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Examinations as Cultural Capital for the Victorian Schoolgirl: ‘thinking’ with Bourdieu

2007; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 16; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09612020601048829

1747-583X

Andrea Jacobs,

Diverse Music Education Insights

Abstract By focusing on the second half of the nineteenth century, the article will demonstrate that girls' success in public examinations has a long history. It will highlight that opportunities for girls to take such examinations were limited by Victorian perceptions of what might be acceptable for their gender and, more especially, by their social class. The data presented in the article is analysed using a Bourdieusian framework. Notes [1] Particularly Pierre Bourdieu (2001) Masculine Domination (Cambridge: Polity Press). [2] See Sara Delamont (1989) Knowledgeable Women: structuralism and the reproduction of elites (London and New York: Routledge); Toril Moi (1999) What is a Woman? And Other Essays (Oxford: University Press); Diane Reay (1998) Bourdieu and Cultural Reproduction: mothers' involvement in their children's primary schooling, in Michael Grenfell & David James (Eds) Bourdieu and Education: acts of practical theory (London: Falmer Press); Jane Martin (2003) Shena D Simon and English Education Policy: inside/out, History of Education, 32(5), pp. 477–494. [3] See, for example, Joanne Bourke (1998) Housewifery in Working‐Class England 1860–1914, in Pamela Sharpe (Ed.) Women's Work: the English experience (London: Arnold), pp. 332–359. [4] Grenfell & James (Eds), Bourdieu and Education, p. 155. [5] Delamont, Knowledgeable Women, p. 139. [6] Amanda Vickery (1998) Golden Age to Separate Spheres? A Review of the Categories and Chronology of English Women's History, in Sharpe (Ed.), Women's Work, pp. 294–331. [7] Martha Vicinus (1977) (Ed.) A Widening Sphere: changing roles of Victorian women (London: Methuen), p. ix [8] See especially Joan Burstyn (1980) Victorian Education and the Ideal of Womanhood (London: Croom Helm). [9] Joan Burstyn (1977) Women's Education in England during the Nineteenth Century: a review of the literature, 1970–1976, History of Education, 6(1), p. 13; also Kathryn Gleadle (2001) British Women in the Nineteenth Century (Basingstoke: Palgrave). [10] These include Margaret Bryant (1979) The Unexpected Revolution (University of London); Sheila Fletcher (1980) Feminists and Bureaucrats (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press); Carol Dyhouse (1981) Girls Growing up in Late Victorian and Edwardian England (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul); Joyce Sanders Pedersen (1987) The Reform of Girls' Secondary and Higher Education in Victorian England (New York and London: Garland). [11] Harriet Martineau (1861) What Women are Educated For, in G. G. Yates (Ed.) Harriet Martineau on Women (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press), p. 100. [12] Meg Gomersall (1997) Working‐Class Girls in Nineteenth Century England (Basingstoke: Macmillan), p. 27. [13] Felicity Hunt (Ed.) (1987) Lessons for Life: the schooling of girls and women, 1850–1950 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell), p. xii. [14] Carol Dyhouse (1976) Social Darwinistic Ideas and the Development of Women's Education in England, 1880–1920, History of Education, 5(1) pp. 41–58; C. Dyhouse (1977) Good Wives and Little Mothers: social anxieties and the schoolgirls' curriculum, 1890–1920, Oxford Review of Education, 3(1), pp. 21–33. [15] Sara Delamont (1978) The Contradiction in Ladies' Education, in S. Delamont & L. Duffin (Eds) The 19th Century Woman: her cultural and physical world (London: Croom Helm), pp. 134–163; Sara Delamont (1978) The Domestic Ideology and Women's Education, in Delamont & Duffin (Eds) The 19th Century Woman, pp. 164–187. [16] Maria Tamboukou (2003) Women, Education and the Self: a Foucauldian