ABSTRACT
Education must grow out of society and not be used to change it, except on the basis of profound conservatism, is the major theme of Education and Social Change. The subtle differences of language and tone between Educating Our Children and Education in Schools and the official reports and papers of early 1940s would be well worth further comment. But perhaps one further rather trivial example from Educating our Children is permissible. Perhaps the most interesting recent account of post-war educational policy is that provided by the Education Group of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. Whilst one may quibble about whether Clarke, F., in particular, represents an 'uncomplicated populism', their general structures on wartime and early post-war debates are just. In short, what the educational discourse of the 1980s seems to offer is, at one end of an increasingly polarised debate, acute pessimism or strategies for radical use of education as a means of transformation.
