The Testimony of Miss Carpenter: social construction of children in poverty in the Report of the 1861 Newcastle Commission

The 1861 Report of the Newcastle Commission set out arguments for a state-funded education system of elementary education aimed at the mass of the working class population and made recommendations regarding structure and content. A formal, government-commissioned national inquiry, it surveyed past documentation, engaged assistant commissioners to examine existing educational provision regionally and internationally, and took witness testimony from those involved in existing provision. Drawn from doctoral work, this paper examines the testimony of one of the report’s respondents, Miss Carpenter. It presents a critical discourse analysis of her testimony and how it was framed within the report. The concept of discourse as social practice that becomes enacted by individuals and groups as social identities, and in structural power relations between social groups (Fraser, 1997, p. 380), underpins the methodology. Similarly, Foucault’s approach to historical discourse analysis, which draws out lines of enquiry from texts to discourses and to everyday practices of relations of power (Deacon, 2002), informs the study in locating and examining educational discourses within wider social and historical contexts. The methodological tools are drawn from Wodak’s discourse-historical approach (DHA) to critical discourse analysis (CDA). DHA understands texts as being socially embedded data in which discourse participants position themselves and others in ways that exercise power through the control of language (Reisigl and Wodak (2009). Close examination of this vignette from the report, helps to focus a lens on how a particular social construction of children living in poverty was established and embedded in the political narrative surrounding the development of state education. In particular, a harsh and unforgiving framing of families in poverty, and a privileging of voices and perspectives along class and gender lines, becomes apparent. McCulloch (2011) speaks of the role of the history of education in examining the social memories of systems. This study, in looking beyond the ‘landmark’ 1870 Education Act, seeks to do just that.