Shaping a Nation - Gaynor Haliday - diskuze

It was in 1869 that Bradford MP Edward Miall who, standing alongside that champion of Elementary Education, William Edward Forster, proclaimed that without the influence of women, men were naught. ‘Happy will be the day throughout the whole world,’ he said, ‘when woman takes up her real and proper position.’ It was a good point. Women have influence over their offspring from the day they are born, whether that is in lessons in morality, support in adversity or counsel in decision making. Not only that – the voluntary elementary schools that were educating children at Miall’s time were mainly staffed by women. And the situation was about to improve; women’s influence was to expand further. A year after Miall’s speech, Forster’s Elementary Education Act didn’t just pave the way for compulsory and free education for all, it also gave women their first real opportunity to have their voices heard politically by being elected to school boards. And, with their significance in educating future generations from their earliest schooldays, women’s soft power was to be the bedrock of developing hearts and minds for ever. Although education management, methods and styles continue to evolve, education is always a key concern for any government. It was future prime minister Tony Blair who, almost 130 years after Forster’s Act, stated his three main priorities for government were ‘Education, Education a
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