ABSTRACT
This year w,e are going to study a subject which has long intrigued me. Even at a time when I was not as I am today, exclusively concerned with teaching educational theory, I was already attracted by the idea of researching into how our secondary school education emerged and developed, because this study seemed to me to be one of very great general interest. And if this project was never realised it was both because I was deflected by other concerns and because I was aware of the great difficulties of the subject. If today I have decided to embark upon this venture it is not only because I now feel better prepared for it, but also, and more importantly, because circumstances seem to demand it of me since it meets, I believe, an urgent contemporary need.
