This book examines key theorists in depth in order to give some insight into cultural change as reflected in their curricular recommendations and in the interplay they reveal between the two fundamental educational concepts of artifice and nature . The essays on the various theorists Erasmus, Vives, Castiglione, Elyot, Montaigne, Bacon, Comenius, Locke and Rousseau can be read separately but the book also forms an integrated whole, with a continuity of themes explored from theorist to theorist. The book not only charts a historical development but also reveals much that may deepen our...

This volume completes G H Bantock 's comprehensive study of educational thought, and its relationship to the broad development of European culture, from the time of the Renaissance to the present day. During the period under consideration, the new freedom from dogma and hierarchy allowed for the emergence of a large number of models of education intended to accommodate the autonomous personality and at the same time to meet the demand for educational expansion. The need to educate the masses was increasingly recognized, and the dilemma posed by mass civilisation and minority culture became...