An Educational War on Poverty
American and British Policy-making 1960–1980

An Educational War on Poverty represents a major contribution to the study of the recent social and educational history of Britain and the United States.

Harold Silver (Author), Pamela Silver (Author)

9780521381499, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 26 September 1991

460 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 3 cm, 0.792 kg

"The book is in the finest tradition of comparative public policy research. It also serves as a reminder, to those of us who tend to concentrate on single-nation studies, how valuable such comparative studies can be....the volume is an extremely valuable resource that readers will return to on numerous occasions." John F. Witte, American Political Science Review

This book analyses the parallel, different and related aspects of the discovery of poverty in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and the role of education in the American 'war on poverty' from 1964, and in Britain from the appointment of the Plowden committee on primary schools. It examines changes in policy emphases, the relationship between research and policy, and the transatlantic interactions and silences involved. Based on archival and interview material the book offers new insights into the role of the Plowden committee in shifting attention from social class to poverty, and it discusses in both the American and British contexts the concepts and theories involved in the changing fortunes of the educational war on poverty in the 1960s and 1970s. An Educational War on Poverty represents a major contribution to the study of the recent social and educational history of Britain and the United States, and the range and depth of research, will make it an essential reference source for scholars and policy-makers on both sides of the Atlantic.

Acknowledgments
1. Introduction: a proper complexity
Part I. A Pattern Of Events: United States: 2. Poverty and education: changing concerns and concepts
3. Education: children and intervention
4. Learning their way out of poverty?
5. Education and the prime target
6. An effort to understand
Part II. A Pattern Of Events: Britain: 7. Advancing from poverty?
8. Opportunity, equality and social class
9. Sounds and silences
10. Plowden: direction finding
11. Plowden: making choices
Part III. Following Through: 12. United States: planned and unplanned variation
13. Britain: units of concern
14. Directions
Interviews and consultation
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural history [HBTB]