The curse of our success.
I have just finished reading the latest paper by the Nuffield Review of 14-19 Education & Training. Part of Oxford University, the Nuffield Review commissions papers that closely examine the developments taking place in educational policy and is made up of commentators from a diverse range of government departments and agencies.
Their latest paper, entitled Aims and Values, explores the current motivations shaping today’s educational system and asks whether it is still focussed upon encouraging the individual development of each pupil, as it was in the 1960s. For me it is a short yet important paper that highlights a very important issue.
First and foremost, our government should always be lauded for its continued championing of education as one of the primary means by which poverty and low social mobility can be alleviated. However, the paper rightly notes that:
Economic competitiveness [in the modern world] has come to overshadow broader educational aims and the complex ethnical issues that come with them.
New Labour is a party that I feel follows closely the ideals of the Third Way, a centrist political philosophy that stresses the importance of education, economic progress and technological development. It has helped strengthen Britain’s position as a major centre of international business and inward investment, as well as making London one of the three command centres of the global economy, alongside Toyko and the United States of America.
Unfortunately, the pressures that come with maintaining such accolades have, according to the paper, forced many schools to encourage the study of subjects pursuant to a strong career within the British economy at the expense of social values and the encouragement of personal potential.
In decades gone by, children lost out on a good educational grounding based purely on their ethnicity, class or gender. Today some children may still miss out on an extensive education, not through discrimination, but through the ills of our own economic success: humanities and the arts are no longer a statutory element of post-14 education and fill an ever declining role in the curriculum; practical and experiential subjects are losing importance; educational success is defined by the number of examinations passed and not the enrichment of the self and promotion of personal quality.
In today’s climate, there is weight to the paper’s argument that children are no longer nurtured, but farmed to become the next generation of economic contributors.
_____________________________________________________________
Image shown is that of Elizabeth Eckford at the Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, 1957. September 4. was the day the National Guard were called in after the the school board allowed nine black students to attend the previously all-white school.
Comments
Leave a Reply