ABSTRACT
This extract, comprising two passages from the 1937 Handbook of Suggestions, summarizes the rationale for infant and junior school education which was part of ‘official’ thinking immediately prior to the Second World War and which was a major influence on the development of primary education following the 1944 Education Act (pp. 34-6). The passage on the infant school has a confident buoyant tone; the one on the junior school is rather more tentative, though still optimistic and forward-looking. The extract neatly embodies many of the tensions (some would say ‘contradictions’) which have characterized primary education (especially at the junior stage) since its inception: the tensions between what children are interested in and what adults judge to be of ‘permanent value’, between education for the here-and-now and ‘preparation for the years beyond’, between ‘freedom’ and ‘discipline’, and between teachers taking advantage of children’s ‘dominant interests’ and ‘planning a systematic course of activity’ for their pupils. The attempted resolution of such tensions (or contradictions) has had, and continues to have, both positive and negative consequences; it has contributed to both the fascination and the frustration involved in educating children in primary schools.
