English Public Schools Research Articles

British Cultural Influence and Japan: Elizabeth Phillips Hughes's Visit for Educational Research in 1901–1902

The ideal of Japanese womanhood was created according to an educational ideology suited to a modern nation state. One regularly used concept was ‘ryōsaikenbo’, a mixed ideology, drawing together idealised images of the British lady and traditional Japanese women. Another imitated concept was Japanese athleticism called new Bushidō influenced by British boys' public school morality during the era of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. However, there was a strong sense of Japanese cultural nationalism that grew in reaction to the threat of foreign enemies and the hardship of two wars, the Sino-Japanese War, 1894–1895, and the Russo-Japanese War, 1904–1905. This created a potential problem. Despite an occidental veneer, those new values were combined with traditional Japanese religion. Elizabeth Phillips Hughes' articles published in Japan during 1901 and 1902 reflect this process of inventing a tradition of both Japanese women's and men's ideal that was originally influenced by the values of the British middle class and the fact that early feminism was trapped within imperialistic ideology. Eventually, girls' physical exercises were recommended as long as they did not damage femininity. Less feminine sports took popular underground paths. Girls' physical exercises flourished after the First World War in Britain and the Second World War in Japan.

The Argonauts of postcolonial modernity: elite Barbadian schools in globalising circumstances

In her book, Neoliberalism as Exception, Aihwa Ong usefully observes that the North American university has been dirempted from it historical role of preparing young people for democratic citizenship. It has instead, according to Ong, become the great global marketplace and grand bazaar for international students' ambitions. In what follows, we draw on Ong's insights. Specifically, we report on a global ethnographic study that looks at the way in which six form students (whom we are calling the ‘Argonauts’) in two Barbadian elite schools – Old Cloisters and Ardent Arbors – are orienting themselves to the future in a moment of aggressive recruiting by North American universities. These developments bring students' global imaginations into profound tension with historical narratives and traditions linking these schools to England. This new context is epitomised by the transactions between the students and international college representatives at an annual international college fair that brings North American recruiters to the island in search of academic talent. We document this encounter at some length, pointing to the collision between the students' roiling ambitions and the schools' deep sense of heritage and tradition linked to the metropolitan paradigm of British public school traditions.

Old elite schools, history and the construction of a new imaginary

Elite schools established in the nineteenth century in the image of British public schools now face intense competition from newly established elite schools. Located within the broader research project that this special issue discusses, this paper examines some of the ways in which an old elite school in India has sought to utilise is history to strategically re-position itself within the emerging global market of elite schools. The paper notes that the historical narrative the school has constructed of its traditions over the decades has not been static, but has changed over the years, in line with their understanding of the shifting historical forces and prevailing political conditions. In the current globalising circumstances, it continues to attach considerable significance to its traditions, often as a marker of distinction. However, it simultaneously emphasises its capacity to prepare its students to meet the emerging demands of global modernity. The paper shows how the school views these two aspects of its strategic re-positioning as inextricably linked.

The ‘games playing ethos’ in Australian Independent Girls' Schools: from origins to the National Curriculum

This paper traces the history of sport in Australian Independent Girls' Schools (IGS) from its origins until the proposed introduction of the National Curriculum in 2014. In particular, the paper focuses on the role played by the Girls' Secondary School Sports Union and its successor the Independent Girls' School Sport Association to coordinate inter-school sporting exchanges. While there have been a number of studies that have documented the history of sport in Australian Independent Boys' Schools, there has been little equivalent scholarly interest in the role of sport in Australian IGS. This paper demonstrates that sport loomed large in IGS and became central to the education of middle-class girls in Australia. Modelled after the English Public Schools that had adopted the educational ideology of the ‘games playing ethos’, Australian IGS used sport to create a female public space.

