CONTRIBUTORS
Imagining and re-imagining – transformation at the tipping points of social change
This month, in our ongoing collaboration with Edge Hill University curated by ALICIA BLANCO-BAYO, Early Years Lecturer and WTEY Programme Leader at the University’s Faculty of Education, we hear from SUE MARTIN, who offers us a fascinating insight into the lives and thinking of the McMillan sisters. Sue recently retired as a university professor of early childhood education in Toronto, Canada. She trained as a Froebel teacher in London, England, where she worked as a nursery/infant teacher, and then lectured at an FE college. She was the education editor at Nursery World and is the author of several early years textbooks.
“Policies and decisions concerning children ultimately derive from conceptions of childhood” Arlene Skolnick
T
he COVID-19 pandemic makes us, parents and
professionals alike, worried about our children. But in the past, how did people come forward in times of crisis to address the specific needs of particular children, families and communities. And how does this influence the ongoing discussions about re-imagining the early years?
Let’s look back over a hundred years to the McMillan sisters, Margaret and Rachel. They offer us an interesting model because theirs was generated as a response to a social crisis (poverty and its detrimental impact on education) which, while not the same as ours, has interesting parallels. They understood that meeting the needs of the child was essential before any meaningful education could occur.
The social historian Steedman determined that there was a
‘reconceptualization of childhood’ going on in Britain in the late nineteenth and early 20th centuries, as people began to look at children somewhat differently, with a shift away from using children for their labour to childhood as a special time of life. Steedman’s biography of Margaret explains that her innovative theory of childhood saw children as symbols of hope for a better future for the working classes. “Modern childhood” is the term Hendrick (1997 p.14) uses to describe this period.
The McMillan sisters The McMillan sisters were born in New York State of parents who had emigrated from Scotland. Their father died, as well as a sister; and their mother, who had suffered scarlet fever, decided to return to Inverness with her two girls, where they were schooled. They were influenced by their grandparents, and Christian socialist speakers. For a while they based their efforts in Bradford, visiting homes of the poor and devising ways to improve the physical health and intellectual welfare of children in slums. They started campaigns to end slums and improve schools in Bradford, including bathrooms, and offering free school meals. In London, this work continued along with political activism that led to the 1906 Provision of School Meals Act. Two years later they opened the country’s first school clinics in Bow, and then Deptford. These offered health and hygiene supports including dental care, breathing and posture help, surgical aid, attention to fleas, and a night camp where children could wash their dirty clothes.
Their Christian socialism galvanized them to improve the lives of children
and families. Poverty, malnutrition, poor living conditions, and a wretched life trajectory, made education a low priority. But improving the lives of working class children was a rising social concern: “A healthy working class child was precious in a way that had not been seen before”(Hendrick p48). In 1918 LEAs were mandated to ensure that all children were medically inspected in
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www.education-today.co.uk June 2020
school clinics, and their physical health was monitored. The McMillans mixed with influential people, including leaders of the new political Left, education leaders and medical officers. This was essential to the financial and political support for their new ventures. Through today’s lens they might be seen as patronizing, yet they brought about improvements for children that were not merely theories or policies.
“Every teacher is a discoverer. Everyone is an inventor, an improver of
methods, or he is a mere journeyman, not a master.” (McMillan p13) suggested Margaret. Mellor makes the interesting point that Margaret “…did not take as her pattern any earlier or contemporary type of school.”(p.29) but used small groups, and her innovative ideas of purpose built shelters for 35- 50 children, amongst other design features to bring about her vision. In 1950 Mellor wrote that change and modification will continue to be necessary, anticipating “The new school looks different, sounds different, feels different… (they) are demonstrating the truth that Life educates” (p.30). “The best classroom and the richest cupboard is roofed only by the sky” claimed Margaret. Their Open-Air Nursery and Training Centre for staff opened in Deptford in 1914. We can imagine the climate at the start of WW1 with more women left alone to bring up children in challenging circumstances. What the McMillans tried to do amounted to providing transformational experience, in extremely difficult times. They were not merely offering traditional schooling, as others had done, or care, that dealt with physical needs of the child.
Outside spaces were thought to offer the best possible opportunity to
maximize healthy growth and development. They experimented with different models of open-air nurseries and ‘camps’ (a kind of sleep-over opportunity) for older children. The ‘shelters’ at the nursery were what we might think of as separate units, with a playroom and bathroom, but children could move between them at will. The entire nursery could have several hundred children enrolled at any one time. It was not a school or childcare centre in today’s sense, but an entirely different way of meeting needs for children in a broader age range than ‘nursery’ might be currently defined. When Rachel died in 1917, the school was named after her, and a modified nursery exists today.
Influences Whitbread (1972) describes the McMillans’ theories as following the utopian and developmentalist Owen tradition. Margaret, a spiritualist, had studied Steiner, as did many in the Arts and Crafts Movement of the time, and
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