Talk:The Guardian of Education

The Guardian of Education is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.

This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on January 3, 2009.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
November 10, 2007	Good article nominee	Listed
December 6, 2007	Peer review	Reviewed
March 17, 2008	Featured article candidate	Promoted

Current status: Featured article

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Does anyone have an image of part of the Guardian of Education that we could use for this page? Thanks. Awadewit | talk 16:17, 26 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

GA review

I think this article is really good and really interesting. There was one big thing that bothered me about it, though. While reading the article, I was waiting to read what The Guardian was about. It took me a while to realize that all these things being attributed to Trimmer were in The Guardian, but even then I had trouble figuring out what was from that work specifically and what was from Trimmer in general. This seems to be a problem throughout the article. So we may want to deal with this first before moving on. I'm putting it on hold while we figure this out. Wrad 22:29, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Trimmer wrote everything in The Guardian, which was a periodical. I thought that was fairly clear. I used phrases such as "Trimmer's Guardian of Education" to be explicit. Awadewit | talk 22:52, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I still thought it was kind of confusing. Maybe a simple fix would be to connect Trimmer to the Guardian early in every section? Wrad 23:01, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Such sentences already exist; I'm not really sure we need to belabor the point more than this, because most of the sections repeat this idea.

Late in her life, Sarah Trimmer was prompted to publish The Guardian of Education by the flood of new children's books on the market and by her fear that those books might contain French Revolutionary values.
For the first time, reviewing children's books was taken seriously: Trimmer's over 400 reviews constituted a set of distinct and identifiable criteria regarding what was valuable in this new genre.
Trimmer's views of the French philosophers were shaped by Abbé Barruel's Memoirs, Illustrating the History of Jacobinism (1797–8) (she extracted large sections from this text into the Guardian itself) but also by her fears of the ongoing wars between France and Britain during the 1790s.
Trimmer's reviews were extraordinarily influential.

Let me know what you think. Awadewit | talk 23:07, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, so the guardian is a monthly periodical about children's literature written entirely by Trimmer? Wrad 23:09, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Quoting from the article again: Each issue of Trimmer's Guardian was divided into three sections: extracts from texts which Trimmer thought would be edifying to her adult readers, an essay by Trimmer herself commenting on an issue related to education, and reviews of children's books. Beginning a tradition that persists to this day, she divided the books she reviewed by age group: "Examination of Books for Children" (for those under fourteen) and "Books for Young Persons" (for those between fourteen and twenty-one).[8] Matthew Grenby, the foremost expert on Trimmer, estimates that the Guardian's circulation was between 1500 and 3500 copies per issue.[3] From June 1802 until January 1804, the Guardian appeared monthly; after that time, it became a quarterly. Awadewit | talk 23:12, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I think I know where I got confused. It was in the lead sentence. I guess it was a bit long and convoluted to me. Here's how I might change it:

The Guardian of Education (June 1802 – September 1806) was the first successful periodical dedicated to reviewing children's books in Britain. It was edited by eighteenth-century educationalist, children's author, and Sunday School advocate Sarah Trimmer.

I think this highlights the fact that it is a periodical better. The previous version highlighted Trimmer over the journal itself, I feel. My interpretation of the lead sentence skewed my reading of the rest of the article, since I didn't have it preset in my mind what The Guardian was. Wrad 23:18, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Changed. Awadewit | talk 23:27, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, I think that's about all I have to say, unless there's something more specific you want me to comment on. Wrad 23:30, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Not unless you have anything else to add. :) Awadewit | talk 23:33, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Alright, it passes. I really liked it. Wrad 23:43, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you!

Thanks to all of the vandal-fighters who worked hard to revert vandalism during this article's appearance on the main page! Awadewit (talk) 23:06, 3 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]