The face of modern education?. Flickr/Richard Lee. Some rights reserved.
Ansgar Allen (2014) Benign Violence: Education in and beyond the Age of Reason, Basingstoke; Palgrave MacMillan. ISBN 9781137272850. £65.00.
Too many sociological and education studies are published nowadays. The pressure to publish has outrun the need to have something different to say. Wheels are constantly re-invented, well-worn furrows are re-ploughed, established ideas, concepts and insights re-cycled. It is not far-fetched to believe that much of what is written and published is actually not intended to be read, it is there to be counted and measured and used to make judgements or claims about the productivity of the author – ‘a new species of academic is in the ascendant’ (p. xi). Worth has become detached from originality. What a relief then it is to read something original, different, challenging, playful, inventive and significant.
