Education was a critical focus of the "war on poverty" declared by President Johnson in 1964. U.S. policy built on research, and experiments being conducted in the early 1960s produced major programs such as the preschool Head Start and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, 1965. In this major transatlantic study two senior educationalists examine both these developments and similar processes in Britain—notably the Plowden report of 1967. The Silvers examine the shift of attention in Britain from social class and the secondary school to poverty and the primary and preschool stage, and use extensive archive and interview material to analyze in depth transatlantic interactions, similarities, and differences in systems and policies. An Educational War on Poverty makes a substantial contribution to recent social and educational history, of interest both to scholars and policy makers, not least for its two large-scale national bibliographies.
