This is a past event
RIISS Research Seminar
In recent years historians of education have critiqued the tendency to focus on Scotland alone – an approach, they have argued, that neglects the broader context in which Scottish schools operated (Anderson and Wallace, 2015; McDermid, 2015). The Scottish-English border has proven particularly impermeable to scholars of the ragged school movement. Providing a gratuitous education to impoverished children prior to the Education Acts, ragged schools operated in industrial towns and cities across Britain. England is well-represented in scholarship in the field – with London receiving particular attention (Bradley, 1976; Clark, 1969; Heasman, 1963). For Kathleen Heasman, London’s Ragged School Union represents the movement’s core and those outside of the metropolis are largely peripheral. Further, E.A.G. Clark (1969) asserts that regional variations in practice undermine any claim that Scottish institutions were part of a broader ragged school mission. In excluding Scottish schools from their analysis, historians have downplayed the scope and significance of these institutions. Drawing on the underused archives of Scotland’s ragged schools, together with promotional literature and reports of public meetings, this paper opens a conversation on the ideological, financial, and practical networks that intertwined Scottish and English ragged schools. More broadly, it argues that the hard distinction separating ragged schools north and south of the border in current scholarship is more of a reflection of current historical trends and the status of Scottish history than of the beliefs and practices of ragged school advocates in either nation.
Dr Laura Mair is the Mary R. S. Creese Lecturer in Modern Scottish History at the University of Aberdeen. She was previously based at the University of Edinburgh, where she held a variety of teaching, research, and impact-related posts. Her first monograph, Religion and Relationships in Ragged Schools: An Intimate History of Educating the Poor was published by Routledge in 2019. She is currently editing a short monograph on the Scottish ragged schools, which will appear in Brill's Research Perspective Series on Religion and Education. In future research, Laura plans to focus on evangelical initiatives intended for disabled children in nineteenth and twentieth century Scotland.
- Speaker
- Dr Laura Mair
- Hosted by
- Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies
- Venue
- Humanity Manse Seminar Room
- Contact
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For further information, please contact Professor Michael Brown (m.brown@abdn.ac.uk)