Richard Aldrich, Lessons from History of Education: the selected works of Richard Aldrich.

Fitzgerald, Tanya

Richard Aldrich, Lessons from History of Education: the selected works of Richard Aldrich, London, Routledge, 2006, ISBN 0-415-35892-2.

This book, published in the acclaimed Routledge World Library of Educationalists series, brings together fourteen of Richard Aldrich's key contributions to the field. Beginning with a specially written Introduction that provides an overview of his distinguished career and maps his selection of chapters, articles or public addresses for inclusion, this book is testimony to Aldrich's scholarship and his influence on generations of academics, researchers, teachers and students. Aldrich has organised his book into six thematic parts that track not only his intellectual journey as one of the eminent scholars in the history of education but provides a legacy of the critical and stimulating debates in which he has engaged for more than twenty years.

The starting point for this collection titled 'Understanding History of Education' offers a contemporary exploration of the duties of the historian of education that convincingly argues distinctions between historians and educationalists and the commitment that academic historians should make to their research and practice. The second theme is 'The Politics of Education' in which Aldrich examines the relationship between history and historical writing, links between questions and evidence and uses his work on Sir John Pakington and the historical metamorphosis of the Department of Education to demonstrate how historians might act in the role of 'splitter': that is, a scholar that produces detailed work on a particular individual or event; or 'lumper': one who ensures that research findings are presented in an accessible form to a wider audience. Aldrich adeptly fulfills each role without producing a Whiggish interpretation of his evidence.

The third part, titled 'Educational Reformers', is central to this text and reflects one of the enduring themes of Aldrich's work and his theoretical engagement with wider questions of the economic, intellectual, political and social circumstances in which individual lives, actions and events are played out. Aldrich's reflections on his role as an educational biographer and the textual and spatial connections between his own biography and that of his subjects are rich evidence of his skill as a researcher, writer and orator. In particular, I found the inclusion of his speeches for and about the eight individuals who received honorary fellowships and degrees at the Institute of Education, University of London, heartwarming.

'Curriculum and standards' is the fourth theme that takes as its central question--"What knowledge is of most worth?" that adopts both a contemporary and historical perspective to proffer suggestions as to how this question might be addressed and answered. Given the current interest in standards that have pervaded education systems in almost every Western nation, to question whether any standard is attainable is both timely and provocative. The two papers that comprise this part again show Aldrich's skill as a 'lumper'.

The final two parts focus on 'The Teaching of History' and 'Education Otherwise'. In particular, Chapters 10 and 11, published in 1984 and 1988 respectively, speak to some of the concerns outlined in the first chapter in this text (published in 2003). This is, in my view, a sophisticated sub-text of this book with Aldrich showing via his selection of these writings how "the historian of education's duty to the people of the past and to the current generation are not necessarily incompatible" (p. 22). The final section is concerned with education outside of the established hierarchy of schools and provides a thought-provoking analysis of the family as a site for education and the shaping of identity. The inclusion of a self-reflective narrative that examines the relationship between the public and private within the institution of his own family provides both a personal and noteworthy conclusion to this collection.

This is a text that every historian of education should read. Not only does this text chart the scholarly work of one of the eminent historians in the field, it is an intellectual biography of the discipline itself.

TANYA FITZGERALD

UNITEC Institute of Technology, Auckland