219Book reviews / International Journal of Educational Development 24 (2004) 213–226

A century of educationAldrich, R. (ed) 2002 Routledge Falmer London &New York ISBN 0 415 24322 X (hbk) 0 415 243238 (pbk) 245 pages

When a colleague went to work a short time agofor the Distance and E-Learning agency Learndi-rect, she observed, ‘They think they have justinvented distance learning’ . When I moved into anoffice in the recently established East of EnglandDevelopment Agency, I looked in vain for some-where to locate my (several) filing cabinets. Theoffice manager explained that people in this organ-isation did not really need anything which pre-dated its (recent) establishment and that everythingfrom then on was stored electronically. I did notdare admit to the fact that I had also hoped to findspace for a wall full of books including a numberauthored some 2000 years ago. History has appar-ently no place in the agencies of contemporaryeducational and social policy, which is one reasonthat they are routinely destined to repeat the mis-takes not just of past ages but, as it sometimesappears, of last year.

Nor does history (or philosophy or sociology, ifit comes to that) have much of a place left in theUK today in programmes for the preparation ofnew teachers. They too will develop rootless pro-fessional lives uninformed by their own histories,uninspired by the struggles for progress of theirpredecessors, unforewarned by their understandingof the conditions which have perverted as well asadvanced the cause of education.

Richard Aldrich’s edited collection might, how-ever, provide a little antidote to such deracination.Some eleven historians of education from Englandand Wales (I am tempted to say ‘ leading’ historiansof education, but I am not sure that there are manymore to follow them) have been assembled to pro-vide ‘an account and interpretation of education inEngland during the twentieth century’ (p 1). Thebook includes chapters which treat the subject bysectors (primary, secondary, further and highereducation); by stakeholders (central and localgovernment, teachers, pupils and students --though curiously not parents); and with theaddition of three themes (special educationalneeds, curriculum, qualifications and assessment).

This breadth of coverage of a busy 100 years ofhistory means that the treatment is more that of areview of on the whole secondary sources than awork of primary scholarship, though some of theauthors are able to draw sparingly on recentresearch projects.

The chapters are designed to enable us to takestock of the twentieth century and encourage us,as it were, to read our history backwards. Perhapsthis is any case inevitable. Each chapter starts witha section on ‘The situation in 2000’ ; leaps acrossthe years to compare ‘The situation in 1900’ ; andthen recounts the story in between. With thisapproach, it is understandably stronger on conti-nuities than on those curious dead ends of history,the pathways that led nowhere (yet). It is interest-ing, for example, to read Peter Gordon’s accountof the history of the curriculum in the twentiethcentury and the similarity between the 1988National Curriculum and that contained in the 1904Secondary School Regulations, but because thecontemporary preoccupation is with the nationaldetermination of the curriculum, the account losessight of for example the role of local authoritiesin developing curriculum guidelines, ‘school-basedcurriculum development’ and the phenomenon ofteachers’ centres as engine rooms of curriculumchange. Perhaps a later history written in a periodof renewed attention to devolved responsibility forlocally sensitive curriculum development willattach a different significance to these initiatives.

As we grapple with the contemporary issues ofwidening participation in higher education, forexample, I am grateful to Roy Lowe for a reminderof the 1972 White Paper, Education: a Frameworkfor Expansion and especially for the reference toMargaret Thatcher’s speech to the House of Com-mons as Secretary of State for Education when shereminded the House that:

‘opportunities for higher education are not to bedetermined primarily by reference to broad esti-mates of the country’s future needs for qualifiedpeople … the Government consider higher edu-cation valuable for its contribution to the per-sonal development of those who pursue it’ (p85).

220 Book reviews / International Journal of Educational Development 24 (2004) 213–226

It is salutary too to recall in this connection theway in which the civic universities of the Edward-ian era and the polytechnics of the 1970s were bothfounded with the expectation of that they wouldconcentrate on technological education but bothfound that the route to expansion was byresponding to student demand for study in the artsand social sciences. What now might one expectof the next phase of expansion of higher educationin England and Wales via the further education col-lege sector, which is again supposed to be drivenby the vocational requirements of employers?

A reading of history might at least prompt con-temporary policy makers to ask whether there wasanything in their current policies or the circum-stances in which they are enacted which will savethem from the fate of their predecessors – but then,history does not seem to occupy much space ineither the shelves or the imagination of contempor-ary policy agencies: it undermines their sense oftheir own inventiveness.

David Bridges,97 Queen Ediths Way, Cambridge CB1 8PL, UK

E-mail address: d.bridges@uea.ac.uk

doi:10.1016/j.ijedudev.2003.11.001

Tropics of teaching: productivity, warfare andpriesthoodFrancois Tochon, University of Toronto Press2002, 163 pages, ISBN 0 8020 3685 6

Tochon writes for an audience interested inphilosophy of semiotics and post-constructivistlinguistics. It purports to be a study of use and rel-evance to teacher education and research in thisfield and performs analytical explorations withinthe teaching/learning classroom situation. The sub-title “Productivity, Warfare and Priesthood” refersto three models of educational interaction. Pro-ductivity is the mode of mastery learning, outputstandardisation, productivity and efficiency: putanother way, teaching to the test. “Warfare” is amode that gives emphasis to the teacher as strateg-

ist, where adaptive and flexible planning, using“bottom up” information as a means of transfer ofpredetermined models of what learning and forma-tion is about. “Priesthood” is a mode on which theauthor expends much of his thought and enthusi-asm. It involves a “postmodern view of researchas collaborative, non-hierarchical enquiry initiatinga conversation between the teacher and the other“ a model of research which also becomes themodel of teacher and pupil. It is above all commit-ted to mutual transformation

Perhaps inevitably for a francophone writer,Bourdieu features strongly, and the concept of nar-rative becomes almost cosmic in Tochon’s think-ing, developing a polarity with other rational struc-tures. He quarries frequently among models drawnfrom literary thought, with various sub-textual“story” content syntaxes which do not quite sur-vive the cross-fertilisation with a transformationalgrammar operating on both sides of the teacher-pupil “actantially ” observed space. It builds ulti-mately into a mode of qualitative research, partici-pant observation and reflective praxis and “didac-tics” which Torchon uses and accepts while at thesame time trying to deconstruct with semiotictools. His dutiful pressing into service of Derrida,Husserl and Greimass does little to assist, since inthe end he virtually abandons postmodern relativ-ism for a quasi-mystical notion of “ teacherhood”which is really a reconstructed didactic “narrative”mode, with the teacher as the subject.

Reflection by practitioners, diary evidence, pro-fessional sharing of experience as modes of teacherdevelopment are all well established practices, butrarely dominate interaction as Tochon seems tosuggest from limited evidence. Extrapolated intoprocesses for classroom practice, thenarrative/semiotic model fits much more easily intoa literary or sociological curriculum than onewhich demands cumulative schemata. Somehowthere is a missing observation on the ability somepupils and teachers have for rapid acceptance ofcognitive schemata (once known as “convergent”thinking) and the ability others have for digressionand flexibility in managing inchoate, even by nar-rative models, experience (“divergent” thinking)and how the teacher-pupil marriage of thesebecomes, or can be made, effective. Moreover in