ABSTRACT
This chapter provides some contours to a history of disaffection in schooling and confirms that disaffection in schools is not a transient phenomenon and has deeper roots than is generally acknowledged. The persistence and durability of disaffection among working class pupils in school means that we need to gain not only a better historical perspective, but also a richer and more dynamic realisation, that it is a phenomenon that has spanned all social classes in England. Therefore social class is not a new dimension to disaffection within education but the old processes are being played out in new educational contexts. The English Journal of Education aimed to provide information and stimulate discussion into the problem of pupil disaffection which we see in the private diary of the master of a London Ragged School. Although much research on disaffection has concerned itself with boys, Davies reports how young women were condemned as 'vixens, viragoes and Amazons' by the local press.
