Neal Lawson, writing in the Guardian:
Education is about more than churning out efficient workers. It's not just what job we want but what kind of world we want to create. Children need the skills not just to play the game but the knowledge to change the rules. … We all want good grades for our children, but our aspirations go higher. We want them to grow to their full potential, not just add to the growth of the economy. We want rounded young citizens. We aspire to a quality of life beyond the "me generation". This is the modern world of personal accomplishment with and for others.
His short article looks at the government's love for a new kind of independent school and his thoughts about the market and schools resonate with me:
Our children are on a treadmill to learn to earn. But where does this "vision" take us? The market relentlessly creates winners - and therefore losers - and depends on our consumption of things we don't really need. Is this the New Labour endgame: to be ever more competitive in pursuit of new trinkets that advertisers persuade us we want? As the economist JK Galbraith said, "There are many visions of the good society; the treadmill is not one of them."
And what about his advocacy of comprehensive education?
Now an emerging hourglass economy, with a wealthy group at the top and an even bigger group stuck at the bottom, is reducing social mobility. Those at the bottom serve the needs of the time-poor rich - cleaning their houses, washing their cars and even walking their dogs. This explodes the myth that we live in a knowledge economy or meritocracy. … But New Labour embraces a grim view of change in which people only respond to targets or competition. There is no space for consensus, cooperation or caring. Capitalism isn't on the national curriculum, but the education system rigorously prepares the minds of our children for it. If this is the wrong direction of travel then which is the right one? It starts from the belief that "it takes a village to form a single child". The education of our children must be rooted in family, kin and community, not in a private company. Comprehensive community schools speak to a different vision of a different world.
I
do not understand how to teach unless we ask ourselves what vision of a
different world drives us as educators and is at the heart of our own
school's sense of purpose. Worth keeping an eye on Compass (Lawson is its Chair). Its home page carries this quotation from Gandhi: 'Be the change you wish to see in the world'.
Technorati tags: Compass, schools, comprehensives, independent schools, independent education
