ABSTRACT
This paper is about one unusual school during the brief period 1973–77, which was probably when the very last rays of the ‘golden age’ 1 could still be seen. The teachers in this school had most of the initiative. Their new comprehensive offered the chance to change secondary education. The head had declared himself for community education and this could capitalize on the gains of progressive education. He and his staff avoided all they disliked in secondary schools, adopted progressive practices and moved on towards lifelong learning and community development. Generally speaking, school is the imposition of order, an order in which a few succeed, most are dispirited and many react with hostility. But in this school most felt some solidarity and some of those who could have reacted with hostility did not. All too late I realized that the issue was the relation between educational experience and class experience, but the question was deferred because there was so much experience in the school to account for. This accounting has taken the form of nearly five years of full-time participant observation.
