Social History for ‘Ordinary’ School Pupils

Abstract

Chapters 1 and 2 make up Part I of this book, which explains how the ‘history of everyday life’ developed and why it had such purchase in mid-twentieth-century British society. This chapter is about the theory and practice of teaching social history in schools between the 1920s and the 1960s. It explains the pedagogical framework in which ordinary consumers of history came to be conceptualized in the mid-twentieth century. It is argued that social history in schools was increasingly associated with average ability and younger pupils after 1918. Through mass education, the ‘history of everyday life’, with its premium on local settings, practical skills, emotions, and the visual, became the type of history prescribed for the ordinary, ‘modern’ pupil.