London Children in War-Time Oxford. A Survey of Social and Educational Results of Evacuation
a Harnett House study oroup. ueonrey cumoerlege, Oxford University Press.
Some of the facts about evacuation were gathered hastily under the pressure of events or with an eye to urgent practical decisions. This study of London children in Oxford city and county undertaken during the years 1941-3 is a more leisured consideration of what can be learned from this migration of city-dwellers to the countryside. The authors, working under the chairmanship of Professor W. G. S. Adams, were primarily interested in the meaning of evacuation from the standpoint of the child’s educational development, considered in its widest sense.
In spite of considerable differences in material and method, some of the main conclusions are strikingly similar to those found in the Cambridge Evacuation Survey.* The 319 children all aged over eleven represented a much wider variety of London areas than the larger number coming only from two London Boroughs which was studied in the Cambridge inquiry, and some of the children studied in Oxford were with their mothers, or were living in a camp school. The smaller number is to some extent compensated for by useful comparative groups of local Oxford children and of London children who remained at home.
” The Cambridge Evacuation SurveyEdited by
Susan Isaacs. Methuen. London. 1941.
A combination of quantitative measurement, sometimes used too uncritically, and of well chosen illustration, the study throws light, with a refreshing lack of scientific pretentiousness, upon a number of questions of importance to family life, social relationships and education. Both the Oxford and Cambridge study provide remarkable evidence of the adaptability of children. A large proportion of boys and girls in both areas, already of course “selected” by influences difficult to weigh, were able to make reasonably good adjustments, at any rate on the surface. That this was not done without cost was shown by the clinical study of some of the children in Cambridge ; more may be learned of this in the future. There is further confirmation of the relation between the child’s resilience and his confidence in the enduring love of his parents, in the higher proportion of successful children whose parents maintained close contact with them by visits and letters.
A particularly valuable chapter on delinquency shows that there was in this area, at any rate, no reason whatever for blaming upon the newcomers the steep rise in delinquency. It was found, moreover, that some of the London children coming from homes calculated to produce delinquents settled satisfactorily in fosterhomes where they were offered unusual understanding. This suggests the immense value of research which is based upon the study of satisfactory social behaviour under apparently adverse circumstances.
In both these surveys there is encouragement for those who believe that there are in the community many homes in which the children of other people may be welcomed and well cared for.
The devotion of children to the familiar is apparent all through the study. Few of these children would choose to live elsewhere than in London, though many write with real delight of the countryside. Nor are they lacking in social observation and comparison. ” Oxford is divided into two parts wrote the fourteen year old son of a policeman, ” master and serfs, the college people and gentry being first, and the working class people working for them, whereas in London everybody is the same as everyone else.”
There is evidence that teachers and children alike, sharing the creation of their own education, discovered new interests and resources. This experience is used to support the view that every child would gain from a country department of his school in which he could spend in a residential community two or three terms of his school life.
This small book is excellent value and a good illustration of what may be accomplished by a team of field workers under able direction. S.C.B.
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