London's Women Teachers by Dina Copelman

Author:Dina Copelman [Copelman, Dina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General
ISBN: 9781136094767
Google: pMBdAgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-12-16T16:00:56+00:00

Principals – Faunthorpe was known as ‘Prinny’ to the students – and mistresses were also affectionately mocked, and the stringent college regulations, especially regarding contact with the opposite sex, are constantly evoked. Mrs. Hawkesworth, for instance, reminiscing in 1970 about her time in college from 1902 to 1904, recalled her tough head governess. She had once stopped her in the hallways to remind her that ‘A lady never hurries, and Whitelands is noted for its ladies, now WALK.’74 She also recalled how students were forbidden to go out alone, and how, when normal regulations regarding male visitors were relaxed in the summer for the annual celebration in honor of St. Ursula, the college’s patron saint, the festivities ended abruptly with ‘Prinny’ shouting ‘in Stentorian tones, “Visitors to the DOOR. Students, UPSTAIRS!” Those were the days!!!’75

Some of these glimpses into students’ culture are culled from special student notebooks in the college archives. These books seem to have been begun before graduation and contain reminiscences, special wishes and even quite skillfully executed sketches of college scenes contributed by special friends. The surviving notebooks were donated in old age or upon the death of a former student, having been carefully cherished and preserved over decades, demonstrating the importance placed by former students on these crucial years.

The college archives also refer to some less harmonious events – the student who ran away; the young woman who stayed out all night and was expelled76 – and no doubt the testimonials from old students provide a rose-tinted view of college life at the turn of the century. Many Whitelands students also went on to teach in religious voluntary schools, not state elementary schools. Nevertheless, these glimpses of college life do reveal the pride and lifelong sense of corporate attachment that training colleges could instill in a future teacher. Given the low status of teaching and the gulf that is often revealed between the experiences of middle-class young women and those destined to be elementary teachers, it is important to acknowledge the extent to which the trained teachers of this period might have been part of a world where character and their development as young women and as future educators was so carefully attended to.

CUTTING THE MUSTARD

By the Edwardian period, the Education Act of 1902, while phasing out apprenticeship and streaming prospective teachers into secondary schools, also affected training colleges. The great innovation in this period was the creation of day training colleges, built from the 1890s onward by local authorities. They were an effort to provide more places for pupils at cheaper cost by making it possible for students to commute from their homes (hence the name, although many did provide room and board); they also attempted to break the stranglehold of religion on teacher training since the majority of existing colleges were denominational. These new colleges helped to provide more trained teachers for schools all over England – a change considered urgent by many since into the twentieth century the majority of women elementary teachers were untrained.

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