Year: 2002
Type: article
Abstract: What makes good socie/}'?I answer, in one word, real fellowship. (vVilliam Hazliu -On Coffee House Politicians)During the early years of the Industrial Revolution a new pursuit surfilccd -youth work.Gradually it developed a distinctive mode of intervention and focus so that by the end of the nineteenth century it had acquired a recognisable style and elan.II embodied a distinctive approach to work with young people.This approach was characterized by an emphasis on relationships and voluntary participation; a commitment to association; a beliei Ihat practitioners should be approachable; have faith in people and be trying to live good lives; and a concern with the education, and more broadly the welfare of young people (see Jeffs, 2001; Doyle and Smith, forthcoming).Here we will explore the nature of that uniqueness and the extraordinary extent to which contemporary practice in Britain and Nonhern Ireland has lost touch wilh key aspects of this heritage.Pioneers of youth vvork entered a burgeoning field of aClivity.The lale eighteenth and nineteenth cenlury witnessed a phenomenal growth in charitable \vork.Many, especially women, gave prodigious ilmounts of time and money 10 charity.One sludy of middle-class family budgets, for example, found more was spent on charily than on rent.clothing, servants' wages or any 01 her item apart from food (Prochaska, 1980: 21).Motives varie<:l but predominately individuals were responding to the problems of poverty, family disruption, poor housing, disease, ignorance and 'spiritual decay' emanating from rapid industrialisation and urbanisation.Groups and organisations proliferated many of whom catered specifically for Ihe social, educational, welfare and spiritual needs of young people.Some were local enterprises, others offshools oj the emerging national youth organisations such as the Sunday School Movemenl or the YMCA.Wisely neophyte youlh workers learnt from predecessors and contemporaries.The more adventurous avoided unthinking replication -partly because they perceived weaknesses in the ways existing programmes functioned, but also for the reason Ihat many aimed to engage with young people untouched by olher agencies.This independence helped ensure youth work emerged as a discrete entity distinctive for reasons besides the age of the clients.Eventually a form of intervention sufficiently unique to secure a niche of its own emerged.As a consequence it became realistic to talk of youth work (and youth workers) in ways that assumed a listener ( oruser) understood what it did, what it sought to achieve and what values it embraced.lotJ/h ..< PoliCl'/~54J€" No: 76 Schooling and visiting The niche youlh work occupied was located between two more seli-assured and substantive forms of intervention inlo Ihe lives of working class young l>eople.The firsl oi Ihese was Ihe inslitution and, in particular.the school and residcnlial home.Both were dcsigm.-'Cl 10 control.manage and reconstruct working class young people.Prior to the 18705 school allendance was nol compulsory and a high proportion opted for independent 'dame schools'.These opera led on a flexible basis Ihat acknowledged the needs of the family, and the desire of both children and parents for Ihe former 10 move in and out of the labour market as and \-"hen vvork became available, and when family poverty slipulated they earn a wage.By 1870 employment opportunities for vuung people were rapidly declining.This resuht.'Ct in widespread alarm amongst reformers and Ihe 'respectable classes' Ihat the majoril)' of young f>eople were neither in work or schoof but oul on Ihe streets.Calls for Ihe inlroduclion of compulsory school attendance eventually became irresislible.However, where employers stilf required cheap malleable child labour 10 suslain praHl levels part-lime schooling was relained or schools combining work wilh instruction were established.Compulsion and the wholesale warehousHlg of young people led to the crealion of a battery oi laws and an army of oiiicials 10 enforce observance.Schooling on this scale also required unprecedented state funding.This was tied to the adoption of a bureaucraiic.tandardised curriculum enforced b)' a malevolent system of inspection designed to ensure compliance and Ihe cowering of Ihe teaching force.It produced a brutish, anti-intellectual, cut-price contemptible system for Ihe schooling of workiOg class children (Roberts.1976; Horn, 1979; Hendricks.1994; Davin, 1996).For those \.vhose parents were too poor or unwilling to care for them.who transgressed the law, or refused to attend regularly there existed a parallel system oi residential inslitutions.Run by the Poor law Guardians or religious organiscltions these places were even more brutal.more terrifying than Ihe worsl state school.These Bastilles.along with enforced migration provided the ultimate deterrents for keeping working class )'oungslers in order, Alongside these activities Ihere emerged a range of educational initiatives aimed at reaching those who did not attend.or had limited full-time schooling -and two of Ihese are of I>rofound significance for the emergence of youth work.Sunday schooling oflen entailed the use of more informal and engaging programmes of activities (after the work of Hannah More and others) -and involved elements Ihat \"'e could now name as youth work.These schools allraded substantial numbers of young people.In 1851 over two million children were enrolled in such institutions (around three-quarters of working class children aged 5-15 years) Claquer.1976: 44l.Also arising out of an evangelical stream, ragged schools were an important site of innovation.Working in the very pooresl areas, and often with lillie money,
Authors: Tony Jeffs, Mark Smith
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W15168692