Schooling In Western Europe

A textbook on education in Western Europe, this book is designed for students of both education and European studies. It compares and contrasts education ideals and practice and cultural aspirations in different countries and generations and then goes on to consider how Western Europe will react to future challenge and change - both from within and beyond its own confines

Schooling in Europe is being transformed by a new policy orthodoxy affecting all aspects of the school. Privatization, decentralization, and business focused curriculum reform are all on the rise. The authors consider the impact and conflict of such changes on schooling in England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

Mary Jo Maynes looks to school reform in early modern Europe to show the relevance of early ideas about schooling for understanding contemporary society. She presents the competing perspectives on issues such as the identity and motivations of school reformers, the broad societal changes that made educational reform seem imperative toward the end of the eighteenth century all over the West, the connections between educational change and economic development, the role of schools in the evolution of class relations, the impact of reform on family strategies in the context of early industrialization. The work concludes by assessing historical data on the social impact of school reform and addressing the social meaning of schooling in the past and in the present.

This unique handbook offers an analytical review of the education systems of all European countries, following common analytical guidelines, and highlighting the paradox that education simultaneously pursues a universal value as well as a national character. Coverage includes international student performance studies, and a comparison of education dynamics in Eastern "new Europe" with "older" western EU members. The book provides a differentiated analytical data base, and offers suggestions for further research.

A study of the effects of antisemitism, the Holocaust, and the search for Jewish identity on Anglo-Jewish writers. Pre-World War II literature reflected the antisemitism of working-class Jewish districts, while many postwar writers describe the inability of middle-class Jews to integrate fully into English society.

Originally published in 1977. This is a lively account of the day-to-day running of European schools based in five countries - France, West Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal. It outlines the organisation of education in these countries, and examines aspects of curriculum, teaching methods, examinations, attitudes of teachers and pupils, buildings, equipment, out-of-school activities, pastoral care, discipline and rules and depicts what it is like to be a pupil or teacher in a European school. The schools discussed are mainly primary and lower secondary grades - the basic compulsory education of each country. Details of working hours, programmes and curricula which are, notably, often government controlled, are given in Appendices. But the author stresses that his aim throughout has been to show how individual schools work and adopt these rules to their own situation. He discusses the relative advantages and drawbacks of different educational systems, and draws his own conclusions about the favourable impressions he gained from many schools and the Awful Warning he saw in a few. This survey throws as much light on schools at home as on those in Europe and suggests that we have a good deal to learn from our neighbours.