethnic London (Cambridge, 1996), 57.
104. It could be argued that the shift to multiculturalism in education, exemplified by the Swann Report in 1985, brought post-war educational policy more in line with the approach taken by the SBL and the LCC, although Grosvenor argues that multicultural education was not significantly different from the assimilationist approach which characterized the immediate post-war decades. Grosvenor, Assimilating Identities, 49.
105. Maclure, History of Education, 165.
106. Waters, "Dark strangers' in our midst', 208-12.
107. See Kathleen Paul, 'From subjects to immigrants: Black Britons and national identity, 1948-62', in Richard Weight and Abigail Beach (eds), The Right to Belong: Citizenship and National Identity in Britain, 1930 1960 (London and New York, 1998).
108. See Robert Colls, 'Englishness and the political culture', in Colls and Philip Dodd (eds), Englishness: Politics and Culture, 1880-1920 (London, 1986).
109. For an article which makes this argument in the specific context of education, see Stephen Heathorn, "'Let us remember that we, too, are English": Constructions of citizenship and national identity in English elementary school reading books, 1880-1914', Victorian Studies (1995), 395-427.
110. On Anglo-Jewry, see Bryan Cheyette, Constructions of 'the Jew' in English Literature and Society: Racial Representations, 1875 1945 (Cambridge, 1993).
111. On the role of textbooks in promoting a racialized Englishness, see John Ahier, Industry, Children and the Nation: An Analysis of National Identity in School Textbooks (London, 1988)
112. and Kathryn Castle, Britannia's Children: Reading Colonialism through Children's Books and Magazines (Manchester and New York, 1996).
113. On the wider context, see Talal Asad, 'Multiculturalism and British identity in the wake of the Rushdie affair', Politics and Society, 18 (1990), 455-80.
114. For an article which makes a similar argument, see Gargi Bhattacharyya, 'Cultural education in Britain: From the Newbolt Report to the national curriculum', Oxford Literary Review, 13 (1991), 4-19.