The English Examining Boards: Their route from independence to government outsourcing agencies

33

what Schama termed the “in the meantime philosophy of narration”(Schama 2002). I
recognise that in terms of current academic research, the term ‘narrative’ is frequently
used to dismiss work that is deemed insufficiently analytical. The risk as described by
Herbert Butterfield in his classic volume The Whig Interpretation of History (Quoted
in Collini 2005: 24) is falling prey to “the elisions and superficialities of narrative or
synoptic history” There also lurk the perils of what in The Guardian of 11 July 2005
Tristram Hunt described as “the terrible consequences of state-sanctioned national
narratives - with their attendant myths of victimhood, ethnic cohesion or divine
mission....” Having considered this litany of warnings, I remain convinced, with
McCulloch, “of the relevance of the historical dimension” in a study such as this. I
hope to avoid as far as possible the various perils and present a story that has not been
told while at the same time attempting to maintain a critical distance. My view has
been endorsed more recently by Eric Hobsbawm, the pre-eminent Marxist historian:
"History needs to be defended against those who deny its capacity to help us
understand the world...” (The Guardian 15 January 2002)

In order to structure the narrative effectively, it will be constructed in accord with
Antonio Gramsci’s concept - admittedly created in a mega dialectical context - of
“periods of organic crisis” (Gramsci 1957: 174). The crises I shall be considering are
not endogenous, but the result of external policy, the third aspect of the theoretical
framework.

Focus on policy analysis: engaging with the ⁱⁱInanagerial state”

Within the broad spectrum of education policy analysis, while developing a historical
narrative to compensate for lacunae in the literature, the shape of that narrative will be

<<   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   >>

More intriguing information