The Philosophy of Primary Education (RLE Edu K)

An Introduction

R Dearden

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781138384842
• eBook ISBN: 9781136492648
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This volume provides a rigorous examination of theoretical concepts such as need, interest, growth, play, experience, activity and self-expression. It also makes an important contribution towards getting a closely argued educational theory. In the first part of the book the author establishes general aims and ends with suggestions as to what the curriculum ought to be. The second part is concerned with the procedures of learning and teaching appropriate to such a curriculum.

Chapter One

THE CHANGING CONCEPT OF THE
PRIMARY SCHOOL

THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TRADITION

The primary school came into existence with the appearance of the first of the three Hadow Reports, The Education of the Adolescent (H.M.S.O., 1926). As one can see from the title of that report, the primary school came into existence as a consequence of interests which lay elsewhere, namely with children of what would now be called secondary age. With the school leaving age then at fourteen, and at least three years thought to be necessary for a recognizable secondary course, a break was seen to be indicated at the age of eleven. The choice of this age also fitted in well with the already existing age of transfer of the ‘scholarship’ children to what are now called the grammar schools. This took place at eleven.

Thus the ‘all-age’ elementary schools were, at least in recommendation, split at eleven into primary and secondary schools, though the actual reorganization was still not complete thirty years later. By ‘primary’ school, however, the second Hadow Report meant only the school for children of from seven to eleven, the ‘juniors’, since the infant schools for the five-to-sevens were often already separate departments, defined by their being prior to ‘standard one’. But in this book, ‘primary school’ will be taken to include both infant and junior schools, or Plowden's first and middle schools, and thus covers the period of compulsory education from five up to eleven or twelve years of age.

The general character of the all-age elementary schools, how-ever, had been formed in the last half of the nineteenth century. This period saw some thirty years of the notorious system of ‘payment by results’, following Lowe's Code of 1862 for ‘popular education’. Even when the forces which formed that general character ceased to operate, it proved to be stubbornly self-perpetuating, and the liberal proposals for the primary school of the second and third Hadow Reports, published in 1931 and 1933, were slow to gain ground. This was especially so in the ‘junior’ departments, in which the recommendations of 1931 had still had only little effect by 1948 (H.M.S.O., 1952, prefatory note).

This slowness was due partly to concentration on secondary re-organization and building, partly to the ‘scholarship’ examination at eleven, which more or less replaced payment-by-results in encouraging the view that the primary school's justification lay solely in preparing children for the secondary school, and partly also it was due to the sheer inertia of a by now well-established tradition (H.M.S.O., 1952, ch. 1). Only gradually did the infant departments free themselves from a similar subordination to the needs of the juniors.

Indeed, a discerning eye can still detect many of the features characteristic of the elementary schools at the turn of the century. The ‘eleven plus’ is still commonly referred to as the ‘scholarship’ examination. Age groups are still sometimes called ‘standards’. There still exist in places a reverence for registers and an awe of the inspector. Headteachers may still sometimes be required to gain the approval of ‘the office’ for the most trivial and detailed matters, and insist on a similar subordination from their staff. Yet if changes have come slowly, the infant schools for the five-to seven-year-olds have now substantially transformed them-selves, and in the last decade even the junior schools have abandoned some of their traditions and much of their old ethos.

These, of course, are historical rather than philosophical considerations, but it will prove useful in the later sections of this book to have a rough model in mind of the general character of the elementary school tradition. It provides the point of departure for change, and is the background of existing practice against which successive reformers are inveighing and which often deter-mines the form of their protest. It therefore deserves some further elaboration, even if only of a very generalised and schematic kind.

The curriculum of the elementary school was dominated by the criterion of social utility. As W. A. C. Stewart puts it: ‘It is a truism to say that the elementary school system of the nineteenth century was not primarily intended to have any cultural value but was predominantly and unmistakably utilitarian’ (Mannheim and Stewart, 1962, 21). Since the institution was also predominantly a working class one, ‘social utility’ can be further specified as ‘what it is useful to teach the sons and daughters of the working classes’.

