ABSTRACT
This is an extract from a third report issued by the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education. The text is taken from the Committee’s discussion of the infant school, described in Simon’s essay as ‘a unique feature of the English educational system’ (p. 10). Liberal romanticism has always flourished in infant education to a greater extent than elsewhere; its influence can be clearly discerned in the text: ‘It is the special function of the infant school to provide for the educational needs of the years of transition that separate babyhood from childhood.’ ‘Our main concern must be to supply children between the ages of five and seven plus with what is essential for their healthy growth.’ ‘It is through opportunities for further experience and experiment that growth will be best be fostered in the infant school.’ The 1933 Report did much to confirm liberal romanticism as the accepted orthodoxy of English infant education.