perspective (London: Palgrave), p.101. [17] Alice Zimmern (1898) The Renaissance of Girls' Education (London: A. D. Innes & Company), p. 51. [18] See especially, John Roach (1971) Public Examinations in England 1850–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) and Elizabeth Crawford (2002) Enterprising Women: the Garretts and their circle (London: Francis Boutle). [19] See Andrea Jacobs (2003) Girls and Examinations 1860–1902 (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Southampton). [20] Ibid. [21] See especially, Frank Smith (1931) A History of English Elementary Education (London: University of London Press); Pamela Horn (1989) The Victorian and Edwardian Schoolchild (Gloucester: Alan Sutton). [22] Diane Reay, Madeleine Arnot, Miriam David, John Evans & David James (Eds) Pierre Bourdieu's Sociology of Education: the theory of practice and the practice of theory, British Journal of Sociology in Education, 25 (4), p. 411. [23] Bourdieu, Masculine Domination, p. 34. [24] Pierre Bourdieu (1998) Practical Reason on the Theory of Action (Cambridge: Polity Press), p. 57. [25] Moi, What is a Woman? and Other Essays, p. 281. [26] Bourdieu, Masculine Domination, Prelude. [27] Ibid., p. 8. [28] David Swartz (1997) Culture and Power: the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), p. 154. [29] Pierre Bourdieu & Loic Wacquant (1992) An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Cambridge: Polity Press), p. 33. [30] Randall Collins (1979) The Credential Society (New York: Academic Press), p. 9. [31] Other theorists including Hegel, Husserl, Weber and Durkheim have used the term. [32] Richard Jenkins (1992) Pierre Bourdieu (London: Routledge), p. 18. [33] Jen Webb, Tony Schirato & Geoff Donaher (2002) Understanding Bourdieu (London: Sage). [34] Bourdieu & Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, p. 133. [35] Ibid., p. 135. [36] See Pierre Bourdieu (2000) Pascalian Meditations (Cambridge: Polity Press), p. 161. [37] Pierre Bourdieu, in Pierre Bourdieu & Jean‐Claude Passeron (1990) Reproduction: in education, society and culture (2nd edn with new introduction, 1st edn published 1977) (London: Sage), pp. 42–45. [38] Although, as Nicola Pullin and Stephanie Spencer suggest, 'The measurement of "success" in education was not always a simple matter of passing the right examinations; it involved negotiating a myriad of expectations from family and society'. Nicola Pullin & Stephanie Spencer (2004) Introduction, Women's History Review, 13(3), p. 342. [39] This was only the second time the examinations were available to female candidates. [40] Jane Miller, Clara Collet's Dissenting Inheritance and the Education of Women in M. Hilton & P. Hirsch (Eds) (2000) Practical Visionaries: women, education and social progress 1790–1930 (Harlow: Pearson Education), pp. 116–118. [41] Sara Burstall (1933) Retrospect and Prospect (London: Longman, Green & Co.) [42] For further discussion of the feminisation of teaching, see especially Frances Widdowson (1980) Going up into the Next Class (London: Women's Research and Resource Centre Publications); Jane Miller (1996) School for Women (London: Virago). [43] These were later referred to as the 'Higher Locals'. [44] See Rita McWilliam‐Tullberg, Women and Degrees at Cambridge University 1862–1897, in Vicinus (Ed.), A Widening Sphere, pp.117–145. For an account of female graduates who joined the medical profession, see especially Carol Dyhouse (1998) Driving Ambitions: women in pursuit of a medical education, 1890–1939, Women's History Review, 7(3), pp. 321–341. [45] Mildred Spencer, Evolution of the High‐School Mistress, Educational Times, November 1897, p. 414. [46] See Christina de Bellaigue (2001) The Development of Teaching as a Profession for Women before 1870, The Historical Journal, 44(4), pp. 963–988. [47] Delamont, Knowledgeable Women, p. 136. [48] Report issued by the Schools Inquiry Commission on the Education of Girls reprinted with