Meanings of Manual Work in Radical Education

This book aims to challenge and inspire readers with lived examples of alternatives to current paradigms in education, childhood and community, through new research into two important and neglected schools in the history of progressive and radical education. Kilguhanity and Wennington schools were both founded in the UK in 1940, and at both schools pupils and staff were extensively involved in the manual work of looking after and shaping the physical fabric of the community. The author uses these case studies to challenge the tendency to equate pupil participation with ‘voice’ and ‘meetings’, and casts light on a fault line within the progressive and radical traditions. She then presents new challenges and perspectives to ongoing debates about education and childhood, unsettling the stalemate between liberal and traditional, and progressive and radical schools by uncovering a community-based alternative. The book offers a contribution to a growing body of contemporary research literature on progressive and radical education, alternative education, informal education and social pedagogy as well as across the disciplines of childhood studies, history, philosophy and geography.

Emily Charkin researches and writes about the experiences of young people growing up in radical schools and communities. She also organises an Instead of School educational experiment for home-educating families at a community woodland in East Sussex, UK.