Ungleiche Bildungschancen: Bildungsforschung, öffentlicher Diskurs und Bildungsreform in England und der Bundesrepublik in den Jahren des Bildungsbooms

The central claim of Measuring the Mind is that, contrary to popular opinion, the psychologists who dominated educational policy-making between the wars were educational progressives and political radicals. They argued that education should reflect the requirements of children rather than the convenience of adults, and regarded intelligence testing as an instrument of child-centred education. These psychologists owed their political inspiration to the meritocratic ideal and lost popularity with the waning of this ideal after the war. Four main themes dominate the discussion: the emergence of educational psychology as a distinct discipline; the recent history of ideas about children's mental development; the role of experts in formulating educational policy; and the rise and fall of the measurement of merit.

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.