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Institute of Education
Nazlin Bhimani
The Representation
of
War and Peace
in the
Newsam Library’s Special Collections
Research Support & Special Collections Librarian

The Newsam Library &
Archives
The Newsam Library & Archives at the UCL
Institute of Education is the largest
education library in Europe.
The library has a copy of every book on
education published in the UK.
It also has a representative collection of
publications on education from around the
world.

The Historical Collections
 The historical collections comprise 27 special
collections and over 100 deposited archive
collections.
 These are unique historical resources on education,
and influential organisations and individuals
working in the field.
 Many of these are associated with the Institute and
others are deposited collections that represent the
history of education in the United Kingdom.

…vary in size and coverage.
Some collections such as
the History of Education
Collection have been built
up from a variety of
sources.
Many of these collections
are libraries of individual
scholars which supplement
the papers in the Archives
collections.
The Special Collections

 The following collections are highlighted in this
presentation:
 BBC Broadcasts to Schools
 Historical Comparative Education Collection
 Historical Textbooks Collection
 The Grantham Number Ones
 The Grenfell Collection
 The Official Publications Collections
 School Histories Collection
Special Collections Highlights

BBC Broadcasts to Schools
Special Collection

About the BBC Broadcasts to Schools
Collection
 This Collection is the BBC's own collection of
pamphlets produced to accompany schools
radio broadcasts from September 1926 till the
late 1970s; the volumes from Summer 1958
and onwards include pamphlets for television
broadcasts as well.
 The Collection was deposited on permanent
loan with the Institute in 1990.

The Second World War brought major
challenges for British school
broadcasting: national and regional
radio variations were temporarily
abandoned in favour of a single home
service for two hours a day, including
a daily five-minute news commentary
‘to explain events arising out of the
general news bulletins which might
give rise to confusion in the minds of
children’ (The Times, 12 July 1940, p.
6).
BBC Broadcasts to Schools

Hans, the refugee from Nazi Germany, continues to ask his
questions. Each broadcast is designed to provide vivid
material as a starting point for a simple project in
citizenship.
BBC’s Citizenship Education

Images source: Kallbach, Wilhelm. (1941). Deutsches Lesebuch für höhere Schulen.
Ausgabe für Mädchen, Klasse 1 (Berlin: Weidmannsche Verlagsbuchhandlung).
Comparative Education
Collection

About the Comparative Education
Collection
 This collection of resources is made up of two
separate departmental libraries in the Institute:
the Comparative Education Department Library
and the Department of Education in Tropical
Areas Library.
 The two libraries were amalgamated in 1969 and
consist of books and pamphlets from all over the
world, mainly from the period 1900-1980.

Source: Kallbach, Wilhelm. (1941).
Deutsches Lesebuch für höhere Schulen.
Ausgabe für Mädchen, Klasse 1 (Berlin:
Weidmannsche Verlagsbuchhandlung).
Comparative Education
Collection

The History of Education
Special Collection

About the History of Education
Collection
 This collection consists of books and pamphlets (160
metres of shelving) on all aspects of education
published before 1940.
 There about 1200 items published in the 16-18th
centuries, but the bulk of the material dates from the
19th and 20th centuries.
 Included in this collection are about 150 bound
volumes of 19th and 20th century pamphlets amassed
by the Ministry and Departments of Education.

Historical Textbooks
Special Collection

About the Historical Textbooks
Collection
 This is a collection of c.88,000 British school
textbooks, dating from 1890 onwards.
 The collection represents all educational
levels, from nursery to sixth form.
 It covers all aspects of the curriculum, with
particular strengths in geography, history and
science.

The idea of textbooks as an object of study in their
own right has not found much favour in the past.
Yet textbooks can reveal a good deal: about the
state of the discipline …about attitudes in society
at the time … about the technologies extant at the
time …indeed about the economics of textbook
production for an educational market.
Graves, N. (2001) School Textbook Research, p. ix.
The Historical Textbooks Collection

Chapter XVI
The Defence of the Empire
The Navy
War is at any time a dreadful thing , for it
means the loss of hundreds if not
thousands of strong and healthy lives ;
and when we think of it, our minds
picture at once a battlefield with its dead
and dying, towns with gaping walls torn
open by shot and shell, and ships sunk or
drifting helpless before the wind.
Besides this sacrifice of human life there
is the immense cost to the nation of trade
for the time diminished and debt
incurred, to provide for the expenses of
an army on active service. (pp. 135-6)

Among the possible causes of war, education
holds a particular and significant place … for in so
far as it embodies dangerous nationalistic
prejudices, it is a means of disseminating them
constantly to all the people. It is the seed of
international discord for both present and future
generations.”
A.M. Schlesinger, in the ‘Introduction’ to A. Walworth’s School Histories at War: Study of
the Treatment of Wars in Secondary School History Books of the United States and in
those of its Former Enemies (Cambridge, MA, 1938), pp. xiii-xx.
The Historical Textbooks
Collection

Source: The Mercury (Tuesday 17 January 1939), page 6. Accessed from
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/printArticlePdf/25581082/3?print=n [07.07.14)
The Poison Called History
H. G. Wells Attacks Old
Ideas of Teaching
CANBERRA, January 14.
If the young Hercules of the new world was to live, its first feat must be
to strangle the tangled coil of poisonous old histories in its cradle,
declared Mr. H. G. Wells, the author and scientist, in an address at the
Science Congress today.
Speaking plainly about the relationship of so-called history to the human
outlook, he said that the world was in an evil state, and faced greater
evils. The primary cause of all the troubles was the complete
incompatibility between historical traditions and the new, more exacting
conditions of life created by invention and discovery.

