ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the work in the first half of nineteenth century of the Edu-cation Department at the University of Manchester. A historical perspective of how an earlier generation addressed the challenge of responding to social and political pressures in the training of teachers may raise some interesting questions, not without significance to the strategies presented in this volume. The reader wishing to be reminded of the serious attempts to address changes to teacher training in the recent past cannot do better than consult the impressive volume edited by William Taylor Towards a Policy for the Education of Teachers. Findlay's experiments were ahead of their time and Oliver's were made impossible by decisions of the Ministry of Education, is irrelevant to the theme of this chapter. Committed to a democratic society Oliver never doubted that the schools should play a part in the extension of social justice.
