British schools during World War II and the educational reconstruction (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,0, University of Potsdam (Anglistik), course: Britain during World War II, language: English, abstract: It might count as a fact that facing the terrors of the Second World War, the British population must have been quite indifferent to mathematic formulas and a correct spelling. Naturally, one is tempted to conclude that for the duration of the war all schools were closed but the whole opposite was true. Schools were evacuated over and over again and despite bombed out classrooms, a short supply of teachers and material, lessons were continued both to maintain the illusion of normal life and to demonstrate resistance to Nazi- Germany.

It will be thus interesting to examine the educational, social and personal problems children were exposed to during the chaos of evacuation and to investigate how school life changed under the difficulties of World War II. Furthermore, it will be important to ask how the experience of war and evacuation shaped the hopes and expectations of British people for post-wartimes.

Responding to these questions there will be given evidence for the assumption that the experience of evacuation and schooling during the war had not only a traumatic effect on most children, but has also contributed to raise public awareness of the shortcomings of the socially divisive educational system and thereby served as a catalyst for the educational reforms of the 1940s that culminated in the 1944 Education Act.

The first part of this paper portrays the three major phases of evacuation and describes how the problems that occurred with the billeting of the evacuees at their host families' homes contributed to the growing awareness of social differences.

The second paragraph will deal with the realities of schooling during the War. A particular emphasis will be put on the problems that accrue from the shortages of school buildings, school personnel and instructional material. It will be equally important to investigate how these deficiencies changed school life in respect to the curriculum, the role of teachers and children's outlook on schooling. In the third part of the paper, I will go on to explain how the results of the educational reforms and discussions in the 1940s reflect the experience of war and evacuation. After having presented the main ideas of the Spens and Norwood Report, particular emphasis will be put on the 1944 Education Act and its revolutionary character at the time, followed by an overview of the most important criticisms of the Act. Finally, there will be a conclusion to point out the most important results of the paper.