I doubt if there has been a book like R. W. Connell’s Teacher’s Work. It aims at presenting to the lay reader the detail and nitty-gritty of life and work in schools from teachers’ day-to-day perspectives. The book successfully illuminates much of the routine of a teacher’s work and the way schools operate – at least in New South Wales in the late 1970s. However, this is one of the book’s problems. Because both time and place are so specific, there is a real problem about relevance. I felt many of the comments did not apply as clearly to Victorian state education as they obviously did to NSW. In particular, important initiatives in Victoria like the creation of post-primary schools (combining. High and Secondary schools) and the important Blackburn Report, inquiring into post-compulsory education in Victoria, limited the books usefulness. Furthermore Connell’s assertion that schools and teachers are essentially conservative (a statement with which I basically agree) partly ignores the fact that education is having to deal with quite massive changes.