The Commemoration of the South African War (1899–1902) in British Public Schools

Mass public commemoration of war dead in Britain is often held to be a twentiethcentury phenomenon, with its genesis in the Great War. However, the war memorial movement in the aftermath of the South African War (1899–1902) foreshadowed that of the Great War and acted as a blueprint for later commemorative activity. At the forefront of this movement were the nation’s great public schools. The memorialization process provided these institutions with the opportunity to mold the memory of their alumni’s war service to reaffirm the validity of their underlying principles and ethos. As debates over the form that Canterbury’s memorial to the fallen of the Great War should take rumbled on into 1919, the chairman of the city’s memorial committee, H. A. Wace, made a direct comparison with Britain’s last imperial war to emphasize the size of the task he and his fellow committee members faced. The municipal authorities had, he reminded a gathering of civic dignitaries, “erected a memorial in Dane John Gardens in commemoration of those who fell in the Boer War. That was an important event, but, great as it was, it was small in comparison to the Great War.” Equally aware of the importance of the duty with which the committee members had been entrusted, the mayor of Canterbury, R. A. Bremner, was uncertain that the South African War memorial would serve as a useful blueprint for their work. “Very few people,” he pointed out to Wace, “now took the trouble to find out what the Dane John statue stood for; they said ‘What is that soldier for?’” 1 The implication inherent in this exchange, that the South African War memorial movement would be eclipsed by the mass commemorative activity of the First World War,

Sports and games in colonial Singapore: 1819–1867

The first 50 years of colonialism in Singapore (beginning in 1819) provided a foundation for the spread of team games that occurred in the second half of the century. The pursuit of athleticism and the games ethic, associated with activities emerging from British Public Schools, would dominate the later sports scene in Singapore. With the added necessity of ensuring health and fitness to combat the tropical environment, games were gradually introduced to other sectors of the predominantly migrant population. This article outlines the evolution of sport (often termed ‘amusements’ by the British settlers) within the context of rule by the British East India Company. Individual games and recreational pursuits were the rule of the day. The small British and European contingent brought the legacy of country games and traditional sport with them, meaning horse racing, hunting, shooting and to a lesser degree fishing. Not surprisingly sailing proved to be the first systematically organized outdoor activity. Indoor games such as billiards and chess also prevailed. The first organized open-air game was probably fives – a relative of rackets and squash. Some indigenous games were present, notably ‘sepak raga’ played in a circle form (bulatan). The first sports organized for the general population took place during the New Year festivities, when land and sea sports provided a rare occasion for the people to participate in boisterous fun. The first clubs of any standing emerged in 1826 the Singapore Yacht Club, in 1842 the Sporting Club and in 1852 the Singapore Cricket Club. Association football had yet to be codified in England, so any games of that sort may have included elements of the handling game that was to become rugby. Racket games such as lawn tennis would be introduced in the 1870s. The establishment of modern sports to Singapore can be linked to the early and middle periods of the nineteenth century and as such it would appear that Singapore (along with settlements such as Penang) was a pioneering location for sport in South-East Asia.

Book Review. Tozer, M. (2012). Physical education and sport in independent schools. John Catt Educational ISBN: 978 1 908095 442 (299 pages)

British physical education has influenced physical education in parts of the world that are former British colonies and Malcolm Tozer’s edited monography, Physical education and sport in independent schools, provides a context for those of us working in physical education in one of those former colonies. The book comprises a wide range of contributions (34 in all from 36 authors) about physical education and sport in British public schools. The content is clustered into four main sections plus an appendix. Generally the authors are writing from a personal perspective and several of the short essays are either abridged life histories or case studies; the editor has established their credibility in short profiles which follow the Foreward. The general purpose of the book is developed the Introduction wherein it is argued that the role of sport in British society has its foundations in school sport and physical education and that athletes in independent schools today are international sports stars of the future. (Abstract taken from the first part of document)

Secondary Matters: Textbooks and the Making of Physics in Nineteenth-Century France and England

