Antonio Gramsci is one of the few Marxist theoreticians to have considered the role and nature of education, yet paradoxically his revolutionary, political and social theory seems at odds with his conservative approach to the content and processes of schooling. This book, originally published in 1979, examines his educational, political and cultural writings in an effort to resolve this apparent discrepancy.

Gramsci's relevance lies in his treatment, in the context of his radical political theory, of themes which currently exercise modern radical educationists. Among the subjects he discusses are the sociology of the curriculum, the apparent discontinuity between the culture of school and that of daily life, problems of literacy and language in education, the role of the state in the provision of education, the cultivation of elites and the role of intellectuals, the relative functions of authority and spontaneity in education and the ambiguious relationship of these to differing political ideologies, particularly Fascism.