Education: A Very Short Introduction

Citation

Thomas, G. (2021). Education: A Very Short Introduction (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press.

Chapter Summary

The book belongs to Oxford's Very Short Introductions series (no. 347). Its seven chapters fill about 125 pages, followed by references, further reading and an index. Gary Thomas is Professor in Education at the University of Birmingham and previously worked as a teacher and educational psychologist; his research has focused on inclusion, special education and social-science research methods. The first edition appeared in 2013. According to the publisher, the second edition traces how education has responded over the centuries to politics, philosophy and the social sciences. It gives particular attention to the controversy over progressive versus formal teaching and to the spread of charter schools, academies and "free" schools in the United States and Britain. New to this edition, the publisher says, are a fresh look at the curriculum in light of the move to online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, a discussion of why action on race, gender and social inequality has achieved so little, a questioning of education's claim to be a force for social mobility, and some thoughts on how education may develop over the coming century.

Chapter 1: Beginnings

The origins of formal education. The publisher's description starts with the early Egyptians, who set up a designated place where knowledge was passed to groups of students. Anthony Feiler's review of the first edition in Times Higher Education mentions vivid accounts of education in ancient Greece and Rome that show how little has changed.

Chapter 2: Oil and water: the formal and the progressive

The central opposition of the book: formal, teacher-directed education against progressive, child-centred education. Feiler notes Thomas's point that real teachers are rarely pure formalists or progressives and switch styles to suit the class.

Chapter 3: The traditions unfold: ideas into practice

How the formal and progressive traditions were turned into practice. Feiler mentions, for example, the impact of Rousseau's child-centred ideas in eighteenth-century Paris and a discussion of the psychologist Susan Isaacs's interest in children's play.

Chapter 4: Big ideas from the 20th century

The major twentieth-century ideas that shaped schooling. The book's indexed vocabulary includes Dewey, A. S. Neill, the Hadow and Plowden reports and the Reggio Emilia approach, which indicates the range of reference, although the public record does not show which chapter treats each.

Chapter 5: Analysts and theorists: what did they ever do for us?

The theorists of learning and their influence on teaching. Feiler describes an accessible overview running from behaviourists such as B. F. Skinner to developmental psychologists such as Piaget and Vygotsky, and the publisher also names Piaget and Vygotsky.

Chapter 6: The curriculum

What should be taught. The publisher's description of the second edition says Thomas looks again at curriculums and the shape they should take in a rapidly changing world, after the pandemic accelerated online learning.

Chapter 7: Schools out

The closing chapter is the most critical. In the first edition, Feiler reports, Thomas describes schools as run on military lines. He criticises "achievement-oriented, educationally barren" Western models, attributes school failure to poverty rather than to difficulties within the child, and gives a section to Ivan Illich's proposals for doing away with schools. The second edition's new questions about inequality, social mobility and the future of education fit this chapter's concerns.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–3

• Formal versus progressive education: the book's organising contrast between teacher-directed instruction and child-centred learning.
• Traditions into practice: how educational ideas become the routines of real schools.

Chapters 4–5

• Twentieth-century reform ideas: the movements and official reports that reshaped schooling.
• Theories of learning: behaviourist and developmental accounts (Skinner, Piaget, Vygotsky) and what they imply for teaching.

Chapters 6–7

• Curriculum: what schools teach and how it should change.
• Education and inequality: the gap between schooling's promise of social mobility and its results.
• Deschooling: Illich's radical case against schools as institutions.
• New school types: charter schools, academies and free schools.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Very short and readable. At about 125 pages of text the book can be read in a day. Feiler praised the first edition's lightness of touch and humour, and judged it useful both to readers new to education and to academics.
• A clear organising question. The formal–progressive contrast gives a newcomer one thread to follow through history, theory and policy, and Feiler found the arguments generally balanced.
• Breadth. In a small space it moves from ancient schooling through Enlightenment and twentieth-century thinkers to learning theory, curriculum and current policy.
• Updated for the 2020s. The publisher's account of the second edition adds the pandemic, the move to online learning, and race, gender and social inequality.

Limitations

• An argument as well as an introduction. The final chapter is openly polemical. Feiler noted that by then "the gloves are off". Readers should separate Thomas's survey from his own case against current schooling.
• British and American focus. The policy examples (academies, free schools, charter schools, NCLB, GCSEs in the first edition) come from England and the United States. Other systems receive little attention.
• Brevity limits depth. In a book of this length, major thinkers such as Dewey, Piaget and Vygotsky can receive only a few pages each. The book is a map for further reading, not a substitute for it.
• Reviews concern the first edition. Published reviews such as Feiler's address the 2013 edition; for the new second-edition material, the publisher's description is the main public account, so check what has changed if using an older copy.

Where It Fits in the Course

In the foundations of education course this is the shortest and broadest starting point, and a good first book before the primary texts. Nel Noddings's Philosophy of Education is an introductory survey of a different kind. It traces philosophical traditions and applies philosophical tools to questions of knowledge, ethics, equality and the aims of schooling, so it is the natural second book for readers who want the philosophical argument in more depth.

The rest of the course list consists largely of the primary texts behind Thomas's chapters. Dewey's How We Think and Democracy and Education stand behind the progressive tradition discussed in Chapters 2–4. Illich's Deschooling Society is the source of the radical critique Thomas takes up in his final chapter. Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, bell hooks's Teaching to Transgress and Jarvis Givens's Fugitive Pedagogy carry the questions of oppression, race and freedom that the second edition raises. Read Thomas first, then use his chapters to choose which of these to read in full.

How to Use This Book

The book is for anyone starting the study of education: first-year students, trainee teachers, and general readers. No background in education, philosophy or psychology is needed.

• Read it whole, in order. It is short enough to read in one or two sittings, and the formal–progressive thread of Chapter 2 runs through the rest.
• Core chapters for a foundations course: Chapters 2, 3 and 5 for the main ideas and theorists, Chapter 6 for curriculum, and Chapter 7 for current debates.
• Use the references and further reading at the end to plan the next step; each chapter names thinkers whose own books are on the course list.

As you read, keep a two-column note of formal and progressive positions, and add each thinker to one side or, more often, somewhere between them. After Chapter 7, write a short response to Thomas's critique of schooling, then test it against one primary text, such as Dewey or Illich. Students outside Britain and the United States should look up how their own system handles the policy issues the book raises, such as school types and national tests.