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The Schooled Voice: Sound and Sense in the Victorian Schoolroom

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Published/Copyright: March 5, 2015
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Abstract

This article examines the vocality of teachers and schoolchildren in nineteenth-century English education discourse. Drawing on Andrew Bell’s model of the monitorial schools of the early nineteenth century, as well as the annual reports of the school inspectorate for the Committee of Council on Education, the article investigates the disaggregation of vocal sound and linguistic meaning in speech training and reading instruction in the writing of the mass schoolroom. Of particular interest is the development of notions of the teacher’s voice as a potentially powerful vehicle for the development of moral selfhood. Children’s speaking voices were understood as crucial indices of an effective pedagogy, something which the Revised Code of 1862 simultaneously enshrined and misrecognized.


Corresponding author: Prof. Janice Schroeder, Department of English Language and Literature, Carleton University, 1812 Dunton Tower, 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, Ontario, K1S 5B6, Canada, e-mail:

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Published Online: 2015-3-5
Published in Print: 2015-3-1

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