Education for Democracy in England in World War II examines the educational discourse and involvement in wartime educational reforms of five important figures: Fred Clarke, R. H. Tawney, Shena Simon, H. C. Dent and Ernest Simon. These figures campaigned for educational reforms through their books, publishing articles in newspapers, delivering speeches at schools and conferences and by organizing pressure groups. Going beyond the literature in this key period, the book focuses on exploring the relationship between democratic ideals and reform proposals in each figure’s arguments. Displaying a variety of democratic forums for debates about education beyond parliament, the book re-interprets wartime educational reforms from a different perspective and illustrates the agreements and contradictions in the educational discourse itself.

Hsiao-Yuh Ku is an associate professor at the Graduate Institute of Education, National Chung Cheng University in Taiwan. Her research interest is in the field of English history of education, mainly on democratic ideals and educational reform in England in the 1930s and 1940s.