Anarchy 94/Education in 1980: open or closed?
Education in 1980:
open or closed?
The most pessimistic view of education in 1980 is that it will be much the same as now, only more so, and more of it; there is a danger that pessimism is automatically granted a keener realism than optimism, and therefore that the prophecy becomes self-fulfilling. This is a view to be rejected at the outset.
The best clue to the possibilities of the next twelve years is what has happened over the last twelve. To quote Alec Clegg,[1] they have been the “most remarkable so far in the history of our education”. In terms of school building, teacher training, university expansion, there has been a fantastic acceleration. There has been the “primary revolution”, the new maths, a spurt in technological education from the abyss it was in in 1956. But most remarkable of all there has been an unprecedented awakening to educational possibilities: “unstreaming” is a concept to be taken seriously, rather than dismissed as the preserve of cranks; the economic potential of education is a fact to which we are all alerted; the “comprehensive” case has been carried intellectually if not administratively; the idea that higher education can take place only in Oxbridge, Redbrick or White Tile has been savagely eroded by the “binary” system.
Precedents for all these trends were there before 1956: in a few progressive private schools; in academic journals; in a handful of LEA’s; in the polytechnics and Keele, etc. But over the last 12 years the documentation and dissemination of these concepts has established them irreversibly on the educational scene. More and more schools are adopting them or being influenced by them. And they have raised a whole new crop of expectations and problems that have to be solved.
How can we “integrate” what remains of the privileged sector of education to make a truly “comprehensive” system? In such a system, how can we avoid Template:Consensus education,[2] which distrusts men like Duane and McKenzie who break with convention and experiment with their pupils? How can we gain the advantages of size, and scale, but avoid the dehumanisation and anonymity of over-organisation and administration? And—the biggest educational dilemma—how can we ensure, or approach, “equality” of opportunity and provision, without imposing utter uniformity and absence of choice?
<references>
- ↑ Alec Clegg: “Education: Wrong Directions?” New Society, 11.2.65.
- ↑ Peter Preston: “No Chance for Choice”, Guardian, 31.8.67.
