This account of the state of secondary schooling in Britain is concerned primarily with the plight of anonymous pupils who offer neither challenge nor difficulty to their teachers and therefore pass through their schooling largely unnoticed. The author argues in a sequence of case studies that the plight of such pupils is a useful key to understanding some of the shortcomings of secondary education in modern Britain. The text examines what happens when teachers and pupils think highly of one another, and what fails when they do not know each other at all. The author highlights the constraints that thwart teachers' intentions, and questions whether it is possible for successful learning to take place in large, overcrowded classes.