Comments on: A new school politics?

By: Drake Van Patten

Drake Van Patten — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 16:33:20 +0000

Woah, loving the points here.
I think there is a problem with team building as the structures of power in the classroom have been broken down a bit by a more individualistic liberal nature. I mean an openness to individuality has left the kids with no real boundaries which are the core of team building and camaraderie in people, especially young people.
I think also kids can see the tight rope schools are walking between teaching in depth about one topic and then suddenly stopping short of another, like sex-education. They can see that teachers are very wary of crossing boundaries but i think this gets all muddled up into a perception that schools have no real clear aim, in students’ eyes. Although political correctness and rights groups are umming and ahhing about the depth of the state’s intervention into the private sphere when it comes to stuff like sex education, i feel that if it was implemented more definitely the effect would be a a wider minimum standard of education if you like. Perhaps it wont cure the obvious troubles of inequalities in schooling as different catchment areas offer different pupils but it is irrefutable that it will downgrade the importance of performance led choosing.
This wholesale education stance might seem a tad monopolistic but think of it this way, if teachers were allowed to be open and discuss everything then they would be projecting an image of leadership.

By: AnneBailey

AnneBailey — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:18:49 +0000

The really important question is what is education for. One of the commenters mentions the utilitarian view that we educate children so that they can serve the state either by contributing economically or providing a service. I think this is a strongly held view and one that I find odd, maybe because I’m American. I first came across this view when I heard someone bad mouthing someone who’d qualified as a doctor and then decided to emigrate. There was a definite sense that she had taken our money to train and was just taking her skills somewhere else and we wouldn’t benefit at all. There’s clearly a sense that education is an investment in our future workforce. I never had that feeling growing up in the US, maybe because the vast majority of university students pay heavily for their college and graduate school so their only debt is to themselves. I remember long ago my father explaining that the public school system (state schools in the US) existed so that we could educate people to play their part in a democracy. So education was to help develop people to be active citizens, able to make decisions about what sort of government they wanted, to vote. I’m sure there’s a link to economic productivity as well but perhaps it’s more in a macro sense. Having said all that, I am all for the curriculum, teaching, and education overall evolving to prepare young people for the world we live in. But if we started by deciding we were educating people for their responsibilities as citizens rather than as fodder for some centralist plan for the economy we would definitely get different outcomes.

By: matthewtaylor

matthewtaylor — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 08:44:04 +0000

Thanks Phil, This is an important point to make and sadly I agree that teaches as a profession seem resistant to effective performance management. There can also be an inadvertent inverted class issue. If middle class children go to challenging inner city schools they will always be seen as having lesser needs than others and when they misbehave can be subject to comments like – ‘I am surprised to see this from someone with a home like yours’ etc. My older son had to deal with lots of this in his early years in his comprehensive

By: matthewtaylor

matthewtaylor — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 08:40:00 +0000

Thanks Arthur. I agree and there is now emerging evidence that children learn better when they are involved in and understand the learning process itself.

By: matthewtaylor

matthewtaylor — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 08:30:23 +0000

Thanks jay. I like this point. The recent Nuffield review on 14-19 said the big unanswered question in policy was what kind of 19 year olds do we want?