Concerning national education in England, it is like with all the other institutions in this country: at first sight it does not appear as a system, as the logical development of an idea, of a preconceived plan, but as the odd product of several forces which are diverse and often opposed; it is in appearance a purely fortuitous set of traditions, of more or less reasoned uses, local improvements, audacious or timid innovations, all together abandoned to individual initiative, in a complete abstention of public authority. It is a city built without any given alignment, where houses are randomly placed and capriciously moulded.Jacques Demogeot and Henri Montucci, 18681A very good indication of the progress the teaching of science is making in our schools and elsewhere is the rapidity with which edition after edition of Ganot's Physics is called for and published.Anon., Leeds Mercury, 18752In 1 866, in the context of educational reforms in France, Jacques Demogeot and Henri Montucci were commissioned by the French government a report on British secondary and higher education. Commissioners were also sent to other countries, including Germany, Belgium and Holland, following a common practice in nineteenth-century educational reforms which heavily drew on international comparisons for the preparation of national policies. Demogeot and Montucci published their report subsequently as a book, which was also widely read in Britain.3 Their opening paragraph, included at the heading of this paper, seems to indicate a major incongruence between French and British education.The two national case studies presented in this paper have conventionally been considered as representing essentially antagonistic models of educational development. This thought, which precedes Demogeot and Montucci and is still deeply grounded in contemporary French and English culture, has shaped scholarship on the development of science education in these countries. While French historians have stressed the role of national structures of formal education and state intervention, historians of English science have tended to focus on the role of voluntarism, informal education, autodidacticism and market forces.4However, Demogeot and Montucci' s perspective was biased by their (otherwise reasonable) aim of finding in England objects and patterns which could be compared with their experience in the French educational terrain.5 Being both teachers in a major lycee in Paris, the objects they found more likely to develop comparisons with were the English public schools. Their focus on public schools was in fact in accordance with that of the British government, which shortly before Demogeot and Montucci's visit to England, had commissioned a report on this type of educational establishment (the Clarendon Commission report), which also made frequent comparative reference to French lycees.6In spite of their unpromising opening, the two French professors developed a detailed account of English education, based both on their readings and their visits to schools. Their focus was traditional public schools. Only one third of their report on the English context was devoted to other types of schools. As we will see, for this reason, it gave less prominence to science than to the teaching of other subjects. Still, it established significant parallelisms between science education in French lycees and in a range of new schools which in the previous decades had been developing in England.Indeed, in the second quotation opening this paper we find that, in spite of the potential antagonisms between French and English education, a certain level of congruence had to exist in the teaching of science in both countries. Ganot's Physics was the translation into English of a textbook by Adolphe Ganot, a French private teacher whose work as a textbook author had been favoured by the boost in science education promoted by government reforms in France since the 1850s. …

Conformity Confronted and Orthodoxy Outraged: The Loom of Youth – Succès de Scandale? In Search of a Wider Reality

By the Edwardian era the celebrated English Public School System of private schools for the privileged, revitalised and reinvigorated in the wake of triumphant imperial expansion, was widely considered to be the source of imperial control, stability and morality: in short, for many the reason for imperial success. The schools were thought to be cultural conveyor belts with the games fields as factories for the production of a robust, confident and moral masculinity. By the time of the Great War paeans to their virtues and values echoed throughout the Empire. Then in 1917 a former public schoolboy published an indictment of the system. The novel was The Loom of Youth and the author Alec Waugh. His exposure of the system was viewed by some as a succès de scandale. It confronted complacent conformity and outraged embedded orthodoxy. For ‘homagers’ social blasphemy had been committed. Their response was extraordinary; a literary volcanic eruption. Their reviews were shocked, abrasive and damning; collectively a verbal flagellation of an unredeemable social sinner; a stark revelation of class defensiveness, cultural myopia and blinkered bias; an unwitting self-condemnatory commentary. However, this was not the whole story! Many reviews were congratulatory, laudatory and supportive. These will now be given long-delayed prominence.

Developing a school based model for optimising the professional development of Canadian primary school teachers

The purpose of this study was to develop a school based model for optimizing the professional development of Canadian primary school teachers. This study focused on the role of the school principal in teacher development and improving learner achievement data. This study utilised a literature review covering a comprehensive review of existing models of teacher development, the school as a professional learning community and the role of the school principal. The empirical investigation was based on a mixed methods approach using a quantitative questionnaire with a sample of 145 out of a possible 200 (representing a 73% return rate) and twenty (10 school principals & 10 teachers) qualitative semi-structured in-depth individual interviews to gather data from both a teacher group and a school management group from a teacher education faculty at a local university and a selected English Public school district in Canada in the province of Ontario.

Rhetorical positioning of US policy statements about multilingual education – with reference to the EU

The focus of this paper is on US language policy statements that govern the priorities for teaching languages other than English in public schools and the language ideologies implied by specific management moves by the federal government to regulate language education, starting with the Bilingual Education Act (BEA) of 1968. Following introductory comments on language ideology, rhetorical positioning, and claims-making, this paper provides an overview of language diversity in the USA as the context for examining four major policy statements by the federal government up through the present: (1) the ‘BEA of 1968’; (2) ‘No Child Left Behind’ (NCLB), which replaced the BEA when it became law in 2002; (3) the ‘National Security Language Initiative of 2006’; and (4) the current proposal from President Barack Obama's administration, titled ‘A Blueprint for Reform’, which – if enacted – will replace ‘NCLB’. The next section provides an overview of European Union (EU) language policy in recent years to highlight the sharp contrast between the EU and US approaches. This paper closes with a comparison of the EU and US approaches, with emphasis on how the EU approach could be instructive for US policy-makers.

