A description of European higher education that is unequaled in clarity and comprehensiveness

A highly original and accessible history of Latin between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries that explores how Latin came to dominate the civic and sacred worlds of Europe and, arguably, the entire western world.

'School Choice' and the forming of citizens for responsible freedom are two of the most hotly debated topics in educational policy. International comparison offers perspective on the effects of alternative policies. This book profiles – historically and currently – two countries which give strong support to parental choice (The Netherlands and Belgium) and two others that maintain a strong State role in controlling education (Germany and Austria). Charles L. Glenn draws upon Dutch, French, and German sources to contrast how the Dutch and Belgians came – over the 19th and 20th centuries – to entrust education to civil-society institutions with strong parental choice, while Germany and Austria maintained a predominant State role in education. Glenn illuminates the implications of these policies and the dangers that can arise when the State uses popular schooling to shape popular beliefs and loyalties. This is essential reading for policy specialists concerned with balancing school autonomy and government oversight, and with debates over parental choice of schools.

This book examines an important aspect of the relationship between higher education and the public - especially secondary - system of schooling in Britain. Higher education has influenced secondary schools in a number of ways, and not least in the development of school examinations. The contributors to this book – each of them experts in their fields analyse the contributions made by some university luminaries, most of them still household names. These personalities have contributed in a variety of ways such as: becoming Ministers of Education contributing powerfully to successive reform movements using their status as members of that mysterious class called 'the great and the good' to mould public policy and to chair prestigious commissions choosing to centre their own research and scholarship on matters related to schooling. Using Oxford University as its chosen case study, this book places these studies in the wider context of the role of Oxford in public and political life, and in an international context. It examines critically the overall contribution of one university to the formulation of national policies, questions the extent to which that contribution has been unique and beneficent, and offers explanations of the contemporary decline in that influence. This book was previously published as a special issue of the Oxford Review of Education.