Education for a Change

Transforming the way we teach our children

Titus Alexander, John Potter

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781134312306
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Education
• Sous-sujet: Education General

This challenging, hard-hitting book is about making schooling relevant to modern society. It starts from the premise that our present education system is ill equipped to serve students and society in thetwenty-first century. In a series of positive yet powerful and provocativechapters, the authors look at critical issues shaping schools today, with a view to:

* set out the critical issues behind the headlines
* show evidence from research and examples of good practice
* stimulate public debate and rigorous thinking about how we educate children for life in the twenty-first century
* provide practical examples of learning for the future
* present a vision for school transformation.

With contributions from a range of leading commentators including Tim Brighouse, Jonathan Poritt, Anita Roddick, Charles Handy and Jonathan Sacks, this is a must-read for school leaders, teachers, policy-makers, parents and all education professionals.

Chapter 1: Education for a change

Letter to the reader

Dear reader

About this book

Education for a Change is an invitation to improve children’s opportunities for learning. How we, as a society, enable young people to learn is one of our greatest responsibilities. As a society, we have chosen to invest in schools as the main place where children learn what they need to know. This book argues that schools need to change dramatically if all children are to fulfil their potential. We also need to invest in less formal places of learning, particularly families, libraries, museums and active learning centres of all kinds.

Every Tract – for that, strictly is what they are – draws on years of experience and thought to propose constructive answers to the question, ‘How do we teach our children?’

But this book does not propose a blueprint of solutions. Blueprints and imposed solutions are part of the problem. What we want is a process of discussion and transformation which creates a culture of constant learning and development that radically improves the everyday education of young people. We therefore invite you to:

• Read all or the part that catches your eye, and follow-up the suggestions for further study and action.
• Give this book to other people to read and discuss.
• Form reading groups, of parents, governors, teachers and others to discuss it, section by section.
• Form action groups, in school, the LEA, your union or professional association, to develop specific suggestions.
• Use the book to start or join the debate in your local area, the press or on the Internet.
• Discuss the issues with your local school governors, your elected councillors and your Members of Parliament, and work with them to transform schools into places of learning capable of equipping young people to thrive in the twenty-first century.

Each section concludes with a list of recommendations. The book finishes with a number of action points for pupils, parents, teachers, governors, LEAs, professional associations, the media, business and government.

This book is therefore an invitation to join the debate, listen to the arguments and make your voice heard. We hope that the ideas discussed here will inspire you to discuss them with friends and colleagues; to work with others to improve and extend learning for young people; and to join a movement that is beginning to transform schools into local centres for lifelong learning.

Everyone has a part to play in improving learning and schools. We hope this book helps us, as individuals and members of society, fulfil our responsibilities for the young people of tomorrow.

Titus Alexander and John Potter
Editors

Tract 1: The battle of ideas

Titus Alexander and John Potter, the Editors, explore the battle for ideas about the future of our schools which must respond to the needs of the present rather than the patterns of the past

We are in the middle of a battle of ideas about schools. The outcome will shape our country for a generation or more. The debate begins with education’s role in meeting the needs of young people in a world of constant change.

The world has already changed dramatically over the past century, largely as a result of our use of knowledge in the form of science, technology, medicine, politics, economics and other disciplines. In 1900, almost a third of jobs were in manufacturing and 11% in agriculture. Today less than 2% work in agriculture, just 14% in manufacturing and most jobs are in services. Less than a third of the paid workforce was women; today it is almost half. Most people now live 30 to 40 years longer than in 1900. Increased efficiency and longevity mean that most people today can expect to spend just 20% of their adult waking lives at work and 80% in leisure and learning, whereas 150 years ago most people toiled 80% of their adult waking lives and enjoyed just 20% free time. In material terms, most people in the West are much better off than a century ago. Spending on leisure is now the second largest item of household budgets, after housing. Almost everyone has instant access to news and entertainment through television. Many homes have more information on tap through the Internet than most universities held in their libraries just 20 years ago.

Britain is now a nation of many cultures, faiths, peoples and traditions. It is part of the European Union, the world’s largest economic power with 480 million people, 25 member states and a single market in which people have a right to travel and work anywhere from Glasgow to Gdansk. It belongs to the Commonwealth, United Nations and several thousand international organisations and treaties which govern the world. It is part of a global economy, in which the vast productive capacity of China and South East Asia is growing 5 to 10% a year, slashing the price of consumer goods.

Our governments have agreed rules of world trade, which mean that people in Britain compete with people in India paid one-tenth of the amount, in accounting and computing as well as manufacturing.

Over the past century, humanity’s ability to wage war killed over 100 million people. Western Europe has sustained over 50 years of peace after four centuries in which every generation fought somewhere on European soil. Today the threats of climate change, terrorism and other dangers have led the Astronomer Royal, Professor Sir Martin Rees, to warn that ‘humanity is more at risk than at any earlier phase in its history’. In Our Final Century: A Scientists Warning (Rees 2003),¹ he estimates that our chance of survival may only be 50:50. Some of these issues are addressed in school through the citizenship curriculum and the government’s Action Plan for Sustainable Development Education. But these remain marginal to mainstream policy and practice.

Knowledge and skill have played a powerful part in both the achievements of the past century and also in its catastrophes. Educated people led the genocides in Germany during the Second World War and Rwanda in 1994. Educated people created machines and chemicals that caused disasters like thalidomide, asbestos and environmental pollution. But education and the use of knowledge also enhances our lives, reducing drudgery and mitigating both natural and man-made disasters.