Tom Brown's Schooldays: 'Sportsex' in Victorian Britain

Thomas Hughes's idealised vision of life at Rugby public school is one of the best-known novels in the English language. It was regarded from the outset as a founding text of 'muscular Christianity'. Contrary to the intentions of its author, it helped to inaugurate the cult of 'manly' athleticism that swept through the English public schools in the second half of the nineteenth-century. I argue that the novel reveals tensions around gender and sexuality that were in play among public schoolboys during the second half of the nineteenth century. These tensions exploded into full public view in the trial of Oscar Wilde in 1895 and were instrumental in helping to establish a structure of homophobia within homosocial settings that has lasted through to the present day.

Communication, confidence, and achievement in public school English

From this year, foreign language, in most cases English, instruction has been made compulsory for 5th and 6th graders once a week with the aim of building up the foundation of communication abilities. A debatable point for many asks if instruction at this age level is meaningful; (i.e., will it lead to higher English proficiency later at the secondary school?) Also in question is “the foundation of communicative competence,” which is supposedly the goal of elementary school English. Still others include: What is the relationship between nurturing positive attitudes toward English learning and building up basic English communication skills? How can such primitive English be assessed in non-threatening and formative manners? How does the result differ depending on the pedagogical technique? The purpose of this talk is to explore these points and to share how the findings from a recent project show what students can achieve through elementary school English education and what this will mean for Junior High School teachers. 今年から小学校5年生と6年生に対して週1回の外国語（たいていの場合英語）指導が、コミュニケーション能力の素地形成をねらいとして始まっている。多くの人が議論の余地を感じている問いは、このレベルの英語教育は意味があるのかどうか、つまり、この時期の教育のおかげで後の中等教育でより高いレベルの英語力につながっていくのだろうかということである。また、小学校英語の目的であると言われている「コミュニケーション能力の素地」とはそもそも何なのだろうか。また他の問いとしては、英語学習に肯定的な態度を養うことと、基本的な英語コミュニケーションスキルを育てることとはどういう関係にあるのだろうか、こんな初歩的なレベルの英語を恐怖感を感じさせずに形成的な効果のあるやり方でアセスメントをするにはどうすればよいのだろうか、その結果は教え方によってどう変わってくるのだろうか、などがある。本講演の目的は、こうした問いを検討し、近年行ってきたあるプロジェクトの結果をふまえて、小学校英語教育を通して子どもたちができるようになってきたことは何なのか、またそのことが中学校の先生にとって何を意味するのかを公開することにある。

Equality in Education?

