What is education for?
Saturday 27 October, 10.30am until 12.00pm, Upper Gulbenkian Gallery Keynote Controversies

The aims of education have shifted over recent years. Announcing radical new school curriculum changes, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority’s Mick Waters explained that ‘We live in a changing society… so the role and organisation of schooling will need to change too… The skills young people will need… are very different from those that were seen as essential when mass schooling began in the late 1800s or even when a curriculum for the nation was established in the late 1980s’. Similarly, the aims of universities have shifted to accommodate mass access and the supposed demands of a globalised economy. Even in the ivory towers, the pursuit of knowledge is less of a focus than gaining skills relevant to the knowledge economy. Subject disciplines are increasingly seen not as valuable in themselves, but as a flexible resource, ‘responsive (to) revision… in a fast changing world.’ Traditional divisions between disciplines or indeed between ‘interpreters’ and ‘performers’ are described as over rigid, even snobbish.

It is telling that Gordon Brown has split the old Department for Education and Skills into the Department for Children, Schools and Families and the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills. Blair’s ‘education, education, education’ has been deleted even from the formal organisation of provision. Whether primary, secondary or university, educational establishments are being reorganised around a range of tasks not previously associated with education. New demands, from economic regeneration to social inclusion are now placed on the ‘sector’. In schools, a the transmission of knowledge seems to have been sidelined in favour of such aims as teaching pupils social and emotional skills, with lessons on manners, respect, Britishness, recycling, diet and ‘economic wellbeing and financial capability’ now on the timetable. In universities, knowledge for its own sake is derided as ‘dodgy’ and the search for truth often dismissed as elitist; employability, application and functionality are the new mantras.

In this context, it is important to take a step back from policy diktats and ask ‘what constitutes education and what is its purpose?’ Is it right to break down the disctinctions between educating and socialising children, or between universities and business? If knowledge becomes a means to an end rather than an end in itself, do we open up the doors to philistinism? What - ideally - is education for?

 Speakers

Keith Bartley
chief executive, General Teaching Council for England
David Willetts MP
Minister of State for Universities and Science; author, The Pinch: how baby boomers took their children's future - and why they should give it back
Malcolm Grant
president and provost, University College London (UCL); chairman, Russell Group
Professor Frank Furedi
sociologist and social commentator; author, What's Happened to the University?, Power of Reading: from Socrates to Twitter, On Tolerance and Authority: a sociological history
Chair:
Claire Fox
director, Academy of Ideas; panellist, BBC Radio 4's Moral Maze; author, I Find That Offensive

 Produced by

Claire Fox director, Academy of Ideas; panellist, BBC Radio 4's Moral Maze; author, I Find That Offensive

A measure of success? Explaining public perceptions of education, Toby Marshall

Citizenship education is not working, Kevin Rooney

What is education for?, Michael Young interview by Toby Marshall

 Recommended readings

Be brave, Mr Brown, in the classroom
Of course children must be able to read and calculate, but learning how to split a phone bill or buy a car is more useful, for many pupils, than pages swimming with cryptic sums
Mary Riddell, Observer, 14 July 2007

Citizenship needs a place of its own
If the national curriculum is a statement of what we see as vital to pass on to the next generation, then learning about democracy, justice and community values must be at its heart, not on the margins
Tony Breslin, Times Educational Supplement, 26 July 2007

Adult prejudices are corrupting the curriculum
Increasingly the curriculum is regarded as a way to promote political objectives and for changing the values, attitudes and sensibilities of children
Frank Furedi, Daily Telegraph, 10 June 2007

Registration isn't enough get active to prove your fitness
If it's to be genuinely worthwhile the Continued Professional Development of teachers needs to be recognised and accredited by teachers themselves
Keith Bartley, TES, 4 October 2007

Overburdened schools
Once, life revolved around church and chapel. Now it is being organised around nursery and school
Ben Rogers, Prospect, December 2006

This education system fails children by teaching them to parrot, not think
"Our schools aren't focusing on what really matters in education - the developing of every child's curiosity and talents."
Jenni Russell, Guardian Education, 26 September 2007

ROSLA extending the age of leaving education
Watch Claire and her guests discuss the new 14-19 diplomas, the impact on FE, youth behaviour, the Repsect agenda and ROSLA extending the age of leaving education.
Claire Fox News, 18 Doughty Street TV, 17 September 2007

What schools are for and why
The academic, subject-based curriculum is a middle class creation. Success in it has become a badge of belonging to, or being fit to belong to, that class
John White, IMPACT Pamphlet No 14: Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, January 2007

recommended by spiked

Intrusion, intrusion, intrusion
Dolan Cummings, 30 June 2007

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