the sanction of Her Majesty's Commissioners with extracts from the evidence and a preface by D. Beale, Principal of the Ladies' College, Cheltenham (1869) (London: David Nutt), p. 232. [49] Report of Schools Inquiry Commission, Report Volume 1, p. 546. [50] Miss Allen Olney had been educated abroad, but had passed the Cambridge Higher Local. She had served at the GPDSC high schools in Blackheath, Exeter and Notting Hill before founding her own school. [51] Bryce Commission, Volume 3, Q9436. [52] Ibid., Volume 6, p. 294. [53] Ibid., p. 300. [54] Janet Howarth (1985) Girls' Secondary Schools, 1880–1914, Oxford Review of Education, 11(1), p. 64. See also Stephanie Spencer (2000) Advice and Ambition in a Girls' Public Day School: the case of Sutton High School, 1884–1924, Women's History Review, 9(1), pp. 76–77. [55] Bourdieu & Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, p. 130. [56] Brian Simon (1960) Studies in the History of Education, 1780–1870 (London: Lawrence & Wishart), p. 349. [57] Dyhouse, Girls Growing up in late Victorian and Edwardian England, p. 89. Diana St John, citing Carol Dyhouse, Catherine Manthorpe and Annemarie Turnbull, highlights the continuing emphasis on domestic instruction in the early years of the twentieth century. Diana E. St John (1994) Educate or Domesticate?: early twentieth century pressures on older girls in elementary schools, Women's History Review, 3(2), p. 192. [58] M. Vlaeminke (2000) The English Higher Grade Schools: a lost opportunity (London: Woburn Press); W. Robinson (1993) Pupil Teachers: the Achilles heel of higher grade girls' schools, 1882–1904, History of Education, 22(3) pp. 241–252. [59] Bryce Commission, Volume 1, 40/52–53. [60] David Wardle (1971) Education and Society in Nineteenth‐Century Nottingham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 93. [61] Vlaeminke, The English Higher Grade Schools, p. 155. [62] Jean Russell‐Gebbett (1994) High Pavement School Science 1885–1905: struggle and survival, History of Education Society Bulletin, 54, p. 28. [63] Wardle, Education and Society in Nineteenth‐Century Nottingham, pp. 131–133. [64] Public Record Office Ed.20/116, letter in file dated November, 1901. [65] Zimmern, The Renaissance of Girls' Education, p. 1. [66] Stuart Maclure (1970) One Hundred Years of London Education (London: Penguin Press), p. 44. [67] The Bryce Commissioners noted that this was particularly true of parents in Birmingham, Volume 7, p. 105. [68] See Joyce Goodman (1997) Constructing Contradiction: the power and powerlessness of women in the giving and taking of evidence in the Bryce Commission 1895, History of Education, 26(3) pp. 287–307. [69] Records of Association of Headmistresses, MSS 188/11/1, p. 84. [70] Vlaeminke, The English Higher Grade Schools, pp. 157–158. [71] Goodman, 'Constructing Contradiction'. [72] Bryce Commission, Volume 3, Q. 7945, 7946. [73] Bryce Commission, Volume 7, p. 108. [74] In Auberon Herbert (Ed.) (1889) The Sacrifice of Education to Examination: letters from 'all sorts and conditions of men' (London: Williams & Norgate), pp. 96–97. [75] See Widdowson, Going up into the next Class. [76] These women were already used to being in situations where their class position was somewhat ambiguous; where there might be considerable close contact with workers and their children: and where they would be both in a position of power and privilege and of powerlessness at the same time. Dina Copelman (1996) London's Women Teachers: gender, class and feminism (London and New York: Routledge), p. 43. Additional informationNotes on contributorsAndrea JacobsAndrea Jacobs is a Research Fellow at the University of Winchester. She completed her PhD on the subject of 'Girls and Examinations 1860–1902', in 2003. Other work from the thesis has been published in the Journal of Education Administration and History and Histoire de l'Education. She is a co‐founder of the Centre for the History of Women's Education.