IntroductionTHE MICHAEL MANLEY GOVERNMENT of 19705 Jamaica has always won plaudits for its achievements in education, even from its most trenchant critics. regime's education policies, most notably 'free education' scheme, are often cited as proof of goodwill in Manley's party, People's National Party (PNP). literature on era's politics has emphasised that however moderate and multi-class his ideas, Manley advanced cause of equality in education in a divided society.2 However, studies of Caribbean education3 have shown that while schools have served as agencies for upward mobility, system in Jamaica, as in other developing countries,4 has failed to meet needs of majority. Therefore, it is surprising that hardly any works have explored in depth approach of Manley's education programme towards poor, in terms of equality.This article looks at education policies which were pursued by Michael Manley in Jamaica from 1972 to 1980, when his PNP government was elected to power on its promises of equality. paper examines extent to which philosophies of equality informed education reforms, and investigates how these manifested themselves On ground'. This work highlights case of black Jamaicans, a disproportionately poor group whose status and image were stained by slavery and colonialism, and asks extent to which education countered this condition, enabling them to be seen as 'equal'. paper deals with themes of expansion, accessibility and curriculum/culture, and submits them not to gender analysis, which deserves a full-length study in itself, but to racial and class analysis. research centres on Manley's policies towards school-aged youth: during 19705, there was a massive population explosion in Jamaica, especially in 5-19 age band,5 the result of high fertility periods of past decades.6The article argues that Manley genuinely sought to alter racial and social profile of island's schools, and to cultivate a 'cultured and sophisticated' image of blacks through education. However, it also shows that development of such policies was inhibited both by logistical challenges, made worse by economic7 and political crises,8 and by Manley's reluctance to follow through with them at expense of educational quality and standard. Manley's goal was not to perfunctorily 'blacken' elite models: in his cost-benefit analysis, a newly branded elite system, but with educational standards of old, was important for Jamaica's national and international ambitions. In other words, Manley's egalitarian education ideal was not a myth, but was less true in practice than it was in theory.Education in Jamaica before ManleyThe foundation of island's government- aided education, which can be traced to 1866, was linked to hopes of a minority group for a majority: elementary/primary school system, which focused on teaching religion and 'jRs', emerged from popular education pioneered by Christian churches and missionaries for ex-slaves.9 Though basic literacy skills were promoted, these schools, and their 'all-age' extensions (which went up until grade 9), were part and parcel of British/European mission to 'civilise' and 'Christianise' black people. In words of one source, The Primary Schools [of Jamaica] are perhaps most class exclusive schools outside top English public schools in whole of English-speaking world.10 Vocational and technical schools evolved from this system. On other hand, island's grammar/high schools, which evolved from various plantation owners' bequests for education of Jamaican poor whites and 'coloureds',11 was to groom heirs apparent to colonial leadership. Based on ethos of British 'public schools', such as Eton and Harrow, Jamaican grammar schools, like their counterparts across other areas of Empire,12 centred on a literary curriculum. …

‘A man's game’: Cricket, war and masculinity, South Africa, 1899–1902

As practitioners of the imperial sport of the Victorian age, cricketers rallied whenever war descended upon England and its colonies. The South African War of 1899–1902 was no different. Adding to existing work on cricket's imperial development within South Africa, this study marks a significant contribution to research on the link between masculinity, war and sport during the Victorian era. A concept emerging from the English public schools of the mid- to late nineteenth century, the masculine ethos of sport and military honour had reached colonial South Africa by the outbreak of war in 1899. In its analysis of cricket and masculinity, this essay examines the events surrounding the war in South Africa and provides an example of the distinct relationship that existed between the military and the masculinity of sport and its organisation during this era.

Three Teachers’ Initial Efforts to Use Twitter for Teaching English in Public Schools

Twitter is perhaps the most widely recognized social network services (SNSs) worldwide. This study attends to the value of Twitter from the EFL pedagogical perspective. The purpose of this study is to investigate how three Korean English teachers in an elementary, middle, and high school used Twitter for three weeks with their students. The qualitative case study yielded findings particularly with regard to the teachers’ use of patterns, interaction with students, and perceptions on using Twitter for instruction by analyzing the teachers’ tweets, interviews, and their students’ postings. The teachers employed microblogging differently depending on their students’ ages, computer experience, their L2 belief, and perceptions concerning the use of technology in the classroom. Interaction patterns with their students also were noticeably different when using Twitter. However, the three teachers agreed that Twitter enables good writing practice for students of any age and provides a great opportunity for them to use English for authentic purposes spontaneously.

Problematizando o estágio supervisionado de inglês

Este estudo objetivou problematizar o estágio supervisionado por meio da identificação de teorias pessoais de quatro professores em formação universitária sobre o ensino de inglês na escola pública. Além disso, procurou-se identificar mudanças em suas teorias pessoais após o estágio supervisionado e o que as deflagraram. Para tanto, utilizaram-se duas entrevistas semiestruturadas e um questionário. Os quatro participantes cursavam o quinto e último ano de Letras na Universidade Federal em Goiás e realizaram o estágio supervisionado na escola pública federal CEPAE/UFG. Os resultados apontaram que os participantes acreditam na eficácia do ensino inglês na escola pública e que o estágio supervisionado realizado em um contexto considerado quase ideal influiu no modo como eles perceberam o ensino de inglês na escola pública.

