Negotiating Responsibility: Ideas of Protecting and Disciplining the Child in London Schools 1908 and 1918

Abstract

This article aims to contextualise notions of state care and responsibility as set out by the London County Council in their suggested amendments to the 1908 Children’s Bill. It discusses the relationships and environments which surrounded London schools, children and parents and how these may have influenced national debate. The research focuses on three schools in Woolwich, a peripheral London borough that ranged from an industrial heartland to a middle-class suburb. I argue that particularly amongst working class families and those with children deemed ‘defected,’ teachers had to negotiate where a parent’s authority and care for a child stopped and the school’s began.