Lord John Russell and the Origins of the Committee of Council on Education
In February 1839 Lord John Russell put before the House of Commons a set of proposals for governmental action in the field of popular education. It was a contentious move by the Home Secretary, and the bitter political tussle which it provoked was predictable. In the context of a flagging ministry facing an opposition already scenting office, it seems almost cavalier. The well-known outcome was the formation of a new executive agency for the management of the state's role in the education of the people, the Committee of Privy Council on Education. The whole incident attracts notice in several dimensions of historical commentary. Social and political narratives must record it; students of Whiggery, Russell, reform or radicalism, must give it place and plausibility; it is a turning point for the historian of education; and it provides a case study for the investigation of government growth in the nineteenth century.
Education for the People
TOTAL war is accustoming us to the necessity for radical changes in the pattern of our society. After the War we shall not be able to go back to our old way of living. We may try to reinstate the old order, leaving it to the inevitable next cataclysm to teach us what the present one fails to do, or we can go forward with imagination and resolution to create a new order. The first few years after the War will be crucial. Will the resolution we are showing now be spent, or baffled, as it was after the War of 1914–18, or will it carry us on to the creation of a new pattern of living in which war will not be inevitable ? The decision depends a good deal on people thinking now what we shall have to do. Some people are thinking now, and though we are not yet within sight of winning the War, it is not premature to be doing so. In the field of education, the officers of the Board of Education have their plan of reconstruction, but for not very convincing reasons it remains a secret plan. Dr. Spencer does a public service by making public now his plan for a ‘new deal’ in education.Education for the PeopleBy Dr. F. H. Spencer. Pp. vii + 306. (London: George Routledge and Sons, Ltd., 1941.) 7s. 6d. net.
Urban Identities and Catastrophe: Izmir and Salonica at the End of the Ottoman Empire*
Two huge fires dramatically influenced the urban development of Salonica and Izmir, in 1917 and in 1922, respectively. These catastrophes occurred after the Ottoman Empire fell, and Salonica and Izmir had shifted into new national contexts. The fires mainly destroyed the districts that were transformed during the late‐Ottoman period. These districts became the cosmopolitan façades of modern Izmir and Salonica. The post‐fires' tabula rasa provided an opportunity for Greek and Turkish politicians and European planners to change the urban identity of both cities. Moreover, the Lausanne Treaty of 1923 transformed their multicultural societies also. Reconstruction plans had been thought to de‐Ottomanize and remove the previous idea of the towns and their multiplicity, interpreting new cultural and nationalist feeling. Here, I emphasize how modernity was interpreted before and after the fires, and point out contradictions between ideological aspects of planning and how the first urban districts were built during the 1920s.