1 To be published by Cambridge University Press. Series editors: Peter Clark and David Reeder; Volume editors: Ron Goodenow and Bill Marsden. In this article I have drawn on my own essay on trends in urban educational history in Britain and make comparative reference to the historiographical surveys of other contributors in Part I of this volume, and to the case studies in Part II. The volume also contains (in Part III) discussions of the relations between theory and history and theory and policy in urban educational study and a concluding essay on the uses and abuses of the comparative educational history of the city. In this article bibliographical references are given to illustrate British trends, but only key texts are referenced for other countries.

2 I am drawing on various ‘state of the art’ reviews of the 1970s in the Oxford Review of Education, Vols 2 (1976) and 3 (1977)Google Scholar. Some of these, along with other reassessments by leading figures of the time are reprinted in Gordon, P. and Szreter, R. (eds), History of Education: the Making of a Discipline (London, 1989).Google Scholar

3 Reeder, D.A. (ed.), Urban Education in the 19th Century (London, 1977)Google Scholar based on the papers of a conference of the History of Education Society the previous year.

4 See, for example, the survey for British educational historians by Cohen, S., ‘The history of education in the United States: historians of education and their discontents’, in Reeder, , Urban Education in the 19th Century, pp. 115–32.Google Scholar The leading liberal revisionists were identified as Bernard Bailyn and Laurence Cremin, both authors of general reassessments in 1960 and 1965. The pioneering text among the radical revisionists concerned with city studies was Katz, M.B. in The Irony of School Reform: Educational Innovation in Mid-nineteenth Century Massachussets (Boston, 1968).Google Scholar

5 It was the relations between schooling and capitalism in the writings of American revisionist historians and sociologists that most interested radical educationalists in Britain, especially the work of Clarence Karier, J. and Bowles, Samuel and Gintis, Herbert; see, for example, the Open University Reader Schooling and Capitalism, eds Dale, R., Esland, G. and MacDonald, M. (London, 1976).Google Scholar There was much criticism of the ‘economism’ of the writings among Marxist educational historians and sociologists.

6 It would be superfluous to list all the studies here: suffice it to say that in addition to Katz the key studies of Boston and New York were written by Stanley Schultz (1973) and Carl Kaestle (1973) and of the St Louis school system by Selwyn Troen (1975). More general accounts of the ideologies of reformers and the development of bureaucracy were provided by Marvin Lazerson (with reference to Massachusets again), David Tyack, and Michael Katz again, all leading figures in the movement. A sympathetic account of the impact of revisionism on urban educational study in the USA is provided in the historiographical survey by Cohen, R.D. and Reese, W.J. for The City and Education.Google Scholar

7 Revisionist influences on Canadian urban educational history are discussed and put in context by Sutherland, Neil and Barman, Jean in their survey for The City and Education.Google Scholar The link with American revisionism was through Michael Katz who moved in the late 1960s to the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education affiliated to the University of Toronto which supported the Canadian Social History project. The volume by Katz, —The People of Hamilton, Canada West: Family and Class in a Mid-Nineteenth Century City (Cambridge, Mass., 1976)Google Scholar—was quite extensively noticed in Britain but little interest was shown in the educational dimensions of this study.

8 See, for example, the comments of Silver, Harold as an afterword to a special issue of the History of Education, 7, 3 (1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar on ‘Education and American society: new historical interpretations’.

9 An exception was the educational sociologist Grace, G., Education and the City. Theory, History and Contemporary Practice (London, 1984)Google Scholar. See also the comments on the relations between history and policy in the contribution of David Coulby to The City and Education: ‘ Approaches to urban education in the USA and the UK’.

10 Kaestle, C.F. reflects on theory and Angus, David identifies models in their respective contributions to The City and Education.Google Scholar

11 As, for example, the city studies in McCann, P. (ed.), Popular Education and Socialisation in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1977)Google Scholar. Essays on the interpretation of English Mechanics Institutes were included in Dale et al., Schooling and Capitalism (along with the wellknown essay on the idea of class cultural control by Richard Johnson), and in the issue of the Oxford Review of Education cited previously. A debate on ‘coal, class and education’ was conducted by Colls, R., Heeson, A.J. and Duffy, B. in Past and Present, xc (1981)Google Scholar. An example of an essay critical of the social control approach from the left perspective is Humphries, S., ‘“Hurrah for England”: schooling and the working class in Bristol, 1870–1914’, Southern History, 1 (1979).Google Scholar Social control interpretations were also questioned in a general study by the American Laqueur, T.W. of Religion and Respectability: Sunday Schools and Working Class Culture (London, 1979)Google Scholar, but see also Dick, M., ‘Urban growth and the social role of the Stockport Sunday school c. 1784–1833’, in Fergusson, J. (ed.), Christianity, Society and Education.Google Scholar

