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Student Debt in American Society

The intense debate around American student loans has largely been cast in moral terms—fairness, forgiveness, desert. Nick Burns instead provides a hard-headed analysis of the political and economic interests that built a credit pyramid out of higher education.

Memories of Learning

From primary school to women’s liberation, reflections on learning as struggle and teaching as a way of opening paths through the world.

In the Academic Counting-House

Leading opponent of the British university’s subordination to metrics, bureaucracy and capital; heir to the English moralists and foe of declinism. What kind of critic is Stefan Collini?

Seminar versus MOOC

Origins of the modern academic seminar in Germany’s university system, and its contrasts with the Massive Open Online Courses that have entranced the world of commercialized higher learning.

False Indignation

Russell Jacoby on Guy Oakes and Arthur Vidich, Collaboration, Reputation and Ethics in American Academic Life. The relationship between Gerth and Mills in the retrospect of orthodox sociology.

The Thatcher Government’s Attack on Higher Education in Historical Perspective

“Some ten millennia separated the agricultural revolution from the emergence of Britain as the First Industrial Nation. A mere two centuries has seen the supersession of the first industrial revolution by the second. This has not yet acquired a definitive title. However, if we may denominate an era . . .” read more

Tribalism in British Education

“R.H. Tawney called it ‘the hereditary curse upon English education’, Anthony Crosland ‘the strongest remaining bastion of class privilege’, Neil Kinnock ‘the very cement in the wall that divides British society’. No other country has anything quite like the British public school system, just as no other country . . .” read more

From the Upper West Side to Wick Episcopi

“don’t go barefoot to a snake-stomping! loosen your wigs! It’s no use hooking them both on the same circuit— The English and American traditions. It won’t take the play out of the loose eccentrics. Cattlemen, sheepmen and outlaws, that’s American writing, And few enough . . .” read more

Socialist Reconstruction of Schooling: A Comment

“The appearance of two articles on education in a single issue of New Left Review (192) is indicative of the mood and spirit triggered by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Apparently, the time has come to take education more seriously and to give up the assumption that . . .” read more

On Socialist Optimism

“We live in a period unprecedented in its possibilities for the development of socialism. With the collapse of the command-administrative system in eastern Europe and the states of the former Soviet Union, it may be hoped that, East and West, Saint-Simonian fantasies can be put aside and the . . .” read more

Dewey-eyed Optimism: The Possibility of Democratic Education

“In 1983, I ended an article about education after four years of Thatcherism by quoting Raymond Williams from The Long Revolution. The old privileges and barriers had gone, he had argued in 1961. The question was now ‘whether we replace them by the free play of the market, . . .” read more

What Did I Do During Thatcherism?

“For all the moral claptrap, Thatcherism entered my personal life by way of a temptation or bribe. In 1982 I was grinding away at an academic career. I had been at it since the early sixties and, like most of my colleagues, was gasping for early retirement. To . . .” read more

Itard and his Savage

“The remarkable story of the re-education of the ‘savage’ of Aveyron, and the pedagogic methods devised by his teacher, Dr Itard, still influence many of the techniques used in the training of backward children today, more than a century and a half later. The situation is paradoxical in . . .” read more

Primary School

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Statement of Aims

“For socialists in Britain, no task is now more important and urgent than the reassertion, by word and deed, of socialist principles and purposes.” read more

Secondary Modern

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Introduction to Gramsci

“Antonio Gramsci’s essay on education, which we print below, was written in prison in 1926. We publish it, not out oj piety, but as a contribution to socialist discussion of education. For Gramsci’s preoccupations in this text coincide significantly with many problems which are still at the centre . . .” read more

'English for the Rejected'; 'Visions of Life'

“English For the Rejected. David Holbrook. C.U.P. 1964. 30s.” read more

In Search of an Educational Principle

“In the elementary school, there used to be two elements in the educational formation of the children. They were taught the rudiments of natural science, and the idea of civic rights and duties. Science was intended to introduce the child to the societas rerum, the world of things, . . .” read more

Education: Programmes and Men

“British education is from a rational point of view grotesque, from a moral one intolerable, and from a human one tragic. Few would deny its stark inadequacy. Predictably, the Labour Party has at no time offered a global challenge to the present system. It has at most stood . . .” read more

