Students, Service and Sacrifice: Wartime Education, Adolescent Experiences and Understandings of the First World War

Abstract

In this study of young students at the Harris Institute technical college during the First World War, Vernon & Wilkinson offer an evaluation of the aims, methodology and outcomes of a centenary community engagement project undertaken by volunteers. Their findings reveal new opportunities for young people during the war, with important short and long term legacies. The largely positive life-stories revealed challenge conventional service/sacrifice discourses based on the war dead and suggest alternative understandings. An assessment of the volunteers’ interpretation of their findings, however, in turn challenges the impact of centenary commemorative activities on the popular memory of the First World War.