12 ‘Education and urban politics c. 1832–85’ in Reeder, , Urban Education in the 19th CenturyGoogle Scholar, which summarizes the literature. The work of educational historians is summarized by Jones, D.K., The Making of the Education System 1851–81 (London, 1977)Google Scholar and in ‘The movement for secular elementary education in Britain’, in Frijhoff, W. (ed.), The Supply of Schooling. Contributions to the comparative study of educational policies in the 19th century (Paris, 1982).Google Scholar For the relations between liberalism, education and the city ethos in the nineteenth century the following may be found useful: Reeder, D.A. (ed.), Educating Our Masters (London, 1980)Google Scholar and Seed, J., ‘Unitarianism, political economy and the antinomies of liberal culture in Manchester’, Social History, VII (1982)Google Scholar.

13 Allsebrooke, D., Schools for the Shires: The Reform of Middle-class Education in Mid-Victorian England (London, 1986)Google Scholar.

14 As, for example, Lowe, R., ‘Structural change in English higher education, 1870–1920’, in Muller, D.F. et al., The Rise of the Modern Educational System (London, 1987);Google Scholar Meller, H., Leisure and the Changing City (London, 1976).Google Scholar

15 The link between criticisms of revisionist models and new studies of how twentieth-century city schools were caught up in the contests over ethnic and racial policies is represented in the writing of Ravitch, Diane and Goodenow, Ronald K. and in their edited collections as, for example, Schools in Cities: Consensus and Conflict in American Educational History (New York, 1983).Google Scholar

16 See the special American edition of History of Education (1978), op. cit., especially the introduction by Kaestle, C.F. and the essay by Tyack, D.B., ‘The spread of public schooling in Victorian America: in search of an interpretation’Google Scholar, which anticipated his later writings on this theme. The most talked about reassessment in this period seems to have been that of Katz, M. B., ‘The origins of public education: a reassessment’, History of Education Quarterly, 16 (1976).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 The extensive literature in Canada is covered by Sutherland, and Barman, , The City and Education.Google Scholar Some examples of the comparative basis of the debate are: Gidney, R.D., ‘Making nineteenth-century school systems: the Upper Canadian experience and its relevance to English historiography’, History of Education, 9, 2 (1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Curtis, B., ‘Capitalist development and educational reform: comparative material from England, Ireland and Upper Canada to 1850’, Theory and Society, 13, 1 (1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Building the Educational State: Canada West 1836–1871 (1988);Google Scholar Miller, P., ‘Historiography of compulsory schooling: what is the problem?’, History of Education, 18, 2 (1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Davey, I., ‘Rethinking the origins of British colonial school systems’, Historical Studies in Education, 1, 1 (1989)Google Scholar; and ‘Capitalism, patriarchy and the origins of mass schooling’, History of Education Review, 16, 2 (1987)Google Scholar. For a recent British contribution, see Green, A., Education and State Formation. The Rise of Education Systems in England, France and the USA (London, 1990).Google Scholar

18 Kaestle, C.F. and Vinovskis, M.A., Education and Social Change in Nineteenth Century Massachusetts (Cambridge, Mass., 1980);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Katz, M.B., The People of Hamilton, Canada West: Family and Class in a Mid-nineteenth Century City (Cambridge, Mass., 1976).Google Scholar The educational dimensions of the work of Katz and his students are discussed by Sutherland, and Barman, in The City and Education.Google Scholar

19 Stephens, W.B. (ed.), Studies in the History of Literacy: England and North America (London, 1983), p. 96.Google Scholar Harvey Graff was an ex-student of Katz who has made a major contribution to literacy studies in North America. Stephens, W.B. is a local and educational historian who took the lead in pioneering an analytical approach to educational provision and literacy in Britain. His most recent book is Education, Literacy and Society, 1830–70: The Geography of Diversity in Provincial England (London, 1987).Google Scholar

