ABSTRACT
We conclude Part II of the book just as Ros, Tahmin and the other young women in their group prepare to embark on further study or on their chosen profession. Some also have young children whom they are preparing for school learning. The time and energy they devote to this task would have astonished earlier generations. When Minnie, Aumie, Joy and Christine and the others in both our pre-and post-war generations were at school, no one expected parental participation in teaching academic knowledge. The only teaching assumed was to ensure that children came to school able to behave well and, in Rani’s words, ‘have the right attitude to learning’. In any case, for our pre-war Jewish children, school-teaching styles and materials for early literacy scarcely privileged fluent English speakers over those learning English as a second language; if anything, Jewish children were conscious that mastery of the Hebrew language and grammar from their religious classes gave them an extra learning resource upon which to draw.
