Educational History: John Pounds and the Ragged Schools

John Pounds was born on June 17th 1766 and died on January 1st 1839. In his time he did unfathomable amounts of work to improve the lives of many people, particularly children, in the city of Portsmouth. It is arguable that this humble man, ‘the crippled cobbler of Portsmouth’, has played one of the most […] Read more...

The Medium is the Means: The Industrial Educational Complex

We now are in an age where we must deconstruct everything in terms of the forces of industry and economics.  This includes the industrial educational complex, the dominating force of finance in organised learning. Marshall McLuhan is very well known for developing communications theory, and is famously attributed with the expression “The medium is the […] Read more...

Education History: A Brief History of Ragged Schools

Ragged schools is a name commonly given after about 1840 to the many independently established 19th century charity schools in the United Kingdom which provided entirely free education and, in most cases, food, clothing, lodging and other home missionary services for those too poor to pay.  In many ways the movement embodied the notion of […] Read more...