20 For example, Lowe, R. (ed.), New Approaches to the Study of Popular Education, 1851–1902 (History of Education Society, 1979);Google Scholar Searby, P., Educating the Middle Class (History of Education Society, 1982);Google Scholar Marsden, W.E., Unequal Education Provision in England and Wales: The Nineteenth Century Roots (London, 1987).Google Scholar The classic study of school attendance is Rubinstein, D., School Attendance in London 1870–1914: A Social History (London, 1969).Google Scholar

21 This paragraph summarizes the drift of the contributions by Davey, Ian and Wimshurst, Kerry to The City and Education:Google Scholar ‘The “state” of the history of urban education in Australia’ and ‘Interpreting irregular school attendance: beyond the rural-urban dichotomy’. For the influence of a concept of patriarchy on these and other Australian educational historians (as for example Pavla Miller), see Davey's, Ian article, ‘Capitalism, patriarchy and the origins of mass schooling’, in History of Education Review, 16, 2 (1987).Google Scholar For a critique of Katz and Davey by an Australian, see Partingon, G., ‘Two Marxisms and the history of education’, History of Education, 13 (1984).Google Scholar

22 See the references in Lowe, R., Education in the Post War Years (London, 1988).Google Scholar There is a considerable literature on local decision-making.

23 These points are made by Cohen, R.D. and Reese, W.J. in their survey of education and America's cities–‘Urban educational history: the United States’, in The City and Education.Google Scholar

24 Bryant, M., The London Experience of Secondary Education (London, 1986).Google Scholar

25 An early example is Stephens, W.B., ‘Early Victorian Coventry: education in an industrial community, 1830–1851’, in Everitt, A. (ed.), Perspectives in Urban History (London, 1973).Google Scholar There are other studies of Nottingham and Leicester.

26 Inkster, I., Metropolis and Province. Science in British Culture 1780–1850 (London, 1983).Google Scholar

27 Some examples are: Billinge, M., ‘Hegemony, class and power in late Georgian and early Victorian England: towards a cultural geography’, in Baker, A.R.H. and Gregory, D. (eds), Explorations in Historical Geography: Interpretive Essays (London, 1984);Google Scholar Smith, D., Conflict and Compromise. Class Formation in English Society 1830–1914 (London, 1983);Google Scholar Morris, R.J., The Making of the British Middle Class: Leeds, 1820–50 (London, 1990);Google Scholar Koditschek, T., Class Formation and Urban Industrial Society: Bradford 1750–1850 (London, 1990);Google Scholar Kidd, A.J. and Roberts, D. (eds), City, Class and Culture (London, 1985).Google Scholar

28 There is, however, a developing interest in class politics in American educational history to which the authors of the American survey in The City and Education have contributed. See also for the type of study: Hogan, D.J., Class and Reform: School and Society in Chicago 1880–1930 (Philadelphia, 1985).Google Scholar

29 Marsden, W.E. has been the pioneer influence: see ‘Education and urbanization’, Paedagogica Historica (1987);Google Scholar Unequal Educational Provision in England and Wales. The Nineteenth Century Roots (London, 1987)Google Scholar—which contains a selection of his writings including his commentary on Booth's education survey–and his contribution to The City and Education: ‘Social stratification and nineteenth- century English urban education’. Other work on the last topic includes Stannard, K.P., ‘Ideology, education and social structure: elementary education in mid-Victorian England’, History of Education, 19, 2 (1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Chinn, C., ‘Was separate schooling a means of class segregation in late-Victorian and Edwardian Birmingham?’, Midland History, 13, xiii (1988).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 Two recent examples are Ueda, R., Avenues of Adulthood: The Origins of the High School and Social Mobility in an American Suburb (Interdisciplinary Perspectives in History series) (London, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Labaree, D.F., The Making of an American High School: The Credentials Market and Central High School of Philadelphia, 1838–1939 (Philadelphia, 1988).Google Scholar There are no comparable English studies. Marsden's, W.E. Educating The Respectable: A Study of Fleet Road Board School, Hampstead 1879–1903 (1991)Google Scholar is a model of its kind but does not make use of the kind of statistical analysis which is characteristic of the American genre.

31 The study of reformatory and industrial schools was an early interest of the revisionists, but has been developed further since, not least in relation to the theories of Foucault in studies in North America and Australia.

