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Only A Schoolmaster: Gender, Class, and the Effort to Professionalize Elementary Teaching in England, 1870–1910

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Barry H. Bergen
Barry H. Bergen*
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
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Extract

“Teaching is by common consent a profession,” begins a 1917–18 Parliamentary report on teachers' salaries. But, the report continues,

at the same time it suffers from the fact that its membership is not so strictly defined as that of law or medicine. For this as well as other reasons, historical, economic, and social, the English public has not realized its great importance to the national welfare, and have not accorded to its members the position to which their education and the importance of their work entitle them. We may however look forward to a time when admission to the profession will be limited to persons who have reached accepted standards of education and training, a result which will be of great benefit to national education.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , Spring 1982 , pp. 1 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © 1982 by History of Education Society 

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References

Notes

1. British Parliamentary Papers (hereafter B. P. P.), 1917–18, XI, Report… Scales of Salary for Teachers in Elementary Schools.Google Scholar

2. The School and the Teacher, October, 1855, quoted in Asher Tropp, The School Teachers (London, 1957), p. 26.Google Scholar

3. Ibid.Google Scholar

4. Effects of the Educational Provisions of the Factories Act. King Collection, Vol. 227.Google Scholar

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6. Lowe, Robert during the 1862 debates on the Revised Code following the Newcastle Commission Report of 1861. Cited in Tropp, School Teachers, p. 89.Google Scholar

7. One can hardly speak properly of a system of education in England before the Education Act of 1902. Inasmuch as Parliament, by the 1860s, endeavored to deal with all elementary education at one blow, and for the sake of convenience, I refer loosely here to a system of education meaning only elementary education in general. These clearly drawn class distinctions in education in England persisted in explicit form well into the twentieth century. Indeed, they persist to a certain extent today. This subject is treated masterfully and extensively for our period by Brian Simon in his classic study Education and the Labour Movement 1870–1920 (London, 1965). On these aspects of elementary education in particular see especially pp. 112–164.Google Scholar

8. Statistical Abstract for the United Kingdom 1870–1884: p. 172; 1886–1900: p. 250.Google Scholar

9. Ibid.Google Scholar

10. Barber, Bernard “Some Problems in the Sociology of the Professions,“ Daedalus, 92, 4 (1963): 672. See also, for example, Cogan, M.L. “Toward a Definition of Profession,” Harvard Educational Review, 23 (1953): 33–50; Carr-Saunders, A.M. and Wilson, P.A. The Professions (London, 1933); Vollmer, Howard M. and Mills, Donald L. eds., Professionalization (Engle-wood Cliffs, N.J., 1966); Hall, Richard H. “Professionalization and Bureaucratization,” American Sociological Review, 33 (1968): 92–103; Goode, William J. “The Theoretical Limits of Professionalization,” in Etzioni, Amitai ed., The Semi-Professions and Their Organization (New York, 1963), pp. 266–313. This is, of course, only a partial listing of avast literature. For a summary of this literature cf. also Jackson, J.A. ed. Professions and Professionalization (Cambridge, 1970). I have not distinguished here among those who would separate ideal-types of professions from those of professionalization or professionalism. And, finally, cf. also Talcott Parsons, Essays in Sociological Theory (New York, 1954), esp. “The Professions and Social Structure,” pp. 34–49.Google Scholar

11. See especially Etzioni, Semi-Professions.Google Scholar

12. See, for example, Toren, Nina “Semi-Professionalism and Social Work: A Theoretical Perspective,“ in Etzioni, Semi-Professions, pp. 141–145. Here Toren follows Carr-Saunders in identifying “new” and “would-be” professions, as well as established and semi-professions. Her dependence upon the standard ideal-type is explicit.Google Scholar

13. See, for example, Wilensky, Harold L. “The Professionalization of Everyone?“ American Journal of Sociology, 70 (Sept. 1964): 137–158; Hall, Richard H. “Professionalization and Bureaucratization,” American Journal of Sociology; Nina Toren, “Semi-Professionalism and Social Work,” American Journal of Sociology, Lortie, Dan C. “The Balance of Control and Autonomy in Elementary School Teaching,” in Etzioni, Semi-Professions, pp. 1–53; Scott, W. Richard “Professional Employees in a Bureaucratic Structure: Social Work,” in Etzioni, Semi-Professions, pp. 82–140; Simpson, Richard L. and Harper Simpson, Ida, “Women and Bureaucracy in the Semi-Professions,” in Etzioni, Semi-Professions, pp. 196–265; Harries-Jenkins, G. “Professionals in Organizations,” in Jackson, Professions, pp. 51–108.Google Scholar

