Progressive Retreat: A Sociological Study of Dartington Hall School 1926-1957 and Some of Its Former PupilsIn 1926, Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst founded Dartington Hall School. Next to Summerhill it was the most influential and important independent school in England when this book was published in 1977. As such it represents a rich vein of alternative education sponsored by middle-class liberal intellectuals in an attempt to escape the orthodoxy of state educational provision. Yet, little evidence existed as to whether these experimental ventures actually worked or even how they might be evaluated. This book represents a fresh attempt to apply explicitly sociological methods to these questions. Maurice Punch critically scrutinises progressive education's avowed aims to revolutionise the school, to save society from its own destruction, and to produce a renewed type of man and woman. |
Contents
An historical sketch of the school 192657 | 19 |
The parents | 29 |
The children | 45 |
Social control | 57 |
The childrens world | 71 |
The academic system and the staff 883 | 83 |
Leaving school | 99 |
Work | 113 |
Marriage and children | 126 |
The progressive lifestyle | 137 |
Dartington the progressives and the antiinstitution | 155 |
Bibliography | 176 |
| 183 | |
Other editions - View all
Progressive Retreat: A Sociological Study of Dartington Hall School 1926 ... Maurice Punch No preview available - 1977 |
Progressive Retreat: A Sociological Study of Dartington Hall School 1926 ... Maurice Punch No preview available - 2010 |
Common terms and phrases
A. S. Neill academic accept adult anti-institution areas attitude authoritarian Bedales Bedales School Bedalians behaviour Bill Curry boarding school boys cent child coeducational congruent conventional cultural Curry Curry's Dartington Hall Dartington Hall School Dartingtonians de-schoolers DHRO difficult Dora Russell early Elmhirst emotional environment evaluation evidence example experience fact father feeling felt Fifties Woman Firstly former pupils Foxhole Free School freedom girls headmaster husband ideals ideology individual innovation instance institutions intellectual interest Interviewer Lambert leaving left-wing liberal London main sample maladjustment marriage married middle class Monkton Wyld mother never nonconforming norms occupational organisation orthodox parents Penguin Books Ltd perhaps political position problems progressive education progressive school progressivism proportion public school Punch radical remember role seemed sexual socialisation sort structure Summerhill teachers teaching tend things Thirties Woman tington tion Totnes traditional school voted Conservative wider society women