Harold Rosen (1919-2008) was the father of Michael Rosen and the husband of Connie Rosen.
He was a secondary school teacher and later a professor of English in Education at the Institute of Education.
A photo of Harold age 26. The photo was taken on the 14th of August 1945.
Harold was born in Brockton, Massachusetts to Jewish parents on June 25, 1919. At the age of two, he came to the East End of London with his mother and siblings. His mother returned to her parents' house just behind the Royal London Hospital. She was an active Communist, joining the British Party as soon as she arrived back, having left the United States after her marriage failed. Harold's father was a union organiser in America for the boot and shoe workers.[1]
In 1935, Harold joined the Young Communist League, where he met Connie Rosen. Their marriage lasted until Connie's death in 1976. After her death, Harold remarried two years later. Both of them were brought up in the East End of London. Harold's grandfather's family had emigrated from Bialystok to London where his parents met, before moving to America.
In 1937, he went to study English at University College London and after graduating in 1940, he took short-term teaching jobs in England. Officially an American citizen, he was called up into the US army in 1945. He served in the Education Corps for two years, with the rank of captain, working in Frankfurt and Berlin.
Returning to civilian life in 1947, Harold took a teaching qualification at the University of London Institute of Education, and began his teaching career in schools in Leicestershire and Middlesex, where he worked at Harrow Weald grammar. However, his career was impeded by the blacklisting of Communists practised by his local authority. He was a founder member of the London Association for the Teaching of English (LATE), the first local organisation dedicated to the improvement of English teaching by practitioners and the spur for the establishment of the National Association for the Teaching of English.
When he left Walworth, Harold began a long career in teacher education, first at Borough Road Teacher Training College in Isleworth, Middlesex, and then in the English department of the London Institute of Education. There, he developed a formidable reputation as a collaboratist education theorist. Harold left the Communist Party in 1957, but he remained a strong socialist until his death in 2008.