Principally, of course, this meant the teaching of the three R's: reading, writing and arithmetic. It was thought useful that these children should be able to read, be able to write neatly, legibly and with correct spelling and punctuation, and be quick and accurate in the main departments of the social applications of arithmetic, such as number, money, weight, length, capacity and time. In addition to these ‘basic skills’, a certain amount of factual material came also to be included, so that something of the geography of the British Isles and British Empire was learned, a suitably patriotic view of our national history was formed, and some facts about certain biological phenomena were learned. Very important also was a knowledge of the Bible. One of the original impulses behind teaching these children to read was that they should be able to read the Bible for themselves.

In addition to the criterion of social utility, there was also operative a demand that this schooling should be cheap, so that mass instruction to fifty or sixty or even many more was very common. The general pattern was for a lesson to be delivered and then to be followed up by drills, practices, catechisms, tests and revisions, with uniform standards of attainment for all, and success achieved if evidence of adequate memorization could be shown. What was taught might not have been understood, but the important thing was, as it were, to know the words in order to be saved. Even with the introduction of ‘art and craft’ into the curriculum, the same general pattern of instruction and drill prevailed. Fifty careful copies of a picture, classroom object or blackboard model would be produced for art, or a long series of graded exercises, culminating perhaps in the manufacture of a paper envelope, would serve for craft. Social utility and cheapness ruled here as elsewhere. Certainly there was no room for ‘mere play’. Children came to school to work, and the teacher had to see that that was what they did. There could be no place for anything as time-wasting and trivial as play, apart from some brief intermissions as minimal concessions which had to be made to animal spirits.

Inevitably, the ethos of the elementary school was authoritarian, and the authority of the teacher over the children was marked in many ways. He was physically separate from and raised above his class, facing them from a dais or high chair. The children were required to observe various rituals of respect, such as prompt standing up on the appearance of authority-figures, speech richly punctuated with ‘sir’ and ‘miss’, procedures for gaining permission to move, or indeed to do anything, procedures for gaining the teacher's attention, and so on. A teacher who successfully exacted such observances was a ‘good disciplinarian’. His children did not talk, fidget, waste time or do anything of their own accord; they listened, and obediently did as they were told, waiting when they had done it for further instructions.

This authoritarianism was reinforced in many ways. The content of what was taught was made dependent for its acceptability on having come from the appropriate authority, whether the teacher or the class textbook, so that the decision-procedure in all cases of doubt or ignorance was to ask the teacher and be told. ‘Teacher says’ settled the matter, and it was a shameful thing, to be concealed at all costs, for the teacher not to know or not to be able to say. One learned in response to such directions as ‘look at the blackboard’, ‘watch how I do it’, ‘repeat after me’ and ‘do as I say’. Again, the expected reluctance of children to learn necessitated a system of incentives to work sustained in effectiveness by the pressure of the teacher. Competition for stars, places of prestige, points and privileges lured on the co-operative, while the rest were goaded by threats, penalties and punishments of many kinds, from sitting with hands on heads or kneeling on the floor to being isolated in some cupboard or corner, or given the cane.

The teachers and headteachers stood similarly subordinated and receptive towards the acts and decisions of yet higher authorities, whose regulations sought to secure that the utilitarian aims of the school would be achieved, and that neither money nor minutes would be wasted in the process. W. A. L. Blyth comments on the elementary school that ‘most of its teachers were themselves too limited in ability and in education and too insecure both financially and socially to be able to conceive of their task in terms other than those of meticulous and conscientious compliance with the routines that they knew’ (Blyth, 1965, II, 27).

The authoritarianism institutionally required from the teacher was not, of course, without its recognizable effects on the teacher's own personality, as Waller made clear in a section of his book called ‘What Teaching does to Teachers’, though he was referring to the parallel system in America (Waller, 1932). For a vivid literary portrayal of the transformation required in a person as a condition of success in the elementary school, one might turn to chapter thirteen of D. H. Lawrence's novel The Rainbow, where a young girl, Ursula, is given a post in such a school. She saw:

all the schoolteachers, drudging unwillingly at the graceless task of compelling many children into one disciplined, mechanical set, reducing the whole set to an automatic state of obedience and attention, and then of commanding their acceptance of various pieces of knowledge. The first great task was to reduce sixty children to one state of mind, or being. This state of mind must be produced automatically, through the will of the teacher, and the will of the whole school authority, imposed upon the will of the children. The point was that the headmaster and the teachers should have one will in authority, which should bring the will of the children into accord.

