War and peace in the Special Collections at the UCL Institute of Education

Institute of Education

Nazlin Bhimani

The Representation of

War and Peace in the

Newsam Library’s Special Collections

Research Support & Special Collections Librarian

Institute of EducationThe Newsam Library &Archives

The Newsam Library & Archives at the UCL Institute of Education is the largest education library in Europe.

The library has a copy of every book on education published in the UK.

It also has a representative collection of publications on education from around the world.

Institute of EducationThe Historical Collections

The historical collections comprise 27 special collections and over 100 deposited archive collections.

These are unique historical resources on education, and influential organisations and individuals working in the field.

Many of these are associated with the Institute and others are deposited collections that represent the history of education in the United Kingdom.


…vary in size and coverage.

Some collections such as the History of Education Collection have been built up from a variety of sources.

Many of these collections are libraries of individual scholars which supplement the papers in the Archives collections.

The Special Collections



The following collections are highlighted in this presentation:

BBC Broadcasts to Schools

Historical Comparative Education Collection

Historical Textbooks Collection

The Grantham Number Ones

The Grenfell Collection

The Official Publications Collections

School Histories Collection

Special Collections Highlights

Institute of EducationBBC Broadcasts to SchoolsSpecial Collection

Institute of EducationAbout the BBC Broadcasts to Schools Collection

This Collection is the BBC's own collection of pamphlets produced to accompany schools radio broadcasts from September 1926 till the late 1970s; the volumes from Summer 1958 and onwards include pamphlets for television broadcasts as well.

The Collection was deposited on permanent loan with the Institute in 1990.


The Second World War brought major challenges for British school broadcasting: national and regional radio variations were temporarily abandoned in favour of a single home service for two hours a day, including a daily five-minute news commentary ‘to explain events arising out of the general news bulletins which might give rise to confusion in the minds of children’ (The Times, 12 July 1940, p. 6).

BBC Broadcasts to Schools


Hans, the refugee from Nazi Germany, continues to ask his questions. Each broadcast is designed to provide vivid material as a starting point for a simple project in citizenship.

BBC’s Citizenship Education


Images source: Kallbach, Wilhelm. (1941). Deutsches Lesebuch für höhere Schulen. Ausgabe für Mädchen, Klasse 1 (Berlin: Weidmannsche Verlagsbuchhandlung).

Comparative Education Collection

Institute of EducationAbout the Comparative Education Collection

This collection of resources is made up of two separate departmental libraries in the Institute: the Comparative Education Department Library and the Department of Education in Tropical Areas Library.

The two libraries were amalgamated in 1969 and consist of books and pamphlets from all over the world, mainly from the period 1900-1980.


Source: Kallbach, Wilhelm. (1941). Deutsches Lesebuch für höhere Schulen. Ausgabe für Mädchen, Klasse 1 (Berlin: Weidmannsche Verlagsbuchhandlung).

Comparative EducationCollection

Institute of EducationThe History of Education Special Collection

Institute of EducationAbout the History of Education Collection

This collection consists of books and pamphlets (160 metres of shelving) on all aspects of education published before 1940.

There about 1200 items published in the 16-18th centuries, but the bulk of the material dates from the 19th and 20th centuries.

Included in this collection are about 150 bound volumes of 19th and 20th century pamphlets amassed by the Ministry and Departments of Education.

Institute of EducationHistorical Textbooks Special Collection


About the Historical TextbooksCollection

This is a collection of c.88,000 British school textbooks, dating from 1890 onwards.

The collection represents all educational levels, from nursery to sixth form.

It covers all aspects of the curriculum, with particular strengths in geography, history and science.


The idea of textbooks as an object of study in their own right has not found much favour in the past. Yet textbooks can reveal a good deal: about the state of the discipline …about attitudes in society at the time … about the technologies extant at the time …indeed about the economics of textbook production for an educational market.

Graves, N. (2001) School Textbook Research, p. ix.

The Historical Textbooks Collection



Chapter XVI

The Defence of the EmpireThe Navy

War is at any time a dreadful thing , for it means the loss of hundreds if not thousands of strong and healthy lives ; and when we think of it, our minds picture at once a battlefield with its dead and dying, towns with gaping walls torn open by shot and shell, and ships sunk or drifting helpless before the wind.

Besides this sacrifice of human life there is the immense cost to the nation of trade for the time diminished and debt incurred, to provide for the expenses of an army on active service. (pp. 135-6)



Among the possible causes of war, education holds a particular and significant place … for in so far as it embodies dangerous nationalistic prejudices, it is a means of disseminating them constantly to all the people. It is the seed of international discord for both present and future generations.”

A.M. Schlesinger, in the ‘Introduction’ to A. Walworth’s School Histories at War: Study of the Treatment of Wars in Secondary School History Books of the United States and in

those of its Former Enemies (Cambridge, MA, 1938), pp. xiii-xx.

The Historical TextbooksCollection



Source: The Mercury (Tuesday 17 January 1939), page 6. Accessed from http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/printArticlePdf/25581082/3?print=n [07.07.14)

The Poison Called History

H. G. Wells Attacks OldIdeas of Teaching

CANBERRA, January 14.

If the young Hercules of the new world was to live, its first feat must be to strangle the tangled coil of poisonous old histories in its cradle, declared Mr. H. G. Wells, the author and scientist, in an address at the Science Congress today.

