Progressive Retreat: A Sociological Study of Dartington Hall School 1926-1957 and some of its former pupils

In 1926, Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst founded Dartington Hall School. Next to Summerhill it was the most influential and important independent school in England when this book was published in 1977. As such it represents a rich vein of alternative education sponsored by middle-class liberal intellectuals in an attempt to escape the orthodoxy of state educational provision. Yet, little evidence existed as to whether these experimental ventures actually worked or even how they might be evaluated. This book represents a fresh attempt to apply explicitly sociological methods to these questions. Maurice Punch critically scrutinises progressive education’s avowed aims to revolutionise the school, to save society from its own destruction, and to produce a renewed type of man and woman.