The Impact of Childhood Migration on Educational Attainment: Evidence from rural–urban migrants in Indonesia

This paper estimates the effect of migrating permanently as a child from a rural area to an urban area; focusing on long-term educational attainment in Indonesia. We conduct a household survey specifically tailored to collect data on urban–rural migrants in four major migrant destination cities in Indonesia, and merge the data with a nationally representative survey to create a dataset that contains migrants in urban areas and non-migrants in rural areas who were born in the same rural districts. We find that individuals who migrated to the city as children attained three more years of education, compared to observably similar individuals who remained in rural areas. We find no gender differences in the benefit of childhood migration. Finally, age at migration and the size of network in the city do not significantly affect the educational attainment of childhood migrants.     

From boats to bushes: environmental elements supportive of children’s sociodramatic play outdoors

ABSTRACT

Sociodramatic play is a central activity of early childhood, one influenced by the nature of the environment where it occurs. Using the Smilansky Scale for the Evaluation of Dramatic and Socio Dramatic Play (Smilansky and Shefatya, 1990), this study compared the frequency and complexity of the sociodramatic play of two groups of fifteen 4–5 year old children in two preschool outdoor spaces differing in natural elements, resources, and spatial characteristics. Field notes and behaviour mapping were also employed to explore potential associations between the play characteristics, and specific elements and areas of the two spaces. Findings showed the following elements supported more frequent and complex sociodramatic play: a balanced conjunction of man-made resources and significant vegetation and natural loose parts; opportunities for seclusion and lack of overcrowding; linking pathways and open-ended design. The findings have implications for the design of outdoor spaces that support the frequency and complexity of children’s sociodramatic play.     

The emergence of early childhood education outdoor programs in British Columbia: a meandering story

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the emergence of early childhood education outdoor programs in British Columbia, Canada. The story told follows paths not dissimilar from how one might observe children on a walk to the park. While the park is the destination, it is the journey to the park, of picking up pebbles, looking at flowers, and finding sticks, that enlivens and binds the journey. Through our consideration of stories from a number of outdoor programs, we weave patterns that join their emergence and consider how their stories might sustain and encourage educational action.     

Mirrors of the Nation: The Construction of National Character and Difference in the Historical Writings of E. G. Geijer

This article suggests that marriageable young upper-class women can be taken as indicators of the longue durée of the ancien régime mentality and the stepwise advancement of the bourgeois mentality. This is so because of factors that made such women particularly prone not to break with established conventions. Source materials in this analysis are taken from contemporary non-fiction texts in which 19th-century St Petersburg and Helsinki serve as the scenes and in which marriageable young women feature as the protagonists or objects of appraising gazes. It is suggested that the differences emerging around the mid-19th century between the two societies with regards to the habitus and education of upper-class girls and marriageable women can at least in part be explained by different institutional settings vis-à-vis land, labour and the status of the bourgeoisie.     

Having her hand in it? Elite women as ‘makers’ of textile art in the Middle Ages

ABSTRACT

In the Middle Ages, elite women acted as creators, donors and recipients of textile art. This article analyses a small but representative group of seventh- to thirteenth-century embroideries in order to examine the motivation for their creation and to investigate the ways in which women could mark their own presence through textile art. It discusses written sources alongside the material evidence; these sources include documentary, hagiographical and literary texts, which provide information about cultural norms and the expectations of society. Set within the context of these sources, the evidence suggests that society both channelled women's creativity into textile art and idealised it. At the same time, as artists and patrons of ornamented textiles, noblewomen had creative control over the medium; embroidery became a field in which their works were noted and celebrated.     

‘Britishness’, Colonial Governance and Education: St Helenian Children in Colonial Natal in the 1870s

This article considers understandings of ‘Britishness’ in the Natal colony in the 1870s. Focusing on St Helenian children’s expulsion from ‘government’ schools that were ostensibly open to all racial groups, the article shows how competing definitions of race and ‘Britishness’ shaped the responses of colonial officials, settlers and the St Helenian community to the expulsion. The white settler population in Natal was concerned about St Helenian economic migrants’ inclusion in white, English society. In particular, the ambiguous racial status of St Helenians was seen as potentially harmful to white children. The focus on a group of recent incomers to the colony uncovers a process of racialisation unfolding in the context of migrations within the British Empire. The case highlights how movement and migration within the empire could bring these definitions of race and Britishness into conversation and conflict with each other.     

