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.
- ↑ Alec Clegg: “Education: Wrong Directions?” New Society, 11.2.65.
