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I am not the first member of my family to leap over a wall. Nearly four hundred years ago, my ancestor, Thomas Baldwin of Diddlebury, leaped to freedom from behind the walls of the Tower of London, where he had been imprisoned for taking part in a plot for the escape of Mary Queen of Scots. His name, with an inscription and the date ‘July 1585’ can still be seen where he carved it on the wall of his cell in the Beauchamp Tower. Later, he added a motto to his coat-of-arms, Per Deum meum transilio murum— ‘By the help of my God I leap over the wall’. It has been the family motto of the Baldwins ever since; but the wall that I leapt over was a spiritual and not a material obstacle. In 1914, my cousin, William Sparrow, who disapproved of my entering the convent, wrote to me: “ Knowing you as I do, I can safely predict that it will be with you as with another fair and foolish female, whose unwisdom caused her to languish long behind prison walls. Your End will be your Beginning. I commend these words, with those of the family motto, to your meditations. Taken together, they may suggest a course of action in years to come.” In the following pages I have tried to describe what happened when my cousin’s rather ambiguous prophecy was fulfilled. It is a rash and foolhardy undertaking, in the circumstances, for I really know nothing about anything, except, perhaps, what goes on behind ‘high convent walls’. My only excuse is that so many, and such different kinds of people, have urged me to attempt it. Some of them said to me, ‘Because of your past environment, your angle is unusual. It should interest people. You ought to write about it.’ Others simply bombarded me with questions. It is chiefly on their account that I have embarked upon this book. Some of the remarks made to me revealed such fantastically wrong ideas about nuns and convents that I began to feel something ought to be done to put the monastic ideal in a truer perspective for those who know little’ or nothing about it. So I have tried to write accurately and fairly about life in a strictly enclosed convent, as I myself experienced it. To do this it was necessary to describe not only the wonderful and exalted spiritual ideal which inspires that life, but also certain aspects of it which, for various reasons, may perhaps leave something to be desired. I do not feel that I have done my subject justice. If, however, these pages help to straighten out even a few of the curiously crooked notions which so many people still appear to retain about convents, I shall be well satisfied.
'School Choice' and the forming of citizens for responsible freedom are two of the most hotly debated topics in educational policy. International comparison offers perspective on the effects of alternative policies. This book profiles – historically and currently – two countries which give strong support to parental choice (The Netherlands and Belgium) and two others that maintain a strong State role in controlling education (Germany and Austria). Charles L. Glenn draws upon Dutch, French, and German sources to contrast how the Dutch and Belgians came – over the 19th and 20th centuries – to entrust education to civil-society institutions with strong parental choice, while Germany and Austria maintained a predominant State role in education. Glenn illuminates the implications of these policies and the dangers that can arise when the State uses popular schooling to shape popular beliefs and loyalties. This is essential reading for policy specialists concerned with balancing school autonomy and government oversight, and with debates over parental choice of schools.

A Study in Contrasts

United States. Congress. House. Committee on Homeland Security. Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 76


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How do plagues, blockades, and world-changing innovations change social and political institutions in some, but not all, societies?
Between 1945 and 1965, the catastrophe of war—and the social and political changes it brought in its wake—had a major impact on the construction of the Soviet masculine ideal. Drawing upon a wide range of visual material, The Fate of the New Man traces the dramatic changes in the representation of the Soviet man in the postwar period. It focuses on the two identities that came to dominate such depictions in the two decades after the end of the war: the Soviet man's previous role as a soldier and his new role in the home once the war was over. In this compelling study, Claire McCallum focuses on the reconceptualization of military heroism after the war, the representation of contentious subjects such as the war-damaged body and bereavement, and postwar changes to the depiction of the Soviet man as father. McCallum shows that it was the Second World War, rather than the process of de-Stalinization, that had the greatest impact on the masculine ideal, proving that even under the constraints of Socialist Realism, the physical and emotional devastation caused by the war was too great to go unacknowledged. The Fate of the New Man makes an important contribution to Soviet masculinity studies. McCallum's research also contributes to broader debates surrounding the impact of Stalin's death on Soviet society and on the nature of the subsequent Thaw, as well as to those concerning the relationship between Soviet culture and the realities of Soviet life. This fascinating study will appeal to scholars and students of Soviet history, masculinity studies, and visual culture studies.
This volume is grounded on the latest research in empirical contrastive language studies, addressing several issues on contrasts between English and other languages. It results from an annual workshop on language contrasts, organised by the International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English (ICAME), and covers a wider range of phenomena in phraseology, discourse and pragmatics. As it relies on data from parallel or comparable corpora, it gives valuable insights into cross-linguistic differences between English and other languages, which might otherwise go unnoticed. The book will be useful to experts on language studies and advanced students with an interest in linguistics. It will serve as a catalyst to other researchers interested in the contrastive analysis of the English language. The results of the linguistic analyses described within will be valuable for practical applications in lexicography, language teaching and translation (both human and machine), including translator training.