The history of education in the 1980s

ABSTRACT

This paper uses Basil Bernstein’s work on pedagogic discourses to examine a largely neglected facet of the history of vocational education – the liberal studies movement in English further education colleges. Initially, the paper discusses some of the competing conceptions of education, work and society which underpinned the rise and fall of the liberal studies movement – if indeed it can be described as such. The paper then draws on data from interviews with former liberal and general studies lecturers to focus on the ways in which different variants of liberal studies were, over time, implicated in inculcating certain forms of knowledge in vocational learners. Whilst it is acknowledged that liberal and general studies always represented contested territory and that it was highly variable both in terms of content and quality, the paper argues that, at least under certain circumstances, liberal studies provided young working-class people with the opportunity to locate their experiences of vocational learning within a critical framework that is largely absent from further education today. This, it is argued, can be conceptualised as an engagement with what Bernstein described as ‘powerful knowledge’.     

Representing education 1969–80: notes on ‘Kes’ and ‘Grange Hill’

Focusing on the Working Men’s College (WMC), this study charts the chequered fortunes of a Victorian project: providing workers with a ‘liberal education’. The paper analyses the project’s aim (making ‘better citizens’), its disciplinary content (the humanities and/or the sciences) and its challenges (the increasing prestige of vocational studies). It argues that, in an increasingly professionalised society, a ‘liberal education’ for workers became contentious ground. As the role of the sciences within a ‘liberal education’ diminished, and the provision of practical skills took precedence in the local-authority-funded courses, Victorian workers’ opportunities for education became polarised between ‘useful’ sciences and ‘profitless’ humanities. With natural scientists losing the intellectual independence of their discipline to technicians, the WMC Edwardian educators chose to side unequivocally with the humanities. The paper contends that it was in the Edwardian context of the adult education movement that the ‘two cultures’ debate first emerged in Britain.     

Enterprise and Liberal Education

Recent initiatives from the Employment Department in the UK have promoted ‘enterprise education’. This paper discusses the relationship of enterprise education to the more established notion of a liberal education. It is argued that enterprise education should be understood not as replacing the aspirations of a liberal education, but rather as supporting or extending them. It does this (i) by helping pupils to understand what is arguably a significant form of life; (ii) by developing understanding of the economic conditions of our social functioning; and (iii) by developing personal qualities which equip us practically to pursue our chosen paths in a competitive and sometimes hostile world.     

A Politically Liberal Conception of Formal Education in a Developing Democracy

As discussed by John Rawls, in a well-ordered society, a public political culture’s wide educational role bears the primary responsibility for developing reasonable individuals for the stability of a politically liberal society. Rawlsian scholars have also focused on the stability and enhancement of developed liberal