Silver Foils

Harold Silver's extended review of Unpopular Education (and, oddly enough, of an old working paper) calls for sustained re-examination and reappraisal of educational policy and experience and for debate how to do [1]. Obviously his interests are similar to our own: Unpopular Education too locates itself in the contemporary crisis in education, re-examines the relation between 'policy' and (popular) experience, and debates 'how to do it'. After this start, we expected an extended argument with our substantive findings. Our reviewer is one of the most productive and lively educational historians writing in Britain today: we started reading his piece with considerable anticipation. We were surprised by the antagonism of the review and disappointed by its substance. For instead of debating our findings and arguments, Professor Silver delivers a little inaugural lecture on the subject of 'real History'. Indeed, he seems to be pretty sure what real 'sociology' and real 'political science' are too [2]. The main charge against Unpopular Education is that it does not conform to any of these reputable academic practices. The professor casts it instead into a limbo of its own, along with some other 'restless' characters-'Marxists' all. We will comment later on the review as a form of intellectual politics, especially its similarity to conservative academic strategies and its apparent debt to some bad old radical habits too. First we want to comment on an important but hidden presence in the review: Unpopular Education is condemned through an unfavourable contrast with a foil of assumed, good, historical practice. In what follows we try to

Aesthetics · Anticipation (artificial intelligence · Argument (complex analysis · Epistemology · Political science · Politics · Reading (process · Relation (database · Sociology · Subject (documents · Diverse Education Studies and Reforms · Educator Training and Historical Pedagogy · Global Educational Policies and Reforms · Law · Philosophy

• Policy as History and as Theory

  Harold Silver•British Journal of Sociology of…•1981

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