The Death of Progressive Education: How Teachers Lost Control of the Classroom

The first authoritative survey of the changing politics of the classroom since the Second World War. It charts the process by which society moved away from being one in which teachers decided both the content of the school curriculum and how it would be taught towards the present situation in which a host of external influences dictate the nature of the educational experience.

The book identifies the key social and political developments which made this transformation inevitable and, at the same time, raises the question of how far the loss of control by teachers has also meant a shift away from progressive, child-centred education. Key issues covered include:

 

• The post-war debate on the school curriculum as well as the extent to which it was fiercely contested

 

• The Black Paper Movement of the early 1970s

 

• The ways in which radical right rhetoric has come to dominate the politics of education and the educational press