Edwardian Teaching

[carpetowl]

I'm researching the various reasons why 2.5 million young men volunteered to fight in WW1. One major influence was how and what they were taught at school in (say) about 1905 thru 1910 - very formative years for young men who'd have been c19 years old in 1914. Does anybody have any primary information on classroom practice, especially for the teaching of history, during those years. Public schools tend to be well-documented - state schools less so. I'm interested in the way ideas of patriotism, nationhood and the military were imparted! So was Grandad an Edwardian schoolteacher?? Thanks in advance.

[dotty.]

'how about comics, story-books, magazines, vicars and pulpits, scouts, boys' brigades, the early cinema'

very middle class, boys and girls where I am from wore clogs to school and hand me down clothes with nothing to spare for comics and books. It was a time of great hardship and poverty and there was nothing to stay at home for. School minute books in the edwardian era are full of reports of absentees being kept off school to work in the harvest, look after smaller siblings, nurse/care for sick parents. No welfare state, no hand outs but for the workhouse and nothing to make them attend school where they had no school dinners, no heating and were caned for not wearing socks.

[cazzz1975]

I watched a documentary recently that also showed that a lot of recruits were unwilling to sign up once the war had started and the stories of atrocities had begun to surface, these recruits were intimidated and goaded daily by recruitment soldiers until they could not take it and signed up.