This year saw the publication of the Conservative Case for Education by Nicholas Tate. The book is well worthy of your time, even if it fails to achieve its stated ambition of providing a (small ‘c’) conservative vision of education. As I said in my review for ‘Schools Week’,
There remains, however, an underlying tension; Tate’s evident irritation with the direction of contemporary thinking, indeed culture, seems to hang over his work. There is nothing wrong with this, and as Chesterton reminds us, ‘he is a very shallow critic who cannot see an eternal rebel in the heart of a conservative.’ But the rebel must also be a romantic, and have a cause to sell.
It is here that Tate risks reaffirming the caricatures of the conservative mindset – that it knows what it is against more than it knows what it is for.
Read the rest of the review
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