Читать лекция по педагогике: "Разработка двух уроков по истории Великобритании" Страница 4

(Назад) (Cкачать работу)

To outsider and also to many at home Britain appeared a model community capable of resolving internal conflicts without resort to excessive force or revolution. Britain, by the norms of other nations, enjoyed high degrees of social cohesion and national unity built on consent and cooperation between the governed and the ruling order.

This sense of community survived despite the economic difficulties of the period, troubles in Ireland, labor unrest, imperial problems, religious tensions and a hard-fought political contest between competing fractions.

By the turn of the nineteenth century the country had become a mass democracy, though not one founded on the universal suffrage. It was a heavily urbanized community based increasingly on distribution and professional services for economic success.

The United Kingdom population grew by almost a third in the last three decades of the nineteenth century, a higher growth rate than for 1841 – 1871, though here the rate is influenced by the Irish famine and its aftermath.

The growth of real GNP was impressively high throughout the whole Victorian period, and especially the Later Victorian time. It had more than doubled in the period to 1871 and, in spite of growing anxieties about Britain’s weakening competitive position it nevertheless managed an 83 per cent increase to 1901. Consequently, national product per capita also exhibited a steady growth.

If anything, there were many indications in the pre-1867 heritage to suggest that change in Britain would generate much more turbulence than was experienced by the late Victorians. In the large number of respects the period is remarkable”.There should be a report too, exactly like in the lesson one. The probable topic could be such an event as the “Rise of the professions”:

“A phenomenon which gathered considerable pace in the Later Victorian period was the emergence of a substantial and powerful professional groups, or classes, -though the latter, perhaps, is not quite the right word – within the British middle class. The emergence of the large group of professional occupations was naturally a function of more global developments in the nineteenth-century Britain: the growth maturation of the world’s first modern capitalist economy; an increasing, and an increasingly prosperous, population, together with it’s concentration in urban settlements; and the diversification of the industrial structure, with an increased emphasis upon the service sectors.

The growing urbanization of the United Kingdom also contributed to the rise of the professions. From the ranks of the expanding “urbanized” group came not only those who retained non-industrial tasks of the traditional professional occupations – religion, law, medicine and education – but also those who helped to professionalise other occupations connected with the demands of the post-industrial world: accounting, surveying, civil and mechanical engineering, and so on. The “rise of the professions”, then, was very much part, and a key part, of the growth of the middle class and the emergence of what has been termed the “service class”.

Numbers in the population group which can be entitled “professional occupations and their subordinate services” in the United Kingdom are found to rise from 345000 in 1861 to 515000 in 1881 and 735000 in 1901, an increase of 113 per cent, 1861 – 1901.

One should pay attention to the implications for Britain of the rise of a professional culture. The professions, though growing, remained numerically small, about 4 per cent of the labor force by the year 1900. But there is abundant evidence to suggest that this group wielded a disproportionate amount of influence in the Later Victorian society. In well-known among the British researchers formulation, professionals, by esposing the ideal of the educated gentleman, helped to perpetuate the pre-industrial distinction between the gentlemen and the players. With the former predominating, this encouraged the incorporation of industrialists into a refashioned elite.

As a result, the professions, being numerically small, still expanded their numbers and economical influence and came to dominate the economic, social and political life of the country.

The question is how did the professions manage to achieve their exalted station? It is supposed that they did so because the state lent them authority, specialist services being deemed essential to the efficient running of the society.

Areas of increased state responsibility such as, for example, public health required specialized knowledge. In turn the state permitted individual professions to manage their own internal affairs, to control entry and enforce standards of competence and behaviour. The professions, for their part, posited claims to privileged status on the posession of exceptional responsibility and respectability as evidenced by the requirements of training, qualifying examinations and obedience to the canons of controlling bodies.

The professions provided the vital bridge between the dignified and efficient sections of the community. They formed the cornerstone of a refashioned social and political hierarchy, a new elite which managed the state effectively. The potential British dissidents found themselves deprived of the support and leadership of the bulk of the professional middle class, which preferred its position as a group accorded financial and occupational recognition by the existing state.

The rise of the professions pointed both forwards and backwards: backwards in that professionalisation failed to shake off the trappings of aristocratic values; forwards in that it encouraged a greater degree of government intervention in the economy, the hallmark of the modern twentieth-century state.”Finally, there should be a listening comprehension since all the

Похожие работы