This volume examines the role of the state in education. The opening essay, "Why should we teach the history of education?", sets out to make a renewed case for the study of the history of education by all those involved in the educational process, especially policy-makers. In the following chapters, Brian Simon demonstrates how the effect of the restructuring of education in England and Wales between 1850-70 was to create a closed system of education benefiting the Victorian middle classes at the expense of the poor. He argues that it is this legacy that we are still grappling with as we enter the 21st century. Brian Simon is the author of the four-volume "Studies in the History of Education".