Common acute childhood infections and appendicitis: a historical study of statistical association in 27 English public boarding schools, 1930–1934

Although the involvement of common childhood infections in the aetiology of acute appendicitis has long been conjectured, supporting evidence is largely restricted to a disparate set of clinical case reports. A systematic population-based analysis of the implied comorbid associations is lacking in the literature. Drawing on a classic epidemiological dataset, assembled by the School Epidemics Committee of the United Kingdom's Medical Research Council (MRC) in the 1930s, this paper presents a historical analysis of the association between termly outbreaks of each of six common childhood infections (chickenpox, measles, mumps, rubella, scarlet fever and whooping cough) and operated cases of acute appendicitis in 27 English public boarding schools. When controlled for the potential confounding effects of school, year and season, multivariate negative binomial regression revealed a positive association between the level of appendicitis activity and the recorded rate of mumps (beta=0.15, 95% CI 0.07-0.24, P<0.001). Non-significant associations were identified between appendicitis and the other sample infectious diseases. Subject to data caveats, our findings suggest that further studies are required to determine whether the comorbid association between mumps and appendicitis is causal.

“The Nakedness of Boy Nature”: Anticipating Manhood at the English Public School in the Early Nineteenth Century

“The Nakedness of Boy Nature”: Anticipating Manhood at the English Public School in the Early Nineteenth Century

The Irish Schoolboy Novel

The Irish Schoolboy Novel Ciaran O'Neill (bio) Some men never recover from education. Oliver St. John Gogarty1 In his 1965 autobiography, Vive Moi! Seán O'Faoláin recalled a Sunday morning ritual from his childhood in Cork City. His father, a member of the local Royal Irish Constabulary, would lead Seán and his brothers to Wellington Barracks, where they would join the loyal citizens of Edwardian Cork in saluting the church parade of the local British Army regiment. O'Faoláin remembered a connection he once had made, listening faithfully to "God Save the King" at his father's knee: When the drums rolled and the brass shook the air I could hear the sabre clash, the hoofbeats, the rifle fire of all the adventure books I had read—Mainly Henty's: The Dash for Khartoum, With Kitchener in the Soudan, One of the Twenty-eighth, Under Drake's Flag.2 [End Page 147] O'Faoláin was not alone among Irish writers in his exposure to G.A. Henty's many empire adventure stories.3 Generations of Irish boys and girls had by then sat enthralled, reading of the exploits of well-mannered wanderers fresh from public schools, as they colonize and civilize out among the farthest reaches of the British Empire. These adventure stories were the lineal descendants of the "schoolboy novel," a genre that owes its existence to the phenomenal popularity of an 1857 novel by Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's Schooldays, based on life at the famous English public school in Rugby. The passing of progressive legislation in the 1870s, the Forster Education Act of 1870 in Britain, and the Intermediate Education Act of 1878 in Ireland helped create over one million new places in schools across Britain and Ireland.4 An increasingly literate youth audience, in turn, was targeted by cheap periodicals, such as The Boy's Own Paper (1879–1967). By the close of the nineteenth century, this genre was firmly established and its formula had altered to reflect the expansionist rhetoric of British society, allowing offshoots based on young adulthood and imperial adventure, such as those contained in the Henty novels of Seán O'Faoláin's youth. For Irish nationalists of the revival period, such as Padraic Pearse and Douglas Hyde, the consumption of these distilled tales of imperial power by Irish youths was at best corrupting and at worst invidious and anti-Irish. Ireland has its own set of much neglected schoolboy novels. Aside from James Joyce's seminal work, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), few have received any critical attention, due in many cases to small print runs. This article is an attempt to rescue the Irish schoolboy novel from its relative obscurity. Although the quality of some of the novels may well be debatable, they nevertheless provide us with a rare and valuable glimpse at the reality of school life for Irish boys in the nineteenth century. The Irish form of this popular genre experienced three main phases from its birth in 1895 to its decline (along with that of the English schoolboy novel) in the 1930s. The earliest of the schoolboy novels, written while Ireland [End Page 148] was united with Britain, all reveal a distinct British cultural influence, the infamous "West Briton" tendency.5 In contrast, those written in the first decade of the Irish Free State mark the emergence of Cúchulainn as an important icon of heroic boyhood that provided an apparently ultra-Irish alternative to Tom Brown and his public school politesse. Finally, toward the end of what is considered the heyday of the schoolboy novel, a more critical and radical form emerged in the 1930s, hugely influenced by Joyce's A Portrait and best understood in relation to the Bildungsroman tradition in Ireland. All schoolboy novels are essentially novels of youth, of childhood, and of personal growth—providing authors with something of an ideological clean slate on which to forge a new national identity. As the Irish novels were published in a period often referred to as the "birth" of modern Ireland, it is possible to see them as a forgotten record of...