Education and the Working-Class Girl of the 1970s: Reconstructing the Theoretical Field of Carolyn Steedman's 'The Tidy House'

摘要

This article asks historians of education to think about the influences that we bring to bear on our work. It uses, as an example, Carolyn Steedman's book 'The Tidy House: Little Girls Writing' (1982). 'The Tidy House' set out to interpret a short story written by three primary school girls in Britain in 1976. Steedman contextualised this source against the backdrop of modern children's writing and childhood experience in nineteenth and twentieth-century Britain. Viewing the book itself as a source, this article explores the intellectual background (the 'theoretical field') that gave its ideas meaning. This involves looking at the historiographical surroundings of the author, such as Marxism and feminism, in a wider lens. It also entails a consideration of how 'The Tidy House' relates to educational thought today – as well as to key issues tackled by some of the most celebrated historians of education in the last forty years.