No "Fear of Flying"? Worrals of the WAAF, Fiction, and Girls' Informal Wartime Education

Autor/in	Spencer, Stephanie
Titel	No "Fear of Flying"? Worrals of the WAAF, Fiction, and Girls' Informal Wartime Education
Quelle	In: Paedagogica Historica: International Journal of the History of Education, 52 (2016) 1-2, S.137-153 (17 Seiten)Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0030-9230
DOI	10.1080/00309230.2015.1133667
Schlagwörter	Fiction; Books; Females; War; World History; Armed Forces; Informal Education; Educational History; Role Models; Womens Education; Feminism; Childrens Literature + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Fiktion; Book; Buch; Monographie; Monografie; Weibliches Geschlecht; Krieg; Weltgeschichte; Military; Militär; Informelle Bildung; Nichtformale Bildung; History of education; Bildungsgeschichte; Identifikationsfigur; 'Women''s education'; Frauenbildung; Feminismus; 'Children''s literature'; Kinderliteratur
Abstract	This article focuses on the series of 11 books about a young female pilot, "Worrals of the WAAF," by W.E. Johns, creator of Biggles. The Worrals books were published from 1941 when recruitment for the Women's Auxiliary Air Force was falling. Johns chose to ignore that the WAAF supported pilots through their work on the ground and did not themselves fly. The article discusses how historians of education can draw on fiction in order to identify aspects of informal education, especially during wartime, when so many children's formal schooling was disrupted or non-existent. Drawing on Erica Jong's 1970s metaphor of "flying" as representative of female freedom, it is possible to read Worrals' character as a role model for teenage girls. The conundrum of why Johns chose to put Worrals in the WAAF, rather than in Air Transport with the likes of Amy Johnson, is further explored in the light of evidence that a number of WAAF were seconded to the SOE. It concludes that fiction read alongside a range of other evidence offers a rich source for the historian engaged in a search for the gendered nature of education beyond the classroom. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2020/1/01