The American ideal has exercised a powerful influence over English educational policy over the last two centuries, even as it has itself changed. Today the very size of America enables it to rehearse problems we shall meet tomorrow. This volume answers key questions for education, as relevant now as they were when it was originally published: Is there an optimal size and a maximal use of a school? Are there adequately sophisticated batteries of attainment tests? Or valid methods of vocational guidance?


In this volume the author discusses the influence of France from the Norman invasion to the late 1960s. French thought and ideas are examined and more tangible evidence is also given of the widespread and often unnoticed influence that France has exerted on English education.


This book traces the impact of German educationists, such as Froebel and Herbart, on practice in Britain while stressing the important and lasting influence of German scientists, technologists, philosophers, sociologists and historians on our educational system. This record of interplay between the two countries shows not only the influence of German innovations but also the effect on British education of the many German emigres in the last two hundred years.