Kate Brooks’ Critical Histories in Care and Education published earlier this year by Routledge (also available as an ebook) explores the entangled histories of the care system and the development of the English education systems.

Aimed at undergraduates and postgraduates, including those in Education, Care, Social Studies and Cultural History, the book is also written to be accessible to social workers, foster carers and anyone else interested in the topic. Critical Histories highlights the ways in which nineteenth century prejudices and assumptions about care-experienced young people helped shape state education, and concludes by arguing that some of these assumptions continue to impact on care experienced pupils today.

Critical Histories starts with Mrs Jeanie Senior, the first female civil servant and Poor Law inspector, who in 1874 dared to suggest workhouse girls could have access to art and creativity. Senior was pilloried by the establishment and in the press as a result. The book ends with the observation that in 2023, Conservative MP Robert Jenrick demanded children refugee centres in the UK should paint over their welcoming cartoon murals. The final chapter suggests we see these incidents as ideologically connected.

In between, we meet an array of characters in the book, including the founder of attachment theory, John Bowlby, who secretly worried to his wife that during his post-war conference tour of Europe everyone else would be ‘stupid’, and influential Frederich Froebel, now synonymous with creative early years’ teaching but in his time, somewhat infamous for his peculiar outfits and ‘odorous coat’. We also encounter the ‘troublesome nippers’ of the wartime evacuation programme, whose experiences helped informed the foster care system, and the young orphans on the now scandalous Home Child programme, who were sent abroad to Canadian and Australian farmers with the promotional literature’s reassurance that ‘it is as easy to feed a child as it is a chicken’.

Critical Histories takes us through key moments of care and education histories. The book initially focuses on the workhouse, the district school and the evangelical orphanage as key nineteenth century institutions, which shaped the ways in which care experienced children and working class pupils were ordered, categorised and judged.  The book then goes on to address the ideology of the British Empire, in which separation from the family was not only seen as unproblematic for the children of the elite but desirable: to be a man fit to build the Empire one only needed loyalty to the ‘brick mother’ (school) and Mother Britannia. As those children were sent across the sea ‘back home’ to English boarding schools, orphans and workhouse young – ‘home degenerates’ – were being sent away from England to unmonitored and often dangerous work placement situations. As this book notes, separation, abuse and upheaval are unfortunately nothing new, and the poorest orphan in the workhouse had more in common with a diplomat’s son at an elite boarding school than we might initially suppose.

The penultimate chapter explores the lives of some of the key protagonists of progressive education and care (for example, pedagogists such as Montessori and Pestalozzi worked extensively with war orphans) and at education and leaving care.  Taking its title from a MP’s quote on pupil types (relating to the now controversial ‘11+’ Tripartite System), the final chapter ‘Fliers, hurdlers and pedestrians’ addresses the ongoing structural inequalities inherent in the education system. It argues that such inequalities work to doubly disadvantage those in care, in education – a thread throughout all the chapters.

Critical Histories ends with a call for a more inclusive education system, arguing that this is not about ‘us’ helping ‘them’ meet ‘standards’ but about acknowledging that such young people have a right to fully participate in education. As the book concludes, this is ‘not because it is fair, but because society needs them as policymakers, CEOs, doctors, writers, teachers, researchers and MPs’.

Critical Histories in Care and Education sets out historical connections between the English care an education systems, and identifies key threads throughout. History – as the book acknowledges – can be messy, involving various protagonists with often messy lives, complicated prejudices and mixed motives. If we understand these threads and connections in this way, we can start to recognise and acknowledge the historical attitudes and elitism which will otherwise remain embedded in our care and education systems. Like the welcome murals of which Jenrick MP was so critical, such histories should not be glossed over.

Critical Histories in Care and Education by Kate Brooks is published by Routledge

IBSN: 9781032663036

Price: £29.43

The book is available to buy at: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781032663036/critical-histories-care-education-kate-brooks