Since the last century, national success - the capacity to compete in global markets, generate new technologies or produce and sustain a proud, healthy and energetic citizenry - has been linked to schooling as it never had been before (A Nation at Risk is the spectacular title of the Gardner Report on education which has been causing a stir in America.) Until the 1880s or thereabouts, the provision for education was much discussed, but rarely in Britain was the state of popular knowledge equated with national survival. Reading and writing for the poor attending Sunday schools, basic skills for manual workers, a little social science for the class of superior workers, liberal education for future governors and those destined for the professions: allowing for some disquiet on the part of moralists and humanists bothered by questions of justice or high culture, these aims were usually considered sufficient. Making little or no demand upon the Treasury, they were all the more satisfactory.

LRB 4 April 1985 | PDF Download