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This article examines the experience of the "school journey", an educational fieldtrip of a fortnight's duration, as practised in London's interwar elementary schools. Established historical debates over perceptions of the countryside in interwar Britain have previously failed to discuss the messages promoted in schools. This article demonstrates that an idyllic notion of the rural countryside often influenced school practice, but that there was little attempt to link this explicitly to a wider ideological message around national identity or patriotism. Although exposure to the countryside was seen as undoubtedly beneficial, school journeys were not uncritical of rural life. They also encompassed a much wider range of purposes, being an opportunity to study different industries and local heritage, or foster contact with local people. Furthermore, they provided an unequalled opportunity for increased supervision by teachers, and thus a valuable chance to counter the perceived moral ill-effects of a child's usual working-class environment. (Contains 90 footnotes.)

To purchase or authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0289.2007.00394_9.x Byline: hester barron (1) Author Affiliation: (1)Magdalen College, Oxford University

This article is based on 269 essays written in 1937 by Middlesbrough schoolboys aged 12-16 years on the topic 'When I leave school', which were collected by the social research organization Mass Observation. The essays provide a counterpoint to social scientific surveys of ordinary people and allow us to work with the boys' own understandings of the world they inhabited. They offer an alternative lens on a period which, at least in relation to the industrial areas of Britain, is often characterized by poverty and unemployment. This representation is largely absent from the children's essays: instead, an overwhelming sense of possibility characterizes their writing, from their wildest fantasies to their most concrete plans. Most dreamt of lives that would be long, fulfilling, domesticated, and happy. This is not to say that they were oblivious to the world around them; indeed an emphasis on security and planning suggested an implicit awareness of material context. Nonetheless these boys expressed a marked determination that their lives would be better than those of their parents. As such, they embodied the educational and occupational aspirations that are more often seen as characteristic of post-war Britain. Their essays illustrate emergent and widely held expectations of social mobility and dreams of cradle-to-grave security in the years before the Second World War, articulated--as they were being lived--by a generation which would go on to elect the 1945 Labour government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the experience of the ‘school journey’, an educational fieldtrip of a fortnight’s duration, as practised in London’s interwar elementary schools. Established historical debates over perceptions of the countryside in interwar Britain have previously failed to discuss the messages promoted in schools. This article demonstrates that an idyllic notion of the rural countryside often influenced school practice, but that there was little attempt to link this explicitly to a wider ideological message around national identity or patriotism. Although exposure to the countryside was seen as undoubtedly beneficial, school journeys were not uncritical of rural life. They also encompassed a much wider range of purposes, being an opportunity to study different industries and local heritage, or foster contact with local people. Furthermore, they provided an unequalled opportunity for increased supervision by teachers, and thus a valuable chance to counter the perceived moral ill-effects of a child’s usual working-class environment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Durham coalfield of the early twentieth century has often been regarded as a stronghold of Methodism. This is not without justification, but has meant that the role of the Church of England in the region has frequently been dismissed. This article reassesses that role, and questions the prevailing assumptions regarding the Church of England's inability to engage with the culture of organised Labour. It argues that despite its association with the employer class, the Anglican church was rarely viewed with either simple or universal hostility by the working population. Indeed, many of the clergy dealt with working-class militancy sympathetically, despite the fact that this frequently put them at odds with their own church hierarchy. The long seven-month lockout of 1926 was to be a time when conflicting symbols and ideologies battled for dominance and men and women had to prioritise their values and act upon them. The success of the parish priests in presenting their churches as (at the very least) apolitical bodies, allowed strikers to avoid any potential conflict between their religious and their political beliefs, and meant that the church was able to maintain its standing in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]