Abstract

Although considered a figure of great importance and influence by his contemporaries, Edmond Holmes has been consigned to relative obscurity in the progressive educational tradition. This book reinstates Holmes as a key figure in the history of progressive education, both as a School Inspector and educational thinker, who was instrumental in forming a set of ideas and principles which continue to resonate in education today. Working as Chief Inspector, Holmes scorned mechanical obedience in the classroom and was appalled by the inability of teachers to allow pupils to express themselves freely and imaginatively. His seminal publications positioned him at the vanguard of educational reforms and he became a notable contributor to the New Education Fellowship. His work, however, was not exclusively educational, and in later life Holmes published on religion, philosophy, poetry and literature, subsuming his educational viewpoint into a much wider ‘philosophy of life’. His spiritual leanings and call for an improved education system which would draw out the potential for development already within the child inspired successive generations of progressive educators. Combining biographical detail and key critical analysis, this book will contribute to current debates surrounding creativity and the curriculum, along with the need for alternative educational voices within the state system of regulation