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Children's literature, the home, and the debate on public versus private education, c.1760-1845
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Children's literature, the home, and the debate on public versus private education, c.1760-1845
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Children's literature, the home, and the debate on public versus private education, c.1760-1845
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Journal Article
Children's literature, the home, and the debate on public versus private education, c.1760-1845
2015
Overview
In Britain in the period 1760-1845 the debate on the relative merits of public (school) versus private (home) education remained unresolved and was vigorously debated in many media. It was in this same period that children's literature began to flourish: a much wider variety of books were published in much greater numbers. The new children's literature generally took domestic life for its subject; its authors often claimed that their books had emerged from domestic practice; and the books were often marketed as being for domestic use. It can seem, therefore, that the new children's literature was, in essence, a materialisation in print of domestic pedagogy, a product developed to supply a growing demand for didactic materials to use in the home. This essay will test the hypothesis, considering some real-life pedagogical practices and examining a wide range of later eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century children's texts (both print and manuscript). This evidence will show in fact that the boundaries between private and public education were blurred. Moreover, some children's books were themselves interventions into the debate on private versus public schooling. They presented a utopian, if still practical, vision of how the advantages of both models could be combined.