Education is dangerous

It is easy to assume that education, education, education is, by its nature, a good thing. This is clearly false. Education does not necessarily make people better or stop them from doing terrible things. Education can even increase our ability to cause harm. It is not enough, therefore, to call for ‘more education’ or ‘education for its own sake’. It matters what we teach.

Skills and knowledge are powerful tools. How we use them, individually and collectively, depends on our values. But values alone are not enough to ensure that knowledge is not used dangerously. Educated, idealistic people have, at times, committed terrible crimes against humanity in the name of Buddhism, Christianity, Communism, Hinduism, Islam, progress or another noble value system.

How education is used also depends on the organisations which govern how we live, from the family, school and workplace to the United Nations. Organisations embody our collective learning as a species. Their purpose, rules, beliefs and ways of working shape the way individuals behave. Democratic, pluralistic organisations limit the ability of an individual or group to cause harm and increase incentives for people to work for the common good.

But education is also dangerous for any established order, because it can lead to new ideas, new ways of doing things or new confidence in people to stand up for themselves and overthrow or transform the status quo. This is the essence of democratic pluralism, in which people learn what is possible and seek to make it happen, through enterprise, science, politics, art or their daily lives.

The dangerous power of education therefore depends on democratic citizenship to be a force for good. As citizens, we have a profound responsibility to debate and decide the purpose of education and the organisations which govern it.

Schools and society

Schools are about more than basic skills and knowledge or success in passing exams. As Bart McGettrick argues in Tract 8, schools are also about the dignity of each person, about how we learn and the values underpinning society. The values of our present school system reflect a divided society, with different kinds of school serving people from different social or religious background. Better-off parents can afford to buy the education of their choice. Seven percent of children go to private schools, where classes are small and they are 30 times more likely to get into a top university than someone from a less advantaged background. State schools in affluent areas are also more likely to be better than schools serving poor areas, where conditions are more challenging. The stark fact remains that those in poverty face enormous obstacles. Lack of education, or even an appreciation of the possibilities offered by education, often go hand in hand with deprivation. It is not surprising that 30% of young offenders and half of all adults in prison have difficulty reading and writing.

More fundamentally, the issue is whether we see education simply as a consumer good, which individuals choose for their private benefit, or whether it is also about a shared citizenship in a common society. And if it is about shared citizenship, is it prescribed by central government, or created by members of a school community, in dialogue with the rest of society, as a ‘citizenship school’ (Tract 28).

Tackling teaching and learning

We need a more coherent approach to the practice of teaching and learning (pedagogy), which takes account of new discoveries about the brain as well as the needs of learners and teachers as people engaged in a common purpose (Chapter 5). These issues form the heart of the book and the debate society needs if we are to address the challenges of the decades ahead.

We need a new framework for schools, which enables schools to innovate and respond to a changing world in ways that all young people can flourish. In Chapter 4 we explore a variety of ways in which schools are already beginning to interact with their communities in fresh and creative ways. Tim Brighouse (Tract 24) describes how the ‘collegiate academy’ could meet this challenge in urban areas. Phil Street explores the prospective importance of ‘extended schools’ and Roz Bird describes how some schools are contributing to the development of rural areas. The section ends with a visionary description of a school of the future by Tony Hinckley (Tract 29)

But three things are likely to be central for children’s education in future:

1. 1 Support for parents as a child’s first and most enduring educator and families as foundations of life long learning.
2. 2 The critical role of teacher – someone who enables young people to achieve their best. As society becomes more complex and demanding, many different kinds of teachers will become even more important as guides through the avalanche of knowledge and possibilities. There are, of course, many different kinds of teacher, including the parent, grandparent, community coach, mentor, workplace adviser, trainer, youth worker, etc.
3. 3 Learning communities, groups of people learning together in places designed to support learning, whether they are called schools, community learning centres or something else.

These are big questions, to which there are many different answers. But in the battle for ideas there are many different answers about how to achieve our goals. Protagonists in the debate can be grouped into three broad camps:

• Traditionalist, who want good discipline, high academic standards and ‘a return to the traditional idea of the teacher teaching the class’ advocated by Chris Woodhead. ‘The belief that teachers must cater for individual needs … is a dangerous nonsense.’²
• Functionalist, who emphasise skills and employability, as much of this Government’s policies have done. They emphasise standards in basic skills of reading, writing, maths and information technology. As set out in the Government’s Primary Strategy, it is ‘focused on individual pupils’ needs and abilities’ in order to reach centrally determined targets.
• Holist, who are concerned with the whole person and learning in a community, society and the wider world. They recognise learning as a collective process as well as an intensely personal one, in which individual potential is realised as a member of society.

Advocates of each approach extol the best examples of their position and denounce the worst of the others as typical. The truth is that at their best all three approaches are excellent, and the best teachers in each approach use methods associated with the others when appropriate.

Each approach has standards, but they focus on different aspects of human potential. The first concentrates on academic abilities; the second stresses skills for life and work; while the third is more rounded, giving attention to each person as a member of society and their unique potential to develop personal, social and intellectual abilities in a changing world.

The traditionalist, functionalist and holistic views have different objectives. These differences imply real choices. The broad approach of this book supports the holist view and we shall return to these three views at relevant points throughout the book and its conclusions.

In addition to these three approaches, there are three distinct views about how schools should be d...