The Secondary Technical School: A Usable Past?

The book’s purpose was two-fold. First, it offers a full-length history of the technical schools in their own time and context. Second, it illuminates recent contemporary policy initiatives. The latter aim operates at the cutting edge of political hopefulness. Much of the policy formulation during the Thatcher period had shown a deliberate, almost wilful, ignorance of the history. Hence, in saying of the book, ‘the history ... will have explanatory leverage on policy as developed over the past decade’, McCulloch strikes the most optimistic stance possible in the circumstances. But as in so many areas of cultural policy, we should not fall victim to top-down philistinism, or to fatalism. It is to McCulloch’s credit that his approach and his scholarship lead us firmly in the direction of policies based on historical understanding, not contemporary ignorance. Today it can be read in its historical context.