Talk:History of infant schools in Great Britain

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History of infant schools in Great Britain is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.

This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on March 7, 2025.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
August 15, 2024	Good article nominee	Listed
October 31, 2024	Featured article candidate	Not promoted
January 3, 2025	Featured article candidate	Promoted
A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on September 5, 2024. The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that nine-year-old children were sometimes employed to help teach younger children in infant schools* in the 1840s?*
Current status: Featured article

History Low‑importance

	History portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject History, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the subject of History on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.HistoryWikipedia:WikiProject HistoryTemplate:WikiProject Historyhistory
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Schools Low‑importance

	Schools portal This article is related to WikiProject Schools, a collaborative effort to write quality articles about schools around the world. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page.SchoolsWikipedia:WikiProject SchoolsTemplate:WikiProject Schoolsschool
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England Low‑importance

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Wales Low‑importance

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Scotland Low‑importance

	Scotland portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Scotland, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Scotland and Scotland-related topics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ScotlandWikipedia:WikiProject ScotlandTemplate:WikiProject ScotlandScotland
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This article has previously been nominated to be moved. Please review the prior discussions if you are considering re-nomination.

Logs and discussions:

Move logs: Infant school
History of infant schools

Discussions:

Moved, 30 October 2024, from Infant school to History of infant schools.
Moved, 31 October 2024, from History of infant schools to History of infant schools in Great Britain.

Article scope

The article manages not to mention that England and Scotland have, and have aways had, entirely different education systems, curriculums, examinations and legislation; they have almost literally nothing in common. Isn't this rather a major omission? The article seems mainly to be about the English system but mentions a couple of Scottish examples. How on earth did this make it through FAC and TFA without anyone noticing? John (talk) 17:17, 6 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

John I looked for information on Scotland when I was researching the article. Very little was available (as is mentioned the term doesn't appear to be used their anymore) but what I did find I included and there wasn't enough to split of into a separate coherent article or section. I asked for reviews on the Scotland project talk page when it was up for FAC the first time (see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Scotland/Archive_13#Featured_article_review_of_Infant_School).--Llewee (talk) 10:14, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I question the relevance of the picture at the top to Great Britain, the fact the artist is French (with no wiki article in English) makes me suspicious, as does the mention of kindergarten materials. That could have been any infant school in western Europe (Germany started the kindergarten system). Yes, it was published in an English newspaper but was the picture related to an article on British infant schools?Cloptonson (talk) 06:29, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I searched in the article for Great Britain, and found no image. You seem to mean the lead image. Originally the scope of the article was more general, and it is a lively image, - I think it is a good visual introduction to the topic wherever it was taken. Or which one would you like to see on top? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:26, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Cloptonson, Renouard spent time in London and did illustrations of life there. Kindergarten materials were used at infant schools in Britian during that time period. The image also appears in a chapter about infant schools in Britain from the book Empire, Education, and Indigenous Childhoods: Nineteenth-Century Missionary Infant Schools in Three British Colonies.--Llewee (talk) 10:35, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. I stand enlightened. I did wonder if the artist was working in this country.Cloptonson (talk) 19:04, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Issues with the article

Parsing through this article, I noticed some issues with some of the text, with certain portions reading like an essay. Given that this is a featured article, I am surprised that so many issues are present here. Nonetheless, I tagged some of the more problematic areas, which I will also try to resolve. As it stands, I find it questionable that the article currently meets featured article status, but I would like to give editors some time to help out first before I consider nominating the article for a featured article review. The tags may seem excessive, but the goal is to highlight parts of the article that are most troublesome. Dobbyelf62 (talk) 01:50, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Dobbyelf62, I'm happy to discuss if there are any issues you feel need to be dealt with. It appears your concerns are about the "Theory and motivation" and "Evolution" sections of the article. Those sections include a lot of opinions from historians but I try to present them as neutrally as possible.--Llewee (talk) 13:02, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the key is to ensure that statements are attributed to the proper individual. In terms of some of the other issues that I have tagged, I would like the first sentence of the Background section to be more specific in detailing which skills were needed for work and home life.

There is also some editorializing present in the first sentence of the second paragraph, which talks about the effects of the industrial and agricultural revolutions on children. Rather than explicitly label these effects as disruptive, I would instead prefer to omit this sentence for the purpose of neutrality. It is not up to us to determine what constitutes a disruptive effect on children, and the remaining sentences in that paragraph largely get the point across anyways. Elsewhere in the Background section, the final sentence of the first paragraph says that there are examples of institutions similar to infant schools in the late 18th century, but none are listed. This can be resolved by listing one or two examples to back that statement up. I hope this can provide a decent starting point. Thank you for being open to suggestions to (hopefully) improve the article. Dobbyelf62 (talk) 20:10, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]