Educator Most Extraordinary

Educator Most Extraordinary

The life and achievements of Harry Rée, 1914–1991

Author/Editor(s):
Format:
Paperback / softback, 269 pages, 234 mm x 156 mm
ISBN:
9781782772125
Published:
15 Aug 2017
Imprint:
Institute of Education Press

Price: £24.99

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This is the extraordinary story of Harry Rée, ‘the pre-eminent educationalist of the post-War years’. The youngest of eight children, he went to Cambridge and then into teaching, and after ten years as headmaster of Watford Boys’ Grammar School he became a fervent advocate for comprehensives. The first professor appointed at the University of York, he argued for innumerable causes: community education, comprehensives, curricular reform, voluntary suicide, and much else. His life and thought explored such questions as: What can you do if you truly believe in the power of education? What does it mean to live a life committed to public service? Is one person’s compromise another’s sell-out? And what does it mean to be a visionary?

  • Jonathan M. Daube

    Dr Jonathan Daube lives in western Massachusetts after a career as a teacher, teacher educator, and college president of institutions in Massachusetts and Connecticut.

CONTENTS: Introduction: What was so extraordinary about Harry?; 1. Antecedents; 2. Early life and schooling; 3. Cambridge; 4. Teaching, and on to London; 5. Hetty and the War; 6. After the War: Teaching; 7. Watford; 8. The man who changed his mind and comprehensive schools; 9. Hetty’s death, and moving on; 10. York; 11. Manifold causes; 12. ‘Planned demotion’; 13. Who was the real Harry Rée?; 14. Death and legacy; Appendix: Finding a gap in the hedge; Index

'These collected memories of an extraordinary educator form a deep critique of the marketization of education. For this wartime resistance fighter, despair was not an option. Harry Rée’s ideas of public service and lifelong learning remain a beacon.'

— Beverley Naidoo, Writer

‘Jonathan Daube has woven a multitude of personal memories into a coherent picture of this Educator Most Extraordinary. This is the Harry Rée whom I remember with such affection and gratitude.’

— George Walker, former Director General, International Baccalaureate

‘Harry Rée was a humane, open-minded, generous-spirited and engaging educationalist. He thoroughly merits Jonathan Daube’s humane, open-minded, generous-spirited and engaging account of his influential life.’

— Professor Eric Midwinter, social historian and educationalist

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