The countryside as educator: schools, rurality and citizenship in inter-war Wales

This paper examines the ways in which the educational system in inter-war Wales reflected wider debates about national identity, rurality and citizenship. It begins by outlining the role of education in the “rebirth” of Wales at the end of the nineteenth century, and the emergence of the central figure of O. M. Edwards. It then traces his legacy into the inter-war period and the work of the Welsh department of the Board of Education and its permanent secretary Alfred Davies. Themes of nature and the rural, citizenship and Welshness are examined in the context of the Board's Scheme for the Collection of Rural Lore in Schools. These educational debates are linked to others within Welsh youth movements likeUrdd Gobaith Cymru, academic geography (especially the work of H. J. Fleure), and the emerging Welsh nationalist movement. The paper ends by noting the contested role of education in Welshness.