But it was not all gloom, and Lawrence himself captures the elementary school classroom in one of its more rewarding moments in his poem The Best of School.

TWO FORMATIVE INFLUENCES

At this point one might pause for a moment to reflect on these generalizations about the elementary school tradition and to try to identify the formative influences at work in producing it. Two such important influences can be picked out for brief comment. The first of these, as with any system of educational practice, relates to social structure in its economic and social class aspects. It has already been mentioned that the dominant criterion for curriculum content was social utility, and that ‘utility’ meant what was useful for working-class children to learn and could cheaply be provided for them. The stress on ‘basic skills’ and the narrow way in which these were conceived were the educational counter-part to a range of adult occupations which called for factory workers, shop assistants, low-grade clerical workers and, very important for the girls, domestic servants. As well as the limited knowledge which such occupations required there were also certain attitudes, notably an attitude of suitable deference towards social superiors. Substantial change in the primary schools has come only with change in this particular formative influence, though the education of the very youngest children was already freeing itself from it at the time of the Hadow Reports.

Today, as everyone knows, the pattern and character of occupations is rapidly changing. The equipment of narrow skills drilled into elementary school children would no longer be adequate, or even sometimes necessary, as more and more low-grade work is mechanized. Increasingly, firms prefer to give their own particular kinds of training. Increasingly, also, jobs require a theoretical ingredient, not just a practical know-how to be gained simply by long apprenticeship. Employers look to the schools for a general education which will produce people who are adaptable and flexible (Plowden Report, paras. 494–6) and ‘adaptability’ is as much a function of having general concepts and principles at one's command as it is of an attitude of readiness to try something different. Not surprisingly, therefore, mathematics and science are at the forefront of the minds of those who now call for a ‘general education’. Doubtless much of the impetus and the financial encouragement for the current changes in mathematics teaching in primary schools, and for the introduction of elementary science, spring from this economic demand.

This and other similar changes in the content of the curriculum have repercussions on general methodology, of course, since they call for insight, understanding and critical acceptance: features which consort ill with any authoritarianism. Indeed, advocates of these curricular and methodological changes have often been quite conscious of the fact that what they were recommending was incompatible with the attitudes going along with a general authoritarianism. Max Wertheimer, for example, explicitly linked his ‘productive thinking’ with democracy and the dignity of man. When insightful methods of learning are used ‘an attitude is implied on his part, a willingness to face problems straight, a readiness to follow them up courageously and sincerely. … This, I think, is one of the great attributes that constitute the dignity of man’ (Wertheimer, 1945, 243). Not surprisingly, therefore, we find movement away from the elementary school tradition occurring not only in consequence of economic change, but also in consequence of wider social and political changes.

Against the view that a cheap and suitably inferior kind of training was good enough for the children of the working classes, there developed a political movement demanding ‘education for all’ and ‘equality of opportunity’. At first, these demands were satisfied by opening up the ‘secondary’ (later grammar) schools to an increasing number of children who had demonstrated their merits in an examination at the age of eleven. By 1944, social justice demanded that all the places in the grammar schools be given on grounds of merit, and none be reserved for children whose only merit was having parents who could afford the fees. But such changes were made within a framework of assumptions which included an acceptance of social class structure as something that was given, a datum. Granted that assumption, heredity was seen as the principal factor in determining variations in ability, and selection and streaming were seen as efficient means of doing justice to the then given abilities.

