ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book addresses the current crises in British comprehensive education. The main themes concentrate on social aspects of comprehensive and progressive ideals and practices and implications for their realisation and articulation against the background of current developments in education. The book also presents a description of state imposed child-centredness in 'progressive' pedagogy and curricula. It also reviews the place of 'community' in the politics of comprehensive education from the 1960's and focuses attention upon a pattern of tensions and contradictions in provisions intended to reduce boundaries between young and old, work and recreation, schools and their contexts. The book also concentrates upon whole school initiatives in multi-culturalism and anti-racism as features of what might be seen as the moral curriculum of schools. It also concentrates upon 'new middle-class' cultural relations and the theme of 'resistance'.