32 British examples are: May, M., ‘The concept of juvenile delinquency in early Victorian England’, Victorian Studies, xii (1973);Google Scholar Gillis, J., ‘The evolution of juvenile delinquency in England 1890–1914’, Past and Present, 67 (London, 1975);Google Scholar Dyehouse, C., Girls Growing Up in Edwardian England (London, 1980);Google Scholar Childs, M.J., ‘Boy labour in late Victorian and Edwardian England and the remaking of the working class’, Journal of Social History, 23 (1990);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Hendrick, H., Images of Youth: Age, Class and the Male Youth Problem, 1880–1920 (London, 1990).CrossRefGoogle Scholar However, there are no studies comparable to the work undertaken in North America on constructions of childhood. For a guide to the way these can be integrated into educational history, Rooke, P.T. and Schnell, R.L., ‘Childhood as ideology: a reinterpretation of the common school’ British Journal of Educational Studies, 27 (1979).Google Scholar See also the insights in Steedman, C., Childhood, Culture and Class in Britain: Margaret McMillan 1860–1931 (London, 1990).Google Scholar

33 This aspect of urban educational study is discussed by Barbara Finkelstein in her contribution on ‘Redoing urban educational history’, in The City and Education.Google Scholar For earlier overviews, Reeder, D.A., ‘Predicaments of city children: late Victorian and Edwardian perspectives on education and urban society’, in Urban Education in the 19th Century (1977);Google Scholar Niva, M., ‘The urban, the domestic and the education of girls’, in Grace, G. (ed.), Education and the City;Google Scholar and Davison, G., ‘The city bred child and urban reform in Melbourne, 1900–1940’, in Williams, P. (ed.), Social Process and the City (Sydney, 1983).Google Scholar

34 There is much to be learned from Heywood's, Colin work on France: Childhood in Nineteenth-Century France: Work, Health and Education among the Classes Populaires (London, 1988).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35 See her contribution to The City and Education: ‘Compulsion, work and family: a case study from nineteenth-century Britain’.Google Scholar Regrettably, very little work influenced by a family strategies approach has been published. Two recent theses worth consulting for their methodological interest are: Elliott, C.G., ‘The school and the family: patterns of educational interaction in four communities, 1861–1891’ (D.Phil., University of Oxford, 1986)Google Scholar and Belfiore, G., ‘Family strategies in Essex textile towns 1860–1895: the challenge of compulsory elementary schooling’ (D.Phil., University of Oxford, 1986).Google Scholar A key survey for North America is Wilson, J.D., ‘From social control to family strategies; some observations on recent trends in Canadian educational history’, History of Education Review, 13, 1 (1984).Google Scholar

36 A useful introduction is Clifford, G., ‘History as experience: the uses of personal-history documents in the history of education’, History of Education, 7, 3 (1978);CrossRefGoogle Scholar see also Haraven, T.K. (ed.), Anonymous Americans: Explorations in Nineteenth-Century Social History (London, 1971).Google Scholar

37 For example, Finkelstein, B., ‘Exploring community in urban educational history’, in Ravitch, and Goodenow, (eds), Schools in Cities.Google Scholar The most recent study is Perlmann, J., Ethnic Differences: Schooling and Social Structure among the Irish, Italians, Jews and Blacks in an American City, 1880–1935 (London 1990).Google Scholar

38 Samuel, R., ‘Local history and oral history’, History Workshop, 1 (1976).CrossRefGoogle Scholar For the use of oral history by educational historians, see Parsons, C., Schools in an Urban Community: A Study of Carsbrook, 1870–1965 (London, 1975)Google Scholar and Humphries, S., Hooligans or Rebels? An Oral History of Working-class Childhood and Youth 1889–1939 (London, 1981).Google Scholar

39 Silver, H., Education as History: Interpreting Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Education (London, 1983)Google Scholar, 22 and Marsden, W.E., ‘Ecology and nineteenth-century education’, History of Education Quarterly (1983).CrossRefGoogle Scholar For another aspect, Gardner, P., The Lost Elementary Schools of Victorian England (London, 1986).Google Scholar

40 The survey of Neil Sutherland and Jean Barman for The City and Education is called ‘Out of the shadows: reconstructing the history of urban education and urban childhood in Canada’. Sutherland was a pioneer of childhood studies.

41 ‘Redoing urban educational history’ reveals the links with a model of urban history that has placed emphasis on the psychological. For the British emphasis on the city as experience, see Feldman, D. and Jones, G. Stedman (eds), Metropolis London: Histories and Representations since 1800 (London, 1989)Google Scholar—the work of Ellen Ross is especially relevant here.

42 In The City and Education, David Angus ends the symposium on a very positive note in an essay which argues the case for comparative studies of various kinds.