Education in Canda has become the scene of ongoing conflict, with various factions vying for representation of their political, economic, and cultural interests. Schools have become obejcts of domination and products of compromise. In this book, Ronald Manzer interprets the political ideas and beliefs that underlie educational politicies and give them meaning. His analysis begins with the foundation of state education in the mid-nineteenth century and brings us up to date with the prospective reforms of the early 1990s. Manzer argues that, from its foundation, elementary and secondary education in Canada has been dominated by liberal conceptions and principles, with each successive liberal ideology taking its place as a public philosophy for state education. He brings a wealth of information to his analysis, examining curricula, district organization, laws, finance, and personnel for each Canadian province. The result is a splendidly detailed national picture and a clear, historical view of each province's values, ideas, and practices. This interface of public policy with political philosophy is original in its depth and scope. No other book offers such a comprehensive view of the past and potential of Canadian education policy.

Education is a powerful factor in determining the shape of a modern society. Recognition of its importance for the wealth and power of a society has risen dramatically in recent years. As a result, the 'demand' for education has increased; and education has assumed a prominent place among contemporary public issues. This change in the relationship between 'education' and 'politics' has, in turn, tended to disrupt the operation of established institutions and procedures for making educational policy and caused a search for new organizational forms. Educational policy-making in England and Wales in the 1940s and early 1950s was characterized by a closed partnership of the Ministry of Education, the local education authorities, and the teachers' unions. The circumstances which made their relationship easy and viable changed as the demand for education increased during the later 1950s and early 1960s, and the institutions and procedures which typified the earlier period -- the National Advisory Council for the Training and Supply of Teachers, the Secondary Schools Examinations Council, the Burnham Main Committee -- were put under pressure to change as well. Teachers and Politics describes the main institutions and procedures for making national education policy in England and Wales since 1944 and attempts to assess the effect that post-war changes in the demand for education have had on them. The analysis is given special focus by its emphasis on the ability of teachers' unions, especially the National Union of Teachers, to influence the making of educational policy.

Anglo-American democracy is a vital and respected political tradition. Yet surprisingly little attention is given to what exactly are its distinguishing political ideas. To understand Anglo-American democracy requires more than simply observing its abstract commitments to basic political goods of community, equality, and liberty; it requires also knowing how ideas are put into practice. Schools are places where people teach and learn; they are also institutional expressions of the principles, values, and beliefs of their political community. Manzer's comparative political study of schools in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States focuses on five fundamental problems in the historical development of Anglo-American educational regimes: the original creation of systems of elementary education in the nineteenth century as publicly provided and publicly governed; the transformation of secondary schools in the early twentieth century to match the emerging structure of occupational classes in capitalist industrial economies; the planning for secondary schools in the development of the welfare state after the Second World War; the accommodation of social diversity in public schools from the 1960s to the 1990s in response to increasingly strong assertions of ethnicity, language, race, and religion, not only as criteria for equal treatment, but also as foundations of communal identity; and the educational reforms in the 1980s and 1990s that aimed to adapt public schools to the contemporary challenges of new information technology and burgeoning global capitalism. Removed from abstract political principle and observed in the policies of historical educationalregimes, changing ideas of community, equality, and liberty not only reveal the likeness and diversity of Anglo-American democracy over time but also constitute criteria for making judgements about its extent and quality.