Benign Violence: Education in and beyond the Age of Reason

Ansgar Allen

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781137272850
• eBook ISBN: 9781137272867
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Administration

Education is a violent act, yet this violence is concealed by its good intent. Education presents itself as a distinctly improving, enabling practice. Even its most radical critics assume that education is, at core, an incontestable social good.

Setting education in its political context, this book, now in paperback, offers a history of good intentions, ranging from the birth of modern schooling and modern examination, to the rise (and fall) of meritocracy. In challenging all that is well-intentioned in education, it reveals how our educational commitments are always underwritten by violence. Our highest ideals have the lowest origins.

Seeking to unsettle a settled conscience, Benign Violence: Education in and beyond the Age of Reason is designed to disturb the reader. Education constitutes us as subjects; we owe our existence to its violent inscriptions. Those who refuse or rebel against our educational present must begin by objecting to the subjects we have become.

Notes

List of Figures

1.‘Whitely Woods Open Air School, Sheffield. Measuring a pupil, 1911’ (Turner, David. The Open Air School Movement in Sheffield. History of Education, 1972, 1(1). Reprinted by permission of the publisher, Taylor & Francis Ltd.).

2.‘Boys dressed in Hindu costume for Empire Day celebrations, children from Abbeydale Council School, 1906’ (Reprinted by permission of picturesheffield.com. Ref No: s02835).

3.‘Walter Harrison with his father’s horse and cart on the corner of Grimesthorpe Road/Earl Marshall Road with Grimesthorpe School in the background’ (Reprinted by permission of picturesheffield.com. Ref No: s15876).

4.‘Free Writing School, School Croft, Sheffield’ (Reprinted by permission of picturesheffield.com. Ref. No: s06568).

5.‘Interior of the Central School of the British & Foreign School Society, Borough Road’ (BFSS. Manual of the System of Primary Instruction. London: BFSS, 1839. Reprinted by permission of British & Foreign School Society Archive, Brunel University).

6.‘Positions of the Scholars’ (ibid. Reprinted by permission of British & Foreign School Society Archive, Brunel University).

7.‘Tinsley Church of England School, Bawtry Road, Tinsley, Sheffield’ (Reprinted by permission of picturesheffield.com. Ref. No: v01664).

8.‘Teacher Mr Wood and pupils; Boys School Classroom, St John’s School’ (Reprinted by permission of picturesheffield.com. Ref. No: u05913).

9.‘Western Road School, Western Road, Crookes, Sheffield’ (Reprinted by permission of picturesheffield.com. Ref. No: s06608).

10.‘Plate V. The fire-balloon’ (Feasey, Jesse Eaton. Outdoor School Work. Bath: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1919).

11.‘Plate II. Siphoning water over a wall’ (ibid.).

12.‘Standard Scheme of Descent’ (Galton, Francis. The Possible Improvement of the Human Breed under the Existing Conditions of Law and Sentiment. In: Essays in Eugenics. London: The Eugenics Education Society, 1909 [1901]).

13.(Reprinted by permission of Sheffield Archives: Acc. 2001/27)

14.(Reprinted by permission of Sheffield Archives: Acc. 2001/27)

15.(Reprinted by permission of Sheffield Archives: Acc. 2001/27)

16.Picture taken by the author.

17.(Reprinted by permission of Sheffield Archives: Acc. 2001/27)

18.‘Industrial Classification’ (Goddard, Henry. Feeble-Mindedness its Causes and Consequences. New York: Macmillan, 1914).

19.(Reprinted by permission of Sheffield Archives: Acc. 2001/27)

20.(Reprinted by permission of Sheffield Archives: Acc. 2001/27)

21.‘That’s the way to London’ (Feasey, Jessie Eaton. In the Garden. Bath: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1910).

22.‘Diagram of the normal curve of distribution of ability’ (Ministry of Education. Scope and Standards of the Certificate of Secondary Education, 1963, p. 4).

23.‘Feeling the direction of the wind with a wet finger’ (Feasey, Jessie Eaton. Garden and Playground Nature Study. Bath: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1911).

24.(Reprinted by permission of Sheffield Archives: Acc. 2001/27)

25.‘Mad hatters Tea Party, High Wincobank Council School. Miss M. Hemmingfield as Alice’ (Reprinted by permission of picturesheffield.com. Ref. No: s02920).

26.‘Singing songs out of doors’ (Feasey. Outdoor School Work).

Preface

1.Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy. London: Penguin, 2003 [1872], p. 97.

2.These arguments draw from: Allen, Ansgar. The solitary academic: a dying breed. openDemocracy – OurKin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• I Bodies
• II Populations
• III Meritocracies
• Notes
• Index