The article traces some lines of connection between teachers' efforts to reshape the way that teaching and learning are done in local settings, and larger-scale shifts and tensions in education policy. The article begins with an account of opposition to the changes that European governments inspired by global policy orthodoxy seek to make in their education systems. It suggests that the intellectual and political resources that supply such opposition were accumulated in most cases in the immediate post-war period, and replenished in the social conflicts of the 1960s and 1970s. It raises the possibility that these resources are now--save in a largely nostalgic sense--exhausted, and cannot contribute to a remaking of education systems. This notion is tested by exploring the ideas and practices of teachers who, working under the banner of "creativity", are attempting to break away from the standards agenda that they have inherited. In doing so, the article suggests, they may find themselves drawing from social, democratic traditions of education, developed not just in England, but elsewhere in Europe; educational internationalism is not the sole property of policy elites.