ABSTRACT
Liberal romanticism received official endorsement in the report issued by the Central Advisory Council for Education (England) under the chairmanship of Lady Plowden. Thereafter, it became the orthodoxy of English primary education for almost a decade, at least as perceived by many policy-makers, commentators and educationists. The three paragraphs reproduced here capture the essence of that ‘recognisable philosophy of education’ which the Plowden Committee believed, mistakenly as it turned out, to be ‘a general and quickening trend’. In particular, paragraph 505 is a memorable encapsulation of the liberal romantic view, standing along with paragraph 75 of the Hadow Report of 1931 (see p. 28) as the embodiment of a view of primary education which many have found very inspiring and many others have found sententious, sentimental and verging on the anti-intellectual. These paragraphs are superb examples of educational rhetoric, unsurpassed in style by the rhetoric of Plowden’s opponents, as scrutiny of other papers in this source book will reveal. For a critique of this ideology, see the paper by Peters (pp. 146-51).
