The second part of this account of struggles over literacy begins in the later seventeenth century. From the 1670s, the new dissenting academies, backed by rising business classes, made teaching in English for a wider curriculum their goal. Thus was Defoe's mastery of a new spoken style developed, while in Scotland, the eighteenth century…

The continuing instability of Education as a discipline is examined against renewed arguments for its "disciplinary" status. Teacher education in particular is seen as Marjorie Garber's concept of "discipline envy" to propose a more positive relationship between disciplines that might work for the good of teacher education.