Speaking plainly about the relationship of so-called history to the human outlook, he said that the world was in an evil state, and faced greater evils. The primary cause of all the troubles was the complete incompatibility between historical traditions and the new, more exacting conditions of life created by invention and discovery.

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/printArticlePdf/25581082/3?print=n


“Practically all history teaching is propaganda, some open, some ‘slyly insinuated’”

Source: A. Walworth’s School Histories at War: Study of the Treatment of Wars in Secondary School History Books of the United States and in those of its Former Enemies (Cambridge, MA, 1938), 373.


The textbook is a cultural artefact which has embedded in it through its use in classrooms a range of issues to do with ideology, politics and values which in themselves function at a variety of different levels of power, status and influence.

Graves, N. (2001) School Textbook Research, p.2



Institute of EducationGeography TextbooksCollection

Geography text books provide much interesting evidence of other aspects of everyday life in past eras.

In addition to the ‘factual’ presentation of contemporary life in text and illustrations, they often reveal prevailing attitudes.

Their presentation of other races and cultures, for instance, or of the British Empire, demonstrates the accepted view of the establishment at the time of their publication.


“If the fate of the nation may depend on a battle, a battle may depend on a knowledge of geography.”

Royal Geographical Society. (1886) Report of the Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society in Reference to Improvement in Geographical Education (Keltie Report), p. 36.

Geography Textbooks Collection


“New trends of history textbook research acknowledge that textbooks are produced somewhere between politics, economics, science and education. They define “legitimate knowledge” and they communicate desired concepts of national identity.

“If you analyse a textbook and keep the complex character and the social and political contexts of the textbook in mind, the analysis tells you something about social change.”

Lars Müller, Research Fellow,

Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research

Textbook Research

Institute of EducationThe Grantham Collection ofNumber Ones

Institute of EducationAbout the Grantham Collection

This collection consists of 71 volumes of the first issues of a variety of journals on all subjects dating from 1850 to 1930.

It was put together by Major William Wilson Grantham (1866-1942), at one time Deputy Chairman of the London County Council, and deposited at County Hall in 1933.

It then passed to the Institute of Education, along with other materials from the Inner London Education Authority, in 1990.


Grantham Collection



Institute of EducationAbout the Grenfell Collection

Capt. Francis H. Grenfell was appointed the first assistant

superintendent of the Navy's Gymnastic Department in the

early 1900s.

He was instrumental in getting the much admired Swedish

system adopted by naval gymnastic schools.

After leaving the Navy, he taught in schools (including Eton

College) until 1909 when he became an H.M. Inspector of

Physical Training for the Board of Education's new medical

department.

He wanted physical education to have a respected place in the

curriculum, with fully trained teachers.


Grenfell amassed an extensive

collection of late 19th and early 20th

century books and journals on

physical education in its broadest

sense and donated it to the Board of

Education in 1934.

The Department for Education,

deposited the Collection (which takes

up14 metres of shelving) with the

Institute in 1992.


Institute of EducationThe Official Publications

Institute of EducationThe Official Publications

Collection



Institute of EducationAbout the Off Pubs Collection

This is an almost comprehensive collection of official reports, taking up 200 metres of shelving of print resources on legislation and other publications on education and related subjects for all parts of the United Kingdom.

Publications of semi-official education organisations (quangos) are included, as are those of other groups (such as political parties and trade unions), when they relate to education.

The earliest documents date from the Government's first involvement in education from the 1850s, and new items are added to the collection as they appear.


Institute of EducationThe Official Publications Collection


School Histories Collectioncollege and university

Institute of EducationAbout the School HistoriesCollection The School Histories

Collections has c. 1700 books from the early part of the 20th century to the present time.

The histories, often written by former pupils / educationalists, tell the stories of individual schools and their communities across Britain.

Schools range from local village schools to secondary modern, grammar, comprehensive and public (private) schools

This collection provides a wealth of information about all aspects of school life including the impact of the wars on British schools.


“As the war continued more men were called up, and in September 1916, Mr. Strubell, the headmaster, reported:

‘Out of the seven male teachers in the school only Mr. Green [an uncertificated assistant who was medically unfit for service] and myself remain.’

At a time when food was short, the school garden was of extra importance ….”

The School Histories

Institute of EducationSchool Histories

“The war passed over us, except for rationing, as we did not see any newspapers and of course there was no radio or television. I remember how shocked I was in the holiday to see a newspaper placard with the number of casualties in the battle of Somme. The girl with the plaits lost her brother and my brother was wounded.”

“This was wartime …. We had margarine on our bread and the margarine in those days couldn’t possibly be mistaken for butter. …we took it in turns – a dollop of jam [from our tuck boxes] to disguise the margarine ….”

Shaw, A.M. (1983) When you were there Reflections on Edgehill College 1884-1984, pp. 24-25.


“In September/October 1918 the school was closed for a total of 15 days for blackberrying. During this time the boys picked 18 cwt 2 qrt 14 Ib of fruit, winning a silver cup… as well as receiving some payment for their efforts.

The Armistice of November 11th

brought great relief and joy to the nation, but it was not until the new year that the school returned to a degree of normality.”

The School Histories

Collection at the IOE
