What Have Historians Been Arguing About... Histories of education – and society?

It is not emphasised enough that the progress of historiography often proceeds, not by historians arguing and then coming to some resolution, but simply by moving on. Historiography follows fashion, and subjects often exhaust themselves (for the time being)... A related issue is that of siloes. Historiography – academic writing generally – takes place within communities, often quite rigidly demarcated...

Both of these issues have affected the history of education in modern Britain. Since the late nineteenth century, the British state has developed a very extensive apparatus of mostly free, often compulsory education. Over time all children and many young adults were drawn into its web. Education became one of the primary sites of socialisation, replacing or supplementing family, workplace, church and community...