Action Research: Critical Evaluation of Superstructures

This is the final installment of the first phase of an action research project interrogating the activities of administrative structures (like the Outcomes Star) in the lives of people who lack agency in the UK cultural context.  As a project it has triggered an investigation of administrative systems with a particular view to asking what a healthy bureaucracy looks like, and also what do the deadweight costs of dysfunctional bureaucracy look like. Read more…

The Children’s Sheriff and the First Industrial Ragged Schools by D. H. Webster

“On the last night of 1839 William Watson wrote in his diary, ‘What have I done for my fellow men? Nothing! Nothing!’, Nothing! What can I do? What does He will that I do? That I love Him with all my strength and might – and my neighbour as myself. How can I love the Father and not the child? I must no longer live for myself but for His little ones. Faith without works is dead.” [1. M.Angus, Sheriff Watson of Aberdeen. 1913, p.58.]

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Origins Of The Ragged Schools: John Pounds, The Kind Old Cobbler by D. H. Webster

The precise role of John Pounds in the history of the Ragged School Movement is obscure. His biographer presents him as the founder of the ragged schools (1. H. Hawkes, The Recollections of John Pounds. 1884, p.295). It was certainly an opinion held by some within a few years of his death (2. E.G. York Herald, 4 May, 1850. ’The origin of this movement commenced with one very humble in life (John Pounds).’ Report of a speech made by the Rev. Canon Trevor). Read more…

The Ragged School Movement and the Education of the Poor in the Nineteenth Century

This is the work of D.H. Webster who wrote a thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of the University of Leicester, 1973. It remains an important historical document and analysis of the Ragged School and free education movement in Britain. It will be reproduced and published verbatim in installments for educational purposes to facilitate review and discussion about education. This post is the first part of the thesis where the references have been reproduced inline within the text.

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