“Practically all history teaching is
propaganda, some open, some
‘slyly insinuated’”
Source: A. Walworth’s School Histories at War: Study of the Treatment of
Wars in Secondary School History Books of the United States and in those of
its Former Enemies (Cambridge, MA, 1938), 373.

The textbook is a cultural
artefact which has
embedded in it through its
use in classrooms a range
of issues to do with
ideology, politics and
values which in themselves
function at a variety of
different levels of power,
status and influence.
Graves, N. (2001) School
Textbook Research, p.2

Geography Textbooks
Collection
Geography text books provide much
interesting evidence of other aspects
of everyday life in past eras.
In addition to the ‘factual’
presentation of contemporary life in
text and illustrations, they often
reveal prevailing attitudes.
Their presentation of other races and cultures, for instance,
or of the British Empire, demonstrates the accepted view of
the establishment at the time of their publication.

“If the fate of the nation may depend on a
battle, a battle may depend on a knowledge of
geography.”
Royal Geographical Society. (1886) Report of the Proceedings
of the Royal Geographical Society in Reference to Improvement
in Geographical Education (Keltie Report), p. 36.
Geography Textbooks Collection

 “New trends of history textbook research
acknowledge that textbooks are produced
somewhere between politics, economics, science
and education. They define “legitimate knowledge”
and they communicate desired concepts of national
identity.
 “If you analyse a textbook and keep the complex
character and the social and political contexts of the
textbook in mind, the analysis tells you something
about social change.”
Lars Müller, Research Fellow,
Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research
Textbook Research

The Grantham Collection of
Number Ones

About the Grantham Collection
 This collection consists of 71 volumes of the first
issues of a variety of journals on all subjects dating
from 1850 to 1930.
 It was put together by Major William Wilson
Grantham (1866-1942), at one time Deputy
Chairman of the London County Council, and
deposited at County Hall in 1933.
 It then passed to the Institute of Education, along
with other materials from the Inner London
Education Authority, in 1990.

Grantham Collection

The Grenfell Collection

About the Grenfell Collection
Capt. Francis H. Grenfell was appointed the first assistant
superintendent of the Navy's Gymnastic Department in the
early 1900s.
He was instrumental in getting the much admired Swedish
system adopted by naval gymnastic schools.
After leaving the Navy, he taught in schools (including Eton
College) until 1909 when he became an H.M. Inspector of
Physical Training for the Board of Education's new medical
department.
He wanted physical education to have a respected place in the
curriculum, with fully trained teachers.

Grenfell amassed an extensive
collection of late 19th and early 20th
century books and journals on
physical education in its broadest
sense and donated it to the Board of
Education in 1934.
The Department for Education,
deposited the Collection (which takes
up14 metres of shelving) with the
Institute in 1992.
The Grenfell Collection

The Official Publications

Institute of EducationThe Official Publications
Collection

About the Off Pubs Collection
 This is an almost comprehensive collection of official
reports, taking up 200 metres of shelving of print resources
on legislation and other publications on education and
related subjects for all parts of the United Kingdom.
 Publications of semi-official education organisations
(quangos) are included, as are those of other groups (such as
political parties and trade unions), when they relate to
education.
 The earliest documents date from the Government's first
involvement in education from the 1850s, and new items are
added to the collection as they appear.

School Histories Collection
college and university

About the School Histories
Collection
 The School Histories
Collections has c. 1700
books from the early part of
the 20th century to the
present time.
 The histories, often written
by former pupils /
educationalists, tell the
stories of individual schools
and their communities
across Britain.
 Schools range from local
village schools to secondary
modern, grammar,
comprehensive and public
(private) schools
 This collection provides a
wealth of information about
all aspects of school life
including the impact of the
wars on British schools.

“As the war continued more men were
called up, and in September 1916, Mr.
Strubell, the headmaster, reported:
‘Out of the seven male teachers in
the school only Mr. Green [an
uncertificated assistant who was
medically unfit for service] and
myself remain.’
At a time when food was short, the
school garden was of extra importance
….”
The School Histories

School Histories
“The war passed over us, except for rationing, as we did
not see any newspapers and of course there was no
radio or television. I remember how shocked I was in the
holiday to see a newspaper placard with the number of
casualties in the battle of Somme. The girl with the
plaits lost her brother and my brother was wounded.”
“This was wartime …. We had margarine on our bread
and the margarine in those days couldn’t possibly be
mistaken for butter. …we took it in turns – a dollop of
jam [from our tuck boxes] to disguise the margarine ….”
Shaw, A.M. (1983) When you were there Reflections on Edgehill College 1884-1984, pp. 24-25.

“In September/October 1918 the
school was closed for a total of 15 days
for blackberrying. During this time the
boys picked 18 cwt 2 qrt 14 Ib of fruit,
winning a silver cup… as well as
receiving some payment for their
efforts.
The Armistice of November 11th
brought great relief and joy to the
nation, but it was not until the new
year that the school returned to a
degree of normality.”
The School Histories
Collection at the IOE

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War and peace in the Special Collections at the UCL Institute of Education

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War and peace in the Special Collections at the UCL Institute of Education

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