Harold Rosen (educationalist)
| Harold Rosen | |
|---|---|
| Born |
June 25, 1919 Brockton, Massachusetts |
| Died | July 31, 2008 (aged 89) London, England |
Harold Rosen (25 June 1919 – 31 July 2008) was an American-born British educationalist who lived for most of his life in the UK. His particular field was the teaching of English, and he eventually became an academic at the Institute of Education, part of London University.
He was a Communist activist in the 1930s; after World War II, he became an English teacher and later a teacher trainer; he became a major figure in leftwing thinking in education after leaving the Communist Party in 1957; and he played an important part in debates and developments in the fields of language teaching and Primary education, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s.
Harold Rosen was born at Brockton, Massachusetts, on 25 June 1919. His mother, Rose, was a Communist activist from the East End of London. Her mother's father and his own father were Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, and his mother's father had joined the Social Democratic Federation, Britain's first independent socialist party. When Rosen was two years old, his parents separated, and he was taken to the East End by his mother. He was brought up in a mainly observant Jewish environment but in a strongly secular and Communist home. He recalled: "The whole family were atheists. But my grandfather had a very sophisticated approach to how to relate to the majority of people who were religious. He was very hard on religion but did not make futile gestures to offend religious people." Rosen was educated at the local state elementary and grammar schools.
In 1935, Rosen joined the Young Communist League (Britain), youth wing of the Communist Party of Great Britain. There he met Connie Isakofsky. Their emotional, political and professional relationship, and later marriage, were to last until her death from cancer in 1976. They had three sons, Brian (b. 1942), Alan (1944–1945) and the poet and broadcaster Michael Rosen (b. 1946).
Together Harold and Connie took part in the Battle of Cable Street in 1936, defending the East End against a march by the British Union of Fascists.
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