Radical Social Pedagogy in the UK?

Historical Roots

Pat PetrieCentre for Understanding

Social Pedagogy

Social Pedagogy UK

18 June 2010

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• Social pedagogy• Apply concept of social pedagogy to four

British social activists, working from the early 19th Century and into the 20th Century–Working with different populations–With diverse values and aims– In order to............................................?

Social Pedagogy• A means by which social issues are addressed by

broadly educational means• Confronting and critiquing educational measures

and the society which produces them

Why

• We have our own pedagogical thinkers as well as a history of drawing on philosophers and educationists from other countries.

• There is much in our traditions - social work, education, or youth and community work - that chimes with the more radical, emancipatory strands in European social pedagogy.  

Social pedagogyFrom the very beginning, the social pedagogical perspective

was based on attempts to find educational solutions to social problems. Thus, the educationists who paid attention to poverty and other forms of social distress, for example, Juan Luis Vives, Johann Amos Comenius, Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, Friedrich Fröbel, from the pedagogical point of view and without using the term ‘social pedagogy’, are pioneers of the social pedagogical perspective.

Hämäläinen, 2003 (emphasis supplied)

They were a boy and a girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged scowling, wolfish; … where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of old age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. … No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and so dread… "Spirit! Are they yours?" Scrooge could say no more."They are man's," said the Spirit … This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy

Charles Dickens 

Social Pedagogic measures are value based• Conservative• Emanicipatory• Socialist• Religious• Oppressive• Eutopian• Facistic• Rational• Sexist......

Three contrasting examples of social pedagogy from the 19th Century

• Robert Owen (1771-1858) – Enlightened reform• Thomas Barnardo (1845-1905) – Evangelical philanthropy• Emmeline Pethick 1867 - 1954 & Mary Neal 1860 – 1944

– Socialist empowerment

Barnardo’s residential homes

• A cottage home system – advocated by Joseph Fletcher, England -

1851–Wichern’s Rauhe Haus in Hamburg, 1876–de Metz, juvenile offenders homes in

Mettrai, France–Mrs Meredith’s homes in England already

established

Evangelical

'There family life and family love might be reproduced and gentle modest ways would be made possible in the retirement of the little cottage with its four or five rooms and under the influences of godly women'

Barnardo and Marchant, 1907

The ‘ideal’ working class: Home, work and religion

For girls a family life with a mother and training in ‘all the feminine arts’ mending, cleaning, cooking

For boys learning a trade, overseen by a ‘Godly brother’ and his wife (also cleaned and cooked)

The 3 Rs and religion

Robert Owen – Socialist and Eutopian • Child of the enlightenment: perfecting' human beings and

society• Children can be trained to acquire "any language,

sentiments, belief or bodily habits and manners, not contrary to human nature“

• Poor people the prime target – 'The characters of these persons are now permitted to

be very generally formed without proper guidance or direction, and, in many cases, under circumstances which directly impel them to a course of extreme vice and misery'.

A wide vision• Education/ pedagogy had a community context that could

be replicated throughout all communities, with the overall aim of the reorganization and reform of society.

• Based on enlightenment rationality

New Lanark• Educational facilities for children and adults• Reorganizing working practices and conditions • Better housing and living conditions • A community context that could be replicated

throughout all communities, with the overall aim of the reorganization and reform of society

An Owen School Constitution1. Every pupil shall be encouraged to express his or her

opinion.

2. No creed or dogma shall be imposed upon any.

3. Admitted facts alone shall be placed before the pupils, from which they shall be allowed it to draw their own conclusions.

4. No distinction what ever shall exist; but all be treated with equal kindness.

5. Neither praise nor blame, merit nor demerit, rewards nor punishments, shall be awarded to any: kindness and love to be the only ruling powers.

6. Both sexes shall have equal opportunities of acquiring useful knowledge.

Socialist philanthropists - Emmeline Pethick & Mary Neal

When my friend Mary Neal started the club ...it was with the first idea of making the club the home, where all who came would find welcome and sympathy and companionship as well as interest and amusement... We wanted to put as much happiness as we could into the two hours spent together, and we hoped to build up in the club human relationships that would influence and uplift the rest of their life.

The ‘gospel of socialism’: ‘rebels against the system that decreed that those who did the hard and unpleasant work of the world should be shut out from any enjoyment of the wealth which they wrought with their hands…”

It became our business to study the industrial question as it affected the girls' employments, the hours, the wages, and the conditions. And we had also to give them a conscious part to take in the battle that is being fought for the workers, and will not be won until it is loyally fought by the workers as well (Pethick 1898: 104).

A model garment factory

Social pedagogy more than addressing social issues by means of education

[social pedagogy] is not just a method to be imported, but also a rich source of inspiration/pedagogy critical reflection on the role that pedagogical institutions play in our society.

• (Cousée, et al., 2008, p. 11)

MA: Child Welfare Pedagogues (Norway)• ‘… social and health problems should be seen in the social

context of politics and economics’• Students will … ‘learn how social workers and disability

social workers, in negotiation with both service users and members of other occupations, can contribute towards societal and community change’

• Principles:– respect for life’s unconditional worth– respect for the person’s inherent worth– solidarity with the socially disadvantaged’

Stephens (2010)

Radical Social Pedagogy in the UK?

Historical Roots

Pat PetrieCentre for Understanding

Social Pedagogy

Social Pedagogy UK

18 June 2010

Home  |   News  |   About  |   Archive  |   Learning  |   Artists & Projects  |   Contacts Timeline     1860-1888   1888-1895   1895-1905   1905-1914   1914-1918   1918-1925   1925-1937   1937-1944   1944-1989   1989-2014