変化の速い世の中にあって教育とはどうあるべきなのでしょうか。新型コロナウイルス感染症パンデミックは教育現場にオンライン学習の導入を加速させました。従前より「教育は社会的流動性を可能にする」と言われますが、人種、ジェンダー、社会的不公正は一向に解消されません。これまで教育がどのような発展を遂げてきたのか、古代から現代に至る学校教育の歴史的経緯を振り返り、さまざまな教育・教授法、国ごとの違いなども考慮・分析し、教育の未来を展望します。
   

• Explores the evolution of education since the Ancient Greeks, and analsyses the forces influencing it
• Considers contemporary controversies over progressive versus formal teaching
• Explores the work of the important education theorists, including Piaget and Vygotsky
• Considers how curriculums globally can be shaped to meet the needs of a rapidly moving world

  
Since the early Egyptians human beings have formalised the business of learning, setting up a designated environment of some form to pass knowledge and learning on to groups of students. In this second edition of his Very Short Introduction, Gary Thomas explores how and why education has evolved as it has, examining the ways in which it has responded over the centuries to various influences in politics, philosophy, and the social sciences. Focussing on education today, he considers especially the controversies over progressive versus formal teaching, and also examines education worldwide, assessing the accelerating trend on both sides of the Atlantic of the move to charter, academy, and 'free' schools.
   
The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically accelerated moves to online learning in schools and universities, and in this new edition Thomas looks again at curriculums and what shape they should take in a rapidly changing world. He asks why action on race, gender and social inequality has borne so little fruit thus far, questioning the oft-made claim of education to be a force for social mobility, and offering an analysis on how education may develop over the coming century.