Education in the 19th Century. its interesting to note that the affordance of what is called an elementary education (or the learning and understanding basic literacy skills) has only been available to the poorest of British citizens since 1833. Prior to this, education was either run at home, through parents who could read a little and who picked up more from the sale of chapbooks by local sellers who walked from town to town, selling ballads literature that could be sung in local pubs or copies of religious or supernatural texts such as Nixons prophesies Mother Bunches fairy tales or Mother Shipton texts. Thus it was more of an oral tradition in the relation to literature and the novel. Local stories were shared rather than written down. As education was voluntary, schools were run from local churches; and this led to many teachers doing more than one job: sometimes being both an educator and a farmhand, working where it was demanded. Also teaching was a position that many saw as a luxury, as a full education was for the elite so education for the poorest people of Britain was shaped around what their community had to offer. Schooling (in the form of elementary education) became mandatory through government legislation in 1850, (the same time as the libraries act, where books were made free to all.) but it was still was not fully enforced until 1880, where children were expected to go to school and be educated by almost qualified teachers. This was also the peak of social change in Britian with the rapid increase of urbanization the growth of the factory and the need for factory owners to have a literate workforce led to greater opportunities for advancement for the employer who could have a literate staff the employee whoi could rise within the company. (there is a graph that shows the proportional drop in illiteracy from 60% to 4% over a 20 year period at the beginning of the new education policy. Which is both shocking and amazing) This affordance of both the library and the new education of children also had constraints attached. It led to the growth of the standardization of English Grammar, in language, which led children to read a certain way spell a certain way and eventually speak in a certain way. This led to unified English (adh 2015) (where the written word and the spoken word reflected themselves) became established. In sum Free education at a point of need is hard to pin down. Generally it is thought to be only 135 years old. Which is quite sad when its thought about. However language use changes. It evolves as people exchange words create language contact reshape language through new affiordances (such as the text message) or find easier ways to explain and express themselves. English came into being from a position of dialect diversity; hybrid languages that mixed together with other cultures and moved on. The standard began by William Caxton and the printing press, what reshaped over time is being reshaped again by the new affordances of globalization language contact hybridization homogenization and the simple fact that English as a language uses the easy way out to seek a definition over the use of more complex and more analytically accurate phrases that come out of the Latin and the Greek. Ergo with every affordance there is a constraint, with every constraint there is a greater chance of creativity which leads to effectivities being explored. Language evolves through creativity.
Posted on: Mon, 15 Dec 2014 14:55:19 +0000