Nicholas Orme's Medieval Schools is something of a capstone on a long scholarly career devoted to the history of education, running from his English Schools in the Middle Ages (1973) to Medieval Children (2001), and taking in thirty other studies listed in the bibliography, most of them the product of detailed archival research. It is accordingly rather a cheek for a reviewer to take issue with his main point, firmly repeated at the start and the end of this book, that 'medieval education was not a precursor of modern education, but the same thing in different circumstances.' That depends on what you mean by 'modern'. Certainly some features of the history laid out by Orme are easily recognisable; they have lasted in literary memory and even into living memory. But actually contemporary? It would be interesting to read an Ofsted report on a medieval school.

LRB 22 February 2007 | PDF Download