we regard this disappearance as an aberration, and notas an indication of progress.

Out of the ideas of Pestalozzi and Froebel, in the early 1900s Maria Montessorideveloped her method, depending on practical tasks such as personal care andcare for the environment, putting independence at the centre of the curriculum.

It was Eric Williams (Capitalism and Slavery) who first developed the idea thatEuropean slave plantations in the New World were, in effect, the first factories; theidea of a “pre-racial” North Atlantic proletariat, in which these same techniques ofmechanization, surveillance, and discipline were applied to workers on ships, waselaborated by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker (The Many-Headed Hydra).

two streams of thought which run through the history of education—they areusually called the progressive and the formal.

Forster’sAct in 1870, which mandated education for all children up to the age of 10 inBritain.

Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis intheir classic Schooling in Capitalist America

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who shockedthe world with Émile: or On Education ([1762] 1993).

Theodulf, bishop of Orléans, hadordered that ‘the priests establish schools in every town and village.