A Social History of Student Volunteering

Georgina Brewis’s study of volunteering by students in the long twentieth century is a very welcome, timely and engaging addition to both the history of education and the history of voluntary action. As Brewis points out, degree-possessing modern historians seem reluctant to examine the environment in which they themselves first gained their knowledge and skills. This may be, as Brewis suggests here, a result of the way in which being a student has come to be seen as a privilege that has to be repaid to society. Yet the study of university students should not be seen as a solipsistic indulgence: the growth of mass higher education in twentieth-century Britain and elsewhere in the industrialised world demands our attention. The book begins with the settlement-house initiatives of the 1880s and 1890s, designed to get the privileged student body out of the cloisters and into the deprived areas of British towns and cities. Settlement houses provided a community and a base from which students and graduates could learn about the pressures of urban working-class life and apply their skills to help where they could. This was an important formative experience for those who were interested in careers in public life. It also shaped, and was shaped by, the growth of social-science and social-work research and professional training, especially in the twentieth century. Student voluntary action was also shaped by predominantly Christian understandings of the need for social service. Brewis pays especial attention to the Student Christian Movement and its work within Britain and its empire, and beyond. Ostensibly, such work was concerned with proselytising and channelling student energies in constructive ways, but it also provided students in Britain with a network of other students around the globe. Such networks would prove vital in engaging students with their counterparts overseas, particularly in the inter-war period

Action (physics · Formative assessment · Indulgence · Media studies · Pedagogy · Political science · Privilege (computing · Settlement (finance · Social history (medicine · Sociology · Law · Medicine · Social Work Education and Practice · Social Work