14. Chapoulie, Jean-Michel “Sur l'analyse sociologique des groupes professionels,“ Revue française de sociologie, 14 (1973): 86–114; Larson, Magali S. The Rise of Professionalism, (Berkeley, 1977). I refer here specifically to Larson's introduction, in which her critique is stated (pp. ix-xviii), but her critique has obviously informed her entire study. Other critiques of the sociology of professionalization do exist, for example, Olesen, V. and Whittaker, E.W. “Critical notes on sociological studies of professional socialization,” in Jackson, Professions, pp. 179–221; and Jackson's own introduction to the same volume, but I have found Larson and Chapoulie most useful.Google Scholar

15. Chapoulie, “Sur l'analyse sociologique:“ 92–94.Google Scholar

16. Ibid., p. 95. cf, for example, Hughes, E.C. The Sociological Eye (Chicago, 1971).Google Scholar

17. Chapoulie, “Sur l'analyse sociologique:“ 95 It is the professional model, and the acceptance and internalization of the moral rules of professional conduct which justify not only the status of the established professions in society, but of their study in sociology.Google Scholar

18. Ibid., p. 97.Google Scholar

19. Ibid., p. 96.Google Scholar

20. Chapoulie, “Sur l'analyse sociologique:“ 96 98, ff. This summary constitutes a gross simplication of Chapoulie's suggestions, but I believe I have faithfully rendered his critique of functionalism. He is, indeed, critical of the interactionists. In fact, this critique constitutes most of the rest of the article, but he is far less critical of them than of the functionalists.Google Scholar

21. Larson, The Rise of Professionalism, pp. xii–xiii.Google Scholar

22. Ibid., p. xiv.Google Scholar

23. Ibid., p. xii.Google Scholar

24. Ibid. That the cognitive elements of the professions help define them means, for Larson, that a determination of their class position will revolve around a treatment of the role of intellectuals in society. Her discussion of this, however, lies outside the realm of this paper, though it has great bearing on its general theoretical questions. We will see, however, that elementary teachers in England lacked a discrete body of generalized and systematized knowledge, and that their class position is best understood outside Mannheim's category of freischwebende intelligenz, which Larson applies to the professions.Google Scholar

25. Larson, The Rise of Professionalism, pp. xvi–xvii (emphasis Larson's).Google Scholar

26. Tropp, School Teachers, p. 14.Google Scholar

27. Ibid., pp. 16–17.Google Scholar

28. Simon, Education and the Labour Movement, p. 115.Google Scholar

29. See, for example, Tropp, School Teachers, pp. 18–19.Google Scholar

30. In 1846, 10–30 for men, 6–20 for women.Google Scholar

31. Statistical Abstract for the United Kingdom 1913, 1918–31, pp. 48–49.Google Scholar

32. Cf., for example, B. P. P. 1887, XXVIII, 738.Google Scholar

33. Tropp, School Teachers, pp. 58–98. H.M.I, will be used hereafter as the abbreviation for Her, or His Majesty's Inspectors.Google Scholar

34. B. P. P. 1917–18, XI, Report … Enquiring Into … Scales of Salary for Teachers in Elementary Schools, 449–512.Google Scholar

35. Tawney, R.H. Education, the Socialist Policy (1924), cited in Simon, Education and the Labour Movement, p. 119, 145, ff.Google Scholar

36. Tropp, School Teachers, pp. 30–31, 41. See especially Simon, Education and the Labour Movement, pp. 118–119.Google Scholar

