ABSTRACT
Prospective teachers are the main consumers of histories of education and hence an important influence on the ways in which the economic laws of supply and demand operate. The sorry truth is that most histories of education are bread and butter affairs, matter of fact in their content, plain to the point of prosiness in their styles of presentation. If courses on the history of education in many teacher training establishments have been gradually edged out in order to make room for the teaching of sociology of education the effects can be seen in the attempts being made to merge the two ‘disciplines’ in a literary form. In Brian Simon’s judgement it is with the social functions of education that the historian should be principally concerned, yet uttle has been done to investigate the changing nature of educational theory and practice and a definitive history of the curriculum is awaited.
