Comparative Education

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British Scholars of Comparative Education:

Examining the Work and Influence of Notable 19th
and 20th Century Comparativists

Eleftherios Klerides

To cite this article: Eleftherios Klerides (2022): British Scholars of Comparative Education:
Examining the Work and Influence of Notable 19th and 20th Century Comparativists, Comparative
Education, DOI: 10.1080/03050068.2022.2048448

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/03050068.2022.2048448

Published online: 09 Mar 2022.

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COMPARATIVE EDUCATION

BOOK REVIEW

British Scholars of Comparative Education: Examining the Work and Influence of

Notable 19th and 20th Century Comparativists, edited by David Phillips, Oxon and
New York, Routledge, 2020, 166 pp., £120 (hardback), ISBN: 978-0-367-25027-0,
£33.29 (eBook), ISBN: 978-0-429-28561-5

Clearly, this text will be mandatory reading for specialists in comparative education. It is of
major importance as a contribution to grasping the beginnings and historical trajectories of
the field, sharpening contemporary debates and evoking future research possibilities. Strate-
gically, the book explores the work and influence of British scholars ‘on the way in which com-
parative studies in education developed over the past 150 years’ (1); ‘the pivotal role played by
each scholar in driving a progression through humanistic and scientific approaches to new
epistemological traditions’ (i). It is structured on the basis of chronology: it starts with
essays on the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century work of Matthew Arnold and Michael
Sadler, continues with chapters on Nicholas Hans, Joseph Lauwerys, Brian Holmes, Edmund
King, and Vernon Mallinson, and finishes with reflections on the more recent scholarship of
Nigel Grant, W.D. Halls, Margaret Sutherland, Colin Brock and Peter Jarvis. Certainly, the
quality of the writing in the essays is uneven – some of the writing is a bit dull, while other
writers offer praise far too easily and have clearly not thought hard about the challenges of
biographical research (Roberts 2002); but overall, the book is a solid contribution to the litera-
ture and provokes thought about our ‘iconography’.
The book is not only about ideas and careers carrying the field forward and shaping its idio-
syncrasies. It is also about individuals as personalities whose lives are celebrated by former stu-
dents and colleagues, often with admiration. In the Introduction, David Phillips, the editor of
the book, depicts British scholars of comparative education as ‘people of many parts’. Of those
who are selected

one corresponded with William Gladstone, one assembled a magnificent collection of Impres-
sionist paintings, one was sent to prison in Russia, one so annoyed Graham Greene that he
became a fictional figure in one of Greene’s better-known novels, one chose gardening as
the subject of his first two books, one operated behind enemy lines in Belgium during the
Second World War, and one wrote poetry in Scots. (1)

Pedagogically, the book has rich teaching material for bringing the field to life, for students.
Intellectually, the book is much more ambitious than just a discussion of some of the ‘icons’ of
comparative education. It is important as a contribution to the legitimacy of comparative edu-
cation as a field of study. By facilitating an inter-generational dialogue, the book captures
puzzles and tensions in the field which now need to be brought to the fore. These do not
simply concern the history and identity of the field but also the identity of the comparativist
and the complexities in the production of comparative education knowledge.
The basic contributions of the text are clear: first, the book enriches the field’s archive with
personal memories (of these historically important scholars) by contemporary specialists in
comparative education. A good example is Michele Schweisfurth’s essay on King where she
finishes her reflections on his work and influence by means of a personal reminiscence in
the Pescatori restaurant in London (94).
2 BOOK REVIEW

