Penguin Education
Penguin Education was an imprint of the British publisher Penguin Books, running from 1965 to 1974. Early days Before the imprint formally came into being, Jill Norman had been hired to do research into higher education and determine trends, so that Allen Lane could decide if this was a market he wanted to get into. She worked at the National Book League, nominally for Allen Lane's friend Jack Morpurgo, the director. Allen Lane chose to keep her year's work on the project from the members of the board until she was able to present them with her report. Penguin Education emerged from this experiment in 1965 and was initially headed by Christopher Dolley as managing director. He was succeeded in 1966 by Charles Clark, who combined the role from 1967 with running Penguin Books' hardback imprint Allen Lane the Penguin Press. The new imprint began by publishing, with Longman, the revolutionary Nuffield Foundation Science Teaching Project, a driver of change in science teaching. Among the other initial projects were the five-volume series A History of Britain, the Learning Mathematics Project, and the Success with English course. Higher Education titles The many series subsequently produced for students in higher education covered a wide range of subject areas, and included the history of science, law and society, the Library of Technology and the Science of Behaviour. Notable and influential best-sellers for this market were Peter Worsley's Introducing Sociology, which became an Open University set book, and James Britton's Language and Learning. For students of literature there were critical anthologies on the work of major writers such as Charles Dickens, Henry Fielding, Henrik Ibsen, Ben Jonson, DH Lawrence, Jonathan Swift and WB Yeats; and in the scholarly Penguin English Poets series volumes covering Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, William Wordsworth's The Prelude, Lord Byron's Don Juan, Robert Browning's The Ring and the Book, and the complete poems of John Donne, Samuel Johnson, Christopher Marlowe and Andrew Marvell. The books were marketed by a team based mainly in Harmondsworth, headed by John Hitchin, and given a stylish make-over by the eminent designer Derek Birdsall. Education specials Meanwhile, the imprint's Penguin Education Specials were making a considerable stir. The Hornsey Affair, written by the staff and students of Hornsey College of Art, offered a radical critique of art education, the students’ protest and sit-in there having provoked similar action in other art schools. Warwick University Ltd centred on the student occupation within the university and their uncovering of secret surveillance of staff and students. Edited by E P Thompson and produced at speed in six weeks, the book highlighted issues such as the close links between industry and the universities, and academic and press freedom Other Education Specials focussed on radical ideas from abroad, with books on schooling by American writers and teachers such as John Holt, Paul Goodman, Hebert Kohl, George Dennison and Everett Reimer. Notably influential were the ideas of the Austrian philosopher Ivan Illich in Deschooling Society and the Brazilian Paulo