David Crook

Edward Boyle: Conservative champion of comprehensives? 1

1 This paper arises out of a research project entitled ‘When a Society Changes its School System: The Introduction of Comprehensive Schools in Great Britain’, being jointly prosecuted by Duke University, North Carolina and the University of Leicester. I am grateful to the Spencer Foundation, Chicago for generously sponsoring the project. Thanks are also due to Mr P. Morrish, Sub‐Librarian (Special Collections) and Mr M. Davies of the Brotherton Library, University of Leeds for their invaluable assistance.

Teacher Education as a Field of Historical Research: Retrospect and Prospect.

UK-based teacher educators formed the core membership of the History of Education Society when it was founded in 1967, and they were frequent early contributors to the Society’s journals. Given these origins, one might imagine that the history of teacher education would have featured more prominently in the pages of the first 40 volumes of the journal than it has. This article identifies and discusses examples of research into teacher education that have featured in History of Education since 1972, making connections with the contexts of political, social and educational change. The influence of feminist scholarship is particularly noted and it is argued that work relating to teacher education, which peaked in the 1990s, has both reflected and shaped new methodological approaches to studying the history of education. Notwithstanding the journal’s publication of some important work, it is argued that the theme remains under-researched and, in the period ahead, it is to be hoped that interest can be re-invigorated.

Citizenship, Religion and Education

The articles in this special issue of History of Education are based on papers given at the 2010 annual conference of the History of Education Society, held at the Garden Halls, London, on 26-28 November, on the theme of ‘Citizenship, Religion and Education’. Over the three days, attendance peaked at 105, with delegates coming from Australia, Brazil, Canada, the Canary Islands, Denmark, Guam, India, Ireland, the Isle of Man, Israel, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain and the USA, as well as the UK. In terms of participation, it was a record-breaking conference, with excellent keynote addresses, including the Presidential Address, plus over 70 delegate papers, including nine work-in-progress presentations by postgraduate students. Three of the plenary papers are included in this special issue, plus a further two articles from delegates. Other papers delivered over the weekend have been, or will be, published as books, book chapters and academic articles, with further papers to feature in History of Education during 2012 and beyond. The relationship between citizenship and religion in education is complex and has long been contested. For example, citizenship has been associated with a particular set of moral values and behaviours, as well as certain types of political participation and activity within local, national and global arenas. At an international level, advances in scientific knowledge during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries variously raised concerns among politicians, self-styled patriots and faith leaders that selfishness and narcissism were supplanting principles of duty and gratitude. These sentiments often found expression in discussions of school curricula. For example, in England, H.C. Beeching, a poet and clergyman, contended in a 1906 letter to The Times that:

Politics, politicians and English comprehensive schools

Very few English secondary schools now include ‘Comprehensive’ in their titles, and political enthusiasm for comprehensive schools is hard to detect. According to David Skelton of Policy Exchange, politicians, like anthropologists, have often ‘investigated them, read thoroughly about them and even visited them, but they don’t really understand them’. Drawing on a variety of source materials, this article discusses the early comprehensive schools movement, the period of intensive circulars and legislation in the 1960s and 1970s and the subsequent waning of interest in comprehensive schools as a policy topic. At the heart of the discussion is a focus on politics and politicians at both the national and local levels, with close reference to some key personalities of the post-war period. It is argued that the story of comprehensive schooling in England needs more balance and that we should look to the present generation of politicians and historians to provide this.

Forty years of History of Education, 1972–2011

This special issue reflects on the first 40 years of History of Education with articles by four past editors, the founding editor of the successful ‘Sources and Interpretations’ strand and the two current editors. Though now 40, the journal is a younger sibling of Paedagogica Historica and the USA’s History of Education Quarterly (both founded in 1961), the History of Education Society Bulletin and the Journal of Educational Administration and History (both founded in 1968), but older than the French and Canadian journals, respectively Histoire de l’Éducation and Historical Studies in Education/Revue d’Histoire de l’Éducation (founded in 1978 and 1988). Interestingly, History of Education is an exact contemporary of the Australia and New Zealand History of Education Society journal, History of Education Review, which recently marked the beginning of its 40th year by transferring to a new publisher and publicly renewing its scholarly mission. In discussion with the editorial board, a more celebratory issue than the one we introduce here was briefly considered, but rejected. Modestly, we do take this opportunity to express huge satisfaction in the decision, communicated in late 2009, to admit the journal to the prestigious Thomson Reuters Social Science Citations Index and in the first impact factor of 0.280, awarded in the summer of 2011. There is so much more, too, that might be celebrated: for example contributions by two of today’s most prominent UK media-friendly historians, Simon Schama and Lisa Jardine, were published in the infancy years of History of Education, and some key journal articles considered to be of seminal importance, either in respect of content or methodology, have been re-published in edited volumes by two former editors and contributors to this special issue. But now that, one suspects, most readers of the journal have electronic access to every back issue, going right back to 1972, the case for a ‘greatest hits’ anthology issue to mark 40 years of the journal seemed questionable. We also felt that contributors to this special issue should be liberated from any requirement to dwell unduly upon scholarship trends and patterns occurring during their own periods of editorship. So, what we have sought are critical thematic analyses of topics linked to some of the authors’ particular research

Education, Health and Social Welfare

If at the end of an average term of office it were found that a Liberal Parliament had done nothing to cope seriously with the social condition of the people, to remove the national degradation of slums and widespread poverty and destitution in a land glittering with wealth; that they had shrunk from attacking boldly the causes of this wretchedness, notably the drink and this vicious land system; that they had not arrested the waste of our national resources in armaments, or provided an honourable sustenance for deserving old age; that they had tamely allowed the House of Lords to extract all the virtue out of their Bills, so that the Liberal statute book remained simply a bundle of sapless legislative faggots fit only for the fire; then would a real cry arise in this land for a new party, and many of us here in this room would join in that cry.1