Streaming and its Supporters

“In its 1960 Primary and secondary schools in England and Wales the Ministry of Education said this: ‘So far as possible children of the same age are assigned to the same class but, where numbers in an age-group are big enough to make up two or more classes, . . .” read more

The Poisoned Apple

“It’s a saddening comment on our methods of financing research that a very important book about education should be essentially an after-thought to a public health survey. In his introduction to Dr J. W. B. Douglas’s book, The Home and the School, Professor Glass says, ‘The investigation . . . .” read more

Robbins and Newsom

“The inclusive nature of the British class structure ensures that all new status situations with potential elite positions are quickly absorbed into the system. In the past, this has usually meant a modification of the educational channels of access to the ruling class, which has been justified by . . .” read more

Starting an Education Association

“the foundation meeting of this Association was held in November 1960: by September of this year its local membership was over 150, and it had interested an additional 45 subscribers from other parts of the country. The climate of opinion here in Cambridge had much to do . . .” read more

Thoughts after Albermarle

“the left’s contribution to the post-Albemarle discussion on youth work has not been particularly impressive. Sneers at youth club members and “grammar schoolites” (from Roy Kerridge in the New Statesman) and the vision of “a society by the young consumer for the young consumer” (outlined by Ray . . .” read more

Notes from Two Primary Schools

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The Learning Revolution

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Elite Education

““we wear a uniform and everyone knows when you have passed to go to a grammar school.” He is a 12 year old and he has passed. He’s replying to one of the questionnaires that helped Frances Stevens document with considerable and useful detail the life and . . .” read more

Growing up Together

“i took my first post in a comprehensive school because I believed that the majority of our children deserve more than our educational system gives them and possess more gifts than we are normally prepared to allow them. I did this in spite of the advice of . . .” read more

Intelligence and Ideology

“there are a thousand kinds of human excellence. Among them intelligence, we might agree, is a potential something which distinguishes us from the brutes; it is one of the trailing clouds of glory that children bring to the schools with each new generation; it is a name . . .” read more

Education for Maturity

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Ordinary Kids

“you see him on TV. You see him at a one night stand. You buy the records. You play him on the juke box. You buy the fan mags.; have dozens of pics. You like his kind of music; the way he gets a number across. You . . .” read more

Learning to Read at Sixteen

“perkins, the 4R form captain, did not come back after the Easter Holiday. A boy with loads of energy and good cheer, he had been longing to escape to a job. For some time now, he had viewed school as a place where he could entertain, a . . .” read more

Scottish Teachers' Revolt

“there is no doubt that the Glasgow teachers’ strike on May 8 had a profound effect upon all teachers, North and South of the border. Strike is a dirty word to some teachers, an unattainable demonstration of militancy to many more. But the Glasgow teachers have shown . . .” read more

Idea of a University

“a great public debate about British universities is now in full swing. Since the immediate post-war crush, the expansion of student numbers has gone ahead steadily, and even further growth is now required. The Government has accepted from the UGC a target figure of 170,000 places by . . .” read more

The New Frontier

“there is now considerable discontent brewing about education. It arises from many different quarters—among teachers and administrators (Cf. the recent controversy in The Observer between Mr. Amis and his colleagues and Dr. Petersen), academic authorities (Cf. the reports of several recent conferences), parents (Cf. the recent PEP . . .” read more

Not Waiting for Lefty

“it is always easy to see things as we want to see them and it is particularly tempting in this apathetic era to see a strike of apprentices as youth hardening itself in the cauldron of industrial strife. Tempting to think of them as the new generation . . .” read more

Crowther in Cold Storage

“Hailed by everyone as forward-looking, the Report has been officially welcomed and officially shelved. The welcome is hardly surprising, since the major recommendations are no longer controversial. It established for the late-Sixties, targets for full and part-time education which were recognised as basic in the 1944 Act. But . . .” read more

Dream Boy

“In this article, a young signalman, who has organised the first of the Youth Venture clubs in Leicester, writes a manifesto for the scheme.” read more

Lady Albermarle’s Modest Proposals

“when experts come together to discuss the aims and needs of a particular section of society, it must surely occur to them that the needs of that section must be seen in relation to those of society as a whole. Most Government Commissions fail to face up . . .” read more

Crowther Over Education

“A three-part analysis and critique of the recent proposals contained in the Crowther Report on Education.” read more