Abstract

Bloomsbury Academic has recently published the six volumes of A Cultural History of Education, edited by Gary McCulloch. This collective effort constitutes an ambitious attempt to interpret the development of educational processes and institutes through history according to the anthropologic concept of culture, that is, the amount of beliefs, behaviors and interpersonal relationships, which shape individual and social identities in communities. Such approach can now be based on a solid tradition of studies, and some of the essays the collection proposes are valuable contributions to a new interpretation of the role of educational practices and experiences in Western history. However, the reader may also detect some limits in the global coverage of educational issues. Furthermore, some major disciplinary topics, such as the global diffusion of the main pedagogic ideas in the last decades, are somewhat neglected by authors.