Secondly, the book revitalises a major puzzle that has been with us at least since Noah and
Eckstein’s (1969) teleological history of the field: what sort of histories are we writing, either
consciously or unconsciously, when we narrate ‘the history of comparative education’? Phillips
himself notes in the Introduction that women comparativists (except Margaret Sutherland) are
absent from the book’s history of British comparative education, while Terri Kim points to the
exclusion of ‘minority ethnic scholars’ in her Afterword (156). What other positions of identifi-
cation are absent from this history? Clearly, Scotland forms part of the story, as well as North-
ern Ireland, but Wales is not represented. The non-British nationals who learned the art of
comparative education in Britain as ‘foreign students’ and returned ‘home’ to contribute to
the development of the field nationally and internationally, are also absent. Perhaps, these
‘subjugated histories’ (Takayama 2018) should be part of the history of the field in Britain –
written how and by whom? – if we are to reach a better grasp of ‘British’ comparative edu-
cation. The history that is on offer in the book is also a history where chronological order,
layered progress and a focus on human agency prevail but the story is not that smooth. For
example, having defined Hans’ work as ‘an escape from the trap of instant practicality’,
Robert Cowen notes that ‘current political and ontological and academic–institutional discon-
tinuities with Hans are dramatic. British "comparative and international education", partly
under the pressure of neo-liberal influences on the university system and ideological
notions of "impact" and partly within the foreign policy frame of British post-colonial political,
economic and cultural relations, has plunged back into the maw of the practical people’ (45–
46). The critical perspective of Takayama (2018) is also relevant here: we still need to be careful
lest we write ‘comforting histories’ (Cowen 2000).
Thirdly, the book is a major contribution to our sense of the identity of the field and its main
features. Combined, the 12 biographical essays do not just project a history of British compara-
tive education: they also articulate an account of who we are, where we came from and, ulti-
mately, what comparative education is about. Kim’s sharp conception of our British
iconography in terms of ‘priorities’ (e.g., an orientation towards policy and advising govern-
ments) and ‘silences’ (e.g., the motif of Empire) reminds us that we have not yet sorted out
a core puzzle in the sociology of discourse formation in comparative education: not simply
how ‘presences’ and ‘absences’ in our comparative knowledge are produced, sustained or
changed over time, but more importantly – for the genre of this and other similar books –
how they emerge at the interplay of individual biography with history and structure. Phillips’
own essay on Mathew Arnold shows brilliantly how Arnold’s practical choices and theoretical
concerns about the comparative inquiry of education ‘elsewhere’ are inextricably interwoven
with the political priorities and social needs of the modern British state in England. Yet, Phillips’
suggestion ‘that the early comparativists have to be seen within the time and contexts in
which they were producing their work’ (2), is not taken up by all authors. This reveals tacit ten-
sions in the book not only about how we understand our iconography and what details from
their biographies we tactically ‘insert’ into the epistemological histories of the field but further-
more about the present (and future?) priorities and silences of comparative education both
within Britain and in contrast to the field’s shape in other places. If we juxtapose this book
with that of Epstein’s (2020), a major difference emerging between British and ‘North Ameri-
can’ comparative education is the fixation on ‘the social sciences’ by ‘North American’
comparativists.
Although there is no agreement in the British volume on how our iconographies are to be
thought of, the biographical chapters are still underpinned by a specific vision of who the
‘good’ comparativist is and what it means to have an ‘impact’ on the field. Phillips alludes
to this vision in the Introduction while justifying his specific selection of British comparativists
as our icons. ‘One thing that unites most of them is that they had experience of school
 COMPARATIVE EDUCATION 3

teaching’ (4) and wrote ‘texts that have been frequently referred to in the literature of com-
parative education’ (1). Another ‘uniting factor’ is that ‘each strove to bring insights to com-
parative inquiry based on their individual areas of expertise – as linguist, historian,
philosopher, scientist’ (5), and all of them ‘played various roles both in editing journals and
yearbooks, in the running of comparative education societies and the active support of inter-
national organisations’ (5). The list of criteria for ‘entering’ the pantheon of our iconography –
and the vision of the ‘good’ comparative educationist – is either explicitly or implicitly
expanded in individual chapters. For instance, the ability to narrate education in foreign
countries mainly in Europe or the command of foreign languages such as French, German
and Russian are subtly identified in several essays as key qualities of a ‘good’ comparativist.
Given that the attributes we ascribe to the identity of the comparativist are always political
and positional, contingent and biased – an exertion of power that constructs unity out of
difference (Klerides and Carney 2021) – what sort of biases, contingencies and oppositions
underpin this book’s vision of the ‘good’ comparativist? And what sorts of shifts in the identity
of the comparativist are already occurring today? Kim, for example, notes that ‘several out-
standing British and American comparativists speak today Chinese and Japanese and have
even migrated to East Asia to do “academic comparative education”’ (158). Opening up an
inter-generational dialogue about this basic but elusive puzzle is a crucial – and unusual – con-
tribution of the book to comparative education.

References
Cowen, R. 2000. “Comparing Futures or Comparing Pasts?” Comparative Education 36 (3): 333–342.
Epstein, E. 2020. North American Scholars of Comparative Education: Examining the Work and Influence of Notable
20th Century Comparativists. Oxon and New York: Routledge.
Klerides, E., and S. Carney. 2021. Identities and Education: Comparative Perspectives in Times of Crisis. London:
Bloomsbury.
Noah, H., and M. Eckstein. 1969. Towards a Science of Comparative Education. London: Macmillan.
Roberts, B. 2002. Biographical Research. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Takayama, K. 2018. “Beyond Comforting Histories: The Colonial/Imperial Entanglements of the International
Institute, Paul Monroe, and Isaac L. Kandel at Teachers College, Columbia University.” Comparative
Education Review 62 (4): 459–481.

Eleftherios Klerides
University of Cyprus
klerides.eleftherios@ucy.ac.cy
© 2022 Eleftherios Klerides
https://doi.org/10.1080/03050068.2022.2048448