Abstract
This article stems in part from research for a doctoral thesis on the wider area of education policy as a whole in Barbados. This research exposed the influence of race and class on policy but also indicated that gender operated as a constraint on secondary education despite the commendable efforts for change initiated by some. The Swaby Commission of 1907–09, the first major local education commission of the century, for example, recognised the need to remedy the perceived deficiencies in facilities for secondary education for girls in Barbados. Over 30 years later, in assessing the provision for secondary education, the newly appointed Director of Education, Howard Hayden, pointed to the need for positive discrimination in favour of girls. This article will demonstrate that during the first half of the twentieth century there was discrimination against girls in access to public secondary education both in terms of the facilities provided, and in the means provided for taking advantage of the offering.
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Endnotes
J.E. Reece et al., ‘The System of Education in Barbados’, Great Britain Bboard of Education, Special Reports on Educational Subjects, Vol. 12 (London: Dawson, 1968), pp. 44–45.
This position is adopted by several writers who discuss the Platonic/Aristotelian models in the Western European context. See for example, Brian Holmes, Problems in Education: A Comparative Approach (London: Routledge, 1965) p. 223; Vernon Mallinson, The Western European Idea in Education (1980; Oxford: Pergamon, 1981), p. 16.
Holmes, Comparative Education: Some Considerations of Method (London: Allen, 1981), p. 124. See his discussion of Plato’s ‘just’ society, pp. 135–39.
Howard Hayden, The Provision for Secondary Education in Barbados, (Bridgetown, 1945) p. 5.
See, for example, Joyce Cole, Official Ideology and the Education of Women in the English-speaking Caribbean, 1834–1945, with special reference to Barbados, in J. Massiah (ed.), Women and Education, (ISER, University of the West Indies, 1982), p. 3, and Carl Campbell, ‘Good Wives and Mothers: A Preliminary Survey of Women and Education in Trinidad, 1834–1981’, Social History Workshop, November 1985, Women and Society, Seminar, No. 2 (Department of History, UWI, Mona), p. 1.
Great Britain, Colonial Office, Report of the West India Royal Commission (hereafter Moyne) (London, HMSO, 1945), pp. 217–20.
Report of a Commission appointed to consider problems of secondary and primary education in Trinidad, Barbados, the Leeward and Windward Islands. Proposals of the Commission relating to Barbados (London, HMSO, 1933), p. 109.
Margot Badran, ‘The Origins of Feminism in Egypt’, in Arina Angerman et al. (eds), Current Issues in Women’s History (London: Routledge, 1989), p. 156.
West Indies Royal Commission. Proceedings of Investigations in Barbados (Bridgetown: Advocate, 1939), Eleventh Day. Evidence in the booklet was reproduced from the newspaper the Barbados Advocate.
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© 1995 Department of History, U.W.I., Mona, Jamaica
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Mayers, J. (1995). Access to Secondary Education for Girls in Barbados, 1907–43. In: Shepherd, V., Brereton, B., Bailey, B. (eds) Engendering History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-07302-0_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-07302-0_14
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