37. Tropp, School Teachers, pp. 15, 22–23, 34–35, 147–150.Google Scholar

38. Ibid., pp. 44–54.Google Scholar

39. Ibid., pp. 108, 109 n. 6.Google Scholar

40. Ibid., p. 111.Google Scholar

41. Ibid., pp. 147–150, 150 n. 33.Google Scholar

42. Candidates for pupil-teacher needed testimony from the school manager not only on their own character, but on that of their parents. Illegitimate children could not be pupil-teachers. In the case of unsatisfactory parents, the child could become a pupil-teacher if he or she moved, but not to any public house. Every candidate had to satisfy a test of his or her religious knowledge, and girls had to provide examples of their needlework.Google Scholar

43. Larson, Cf. The Rise of Professionalism, p. xvi on the middle class nature of the professions.Google Scholar

44. I am painfully aware of the difficulties involved in assessing the relative economic position of elementary school teachers in England for this period. The significant differences between urban and rural teachers, secular and religious schools, certificated and non-certificated teachers do not appear in these tables. The only such difference which does appear is that between men and women, because it is so well documented. But I do feel that I have shown as well as possible the basic relative economic position of elementary school teachers for the period. My thanks to Steven Ruggles and Roald Euller for assistance with the tables.Google Scholar

45. B. P. P., 1897, XXVI, lxxxiii.Google Scholar

46. B. P. P., 1871, LV, Minute … Establishing a New Code of Regulations, 317.Google Scholar

47. B. P. P., LVI, Syllabus…. 231.Google Scholar

48. B. P. P., 1917–18, XI, Report…., 6.Google Scholar

49. B. P. P., 1917–18, XI, Report… Enquiring into…. Scales of Salary for Teachers in Elementary Schools, 8–9.Google Scholar

50. Ibid.Google Scholar

51. Tropp, School Teachers, p. 157, n. 46.Google Scholar

52. Ibid., p.157, n. 46; p. 158.Google Scholar

53. For treatments of the feminization of teaching in America, see for example, Rothman, Sheila M. Woman's Proper Place (New York, 1978), esp. “Defining Woman's Work: Typewriters, Salesgirls, and Teachers,” pp. 42–62; Elliot Brownlee, W. and Brownlee, Mary M. Women in the American Economy (New Haven, 1976), esp. “The Designation of Teaching as ‘Women's Work',” pp. 266–270; and Katz, Michael B. The Irony of Early School Reform (Boston, 1968), esp. pp. 56–59, 153–159.Google Scholar

54. B. P. P., 1890–91, XVII, Special Report… On the Teachers’ Registration and Organization Bill, 224.Google Scholar

55. B. P. P., 1902 LXXVIII, 6.Google Scholar

56. Simon, Education and the Labour Movement, pp. 99–112, on the development of the public schools out of the endowed grammar schools.Google Scholar

57. Tropp, School Teachers, pp. 175–177; Simon, Education and the Labour Movement, pp. 208–246.Google Scholar

58. Simon, Education and the Labour Movement, pp. 242, is actually discussing the implementation of the 1902 Act, rather than the debate leading up to it.Google Scholar

59. Ibid., pp. 224–234.1 am, for the purpose of this paper, taking an extremely narrow view of the issues involved in the Education Act of 1902.Google Scholar

60. Tropp, School Teachers, p. 179; Simon, Education and the Labour Movement, p. 238.Google Scholar

61. Quoted in Simon, Education and the Labour Movement, p. 238.Google Scholar

62. Ibid., pp. 208–246, ff., esp. pp. 238–246.Google Scholar

63. Tropp, School Teachers, pp. 195–199; B. P. P.,1902, LXVIII, 791; 1906, XC, 407; 1908, LXXXIII, 799; 1890–91, X, 287; 1890–91, XVII, 199. The abolition of the register in 1906 is really only the beginning of the continuing struggle for registration and the establishment of a Council. The events become inextricably linked with the relations between elementary and secondary teachers, but the failure of the Council and register established in 1912, which lapsed in 1949, owe more, I believe, to the nature of teaching and its position in English society. As I hope this paper shows, the inability of teachers to professionalize is deeply rooted. See also, Tropp, School Teachers, pp. 267–269. The changing professional status of elementary teachers in England after 1908 must be linked to the end of the system of pupil-teachership, and the establishment of bursarship, which did much to place entry into elementary teaching outside the financial abilities of the working class.Google Scholar