Making Subjects: History‐Writing, Education and Race Categories

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This article is concerned with the ways in which historians may write about post‐1945 British education. In particular, it argues that accounts of education policy and practice may be distorted by the race and ethnic discourses embedded in both the analytical frameworks which historians employ and in the primary source materials with which we work. We begin by exploring the problems which inhere in the concepts race and ethnicity, arguing that the historian should be wary of importing common sense constructs into historical analysis. Discussion then turns to a critical review of a number of texts written by educationalists and policy‐makers from the early 1960s to the publication of the Swann Report; these texts constructed a particular “race relational” reading of pupil populations and educational “problems”. We summarise the key themes of the period‐texts and consider some new directions for education history‐writing.