Brian Simon and the Struggle for Education: National Identities and International Ideals

Educational historian Gary McCulloch, holder of the Brian Simon Chair at the Institute of Education, analyzes the different lines of research that address the study of national identities and international ideals in education and reviews the main bibliographic contributions of each. He then illustrates the importance of international ideals in education through the figure of Brian Simon, whose personal and intellectual biography he discusses. McCulloch concludes by addressing the enormous influence of the Spanish Civil War on an entire generation of young English intellectuals, the experience of the conflict from the University of Cambridge, the moral and political commitments it generated, and emphasizes how these commitments accompanied Brian Simon's academic and intellectual trajectory for the rest of his life.