However, once the existing social class structure was no longer automatically accepted as part of the nature of things, it was quickly revealed as itself being a major factor in determining variations in ability, and the school was seen as a possible agency through which one might deliberately compensate for certain inequalities of opportunity, namely those arising from the varying attitudes shown to children, and the variable provision and encouragement given to them, by different social classes. The movements against eleven-plus selection, against streaming, and now for positive discrimination in favour of certain socially depressed areas (Plowden Report, ch. 5), stemmed largely from the trend of this wider social and political thinking. Much of the acrimony and mutual misunderstanding which have accompanied these actual and recommended changes, one may surmise, are due to the fact that some have come to see as variables, subject to human choice and control, what for others still lies beyond the horizon of human agency, as something given, fixed, part of the nature of things, and perhaps even conveniently so if in fact it works to their own advantage.

But besides the influence of social structure in its economic and social class aspects, one may see also in the elementary school tradition a second influence at work, and one which is not wholly unrelated to the first. This second influence is that of a certain theory of human nature deriving from religion. According to this theory, children are to be seen as being by nature bad. That is to say, their spontaneous impulses are to be distrusted, they cannot see what is true or good for themselves, and hence they stand in need of a redemption which in practice can only be gained by obedience to adult authority. One should therefore distrust spontaneity, independence, or self-direction in children. Such things are sensed to be the potentially anarchic symptoms of a self-will that must be curbed, and in some cases broken. Hence the plethora of such proverbs and sayings as ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’, or ‘Satan will find mischief for idle hands to do’. The implications of this for the teacher fitted in very well with the utilitarian demand for efficiency, and with the general ethos of authoritarianism engendered on the one hand by the methods of mass instruction, and on the other hand by the administrative and social hierarchy. Children should be directed in all that they do, told in detail what to do and how to do it, kept busy, and trained in obedience to such directions. Not only was the good disciplinarian giving secular instruction and instilling appropriately deferential attitudes, but he was also making his contribution towards the saving of souls.

A feature of this theory of human nature deserving of remark is its self-confirming character. That is to say, if one does in fact believe children to be by nature bad, and if one makes institutional arrangements of the kind described to combat this badness, then what happens abundantly confirms one's expectations. Bad children will be reluctant to learn, and so it turns out. Bad children will laugh if the teacher's dignity is momentarily upset, and so they do. They will relax and fight if control is withdrawn, and they will erupt into wildness when the pressures are off, all of which is confirmed.

Furthermore, accounts of different regimes in which none of these things are noticeably present will be received with incredulity. Knowing questions will be asked about what such children do when so-and-so, and any news of a need for some control or direction will be received with relief. And no doubt such suspicions and reluctance to believe will in some cases be justified, for belief in the badness of children polarizes in some people an opposite belief in their natural goodness, so that authoritarianism may be countered by sentimentality. Dewey saw the mechanism of this style of reaction very clearly when he said that ‘in spite of itself any movement that thinks and acts in terms of an ’ism becomes so involved in reaction against other ’isms that it is unwittingly controlled by them. For it then forms its principles by reaction against them instead of by a comprehensive, constructive survey of actual needs, problems and possibilities’ (Dewey, 1938, Preface). One thesis of this book will be that much of the child-centred reaction against the authoritarianism of the elementary-school tradition has been controlled in this way.

CHANGE AND UNCERTAINTY

The elementary-school tradition had at least one virtue. It made clear to the teacher what he was supposed to do, arranged a con-certed programme of mutually supportive teaching, and provided institutional backing for such measures as the teacher had to take. With the eclipse of that tradition, the concept of the primary school has, perhaps only temporarily, become somewhat clouded. There are, of course, those who talk approvingly of ‘good teachers’, ‘good practice’ and ‘good learning situations’, as if what was ‘good’ just showed itself, and as clearly and unambiguously to all as does what is tall, o...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Routledge Library Editions: Education
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Original Copyright
• The Students Library Of Education
• Contents
• PREFACE
• Chapter One THE CHANGING CONCEPT OF THE PRIMARY SCHOOL
• Chapter Two AIMS (1): NEEDS AND INTERESTS
• Chapter Three AIMS (2): GROWTH
• Chapter Four AIMS (3): A CURRICULUM
• Chapter Five PLAY AS AN EDUCATIONAL PROCESS
• Chapter Six LEARNING AND EXPERIENCE
• Chapter Seven ACTIVITY, SELF-EXPRESSION AND THE ARTS
• Chapter Eight MORAL EDUCATION
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
• INDEX