王夫之进步教育观论略

作为明清之季杰出的思想家,王夫之的主要贡献并不在教育方面,但他却有着丰富而进步的教育思想。尤其是他的重视对儿童进行早期教育、重视“情商”教育的思想,以及行先知后的知行观等,都极大地丰富了中国传统教育理论,并在今天仍然散发着它的理论光芒。     

Utopian Promise or Burdensome Responsibility? A Critical Analysis of the UK Government's Building Schools for the Future Policy

Abstract: This paper critically analyses a nationwide school‐building programme in England: Building Schools for the Future (BSF). It is argued that, between 2003 and 2010, the UK Government's policy guidance for BSF represented a (re)turn to utopian discourse in governmental policy‐making, mobilised in order to justify a massive programme of new school building in the UK. In doing so, BSF connected with the promise of three further discourses: school(‐children), community and architectural practice. It anticipated that new school buildings would instil transformative change—modernising English schooling, combating social exclusion and leaving an architectural “legacy”. However, it is argued that BSF constituted an allegorical utopia: whilst suggesting a “radical” vision for schooling and society, its ultimate effect was to preserve a conventional (neo‐liberal) model of schooling. The paper highlights the critical role that notions of utopia might have in negotiating—and challenging—promise‐laden mega‐building policies like BSF. In doing so, it develops recent geographical research on utopia, education and architecture.     

War Trauma and Alcoholism in the Early Writings of Charlotte and Branwell Brontë

During and after the Napoleonic Wars, there was an outpouring of military-based biographical writing never before seen in British history. Over 200 military memoirs were published either as standalone entities or in periodicals such as Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine and The United Service Journal. As a result, the experiences of ordinary soldiers were brought to the forefront of Britain’s public consciousness. Although many of these memoirs glorified war, a number revealed the psychological damage war inflicted on the British male population and explicitly exposed the horrors of combat to a domestic readership. Furthermore, this explosion of life writing also exposed a connection between suffering and alcoholism, consolidating trauma as a post-war, national problem. The Brontës, typically recognized as canonical, Victorian authors, first participated in this military-based literary movement. This article attempts to reposition and establish two of the siblings – Charlotte and Branwell – as significant post-war commentators. By focussing on their military reading, it will become clear how they vicariously processed and reimagined war trauma and addiction through their Glass Town and Angrian sagas. Not only will this article argue that the introduction of military biography into British society generated wide-scale recognition of war trauma, despite its absence within contemporary medical discourse, but it will also argue that the young Brontës’ literature is an important historical source for understanding and re-evaluating the public response to post-war military masculinity.     

试论清末民初大众媒体对女子学校教育的影响

清末至民初各种大众媒体关注女子解放问题,不仅全方位抨击当时为女子学校教育兴起造成困难的缠足风俗,帮助广大妇女解放双足,并积极报道西方女子的学校教育情况,大力提倡新式女学,为女子学校宣传助威,还利用舆论的力量逐步推进女子学校教育的合法化、正规化。大众媒体的宣传为女子教育的发展奠定了基础和铺平了道路,对女子学校的教育影响巨大而深远。     

The Authority of Age: Institutions for Childhood Development in China, 1895−1910

The structure of aged-based education and the science of childhood development were introduced to China in the last decades of the Qing dynasty. Drawing on period textbooks, journal articles, and school documents for women and children, this study argues that the theory of childhood development helped shape socialized play and citizenship training in new schools. These new institutions followed scientific insights about childhood development in terms of both physical and emotional growth. Educators hoped to found schools that would inculcate respect for political authority within the classroom, and administrators took unprecedented steps in documenting and regulating children. Schools not only became places for disseminating learning, but also centers for gathering information about children and their families, as well as about childhood itself. The production of knowledge and the institutionalization of schools for preschool children helped usher in new trends that denaturalized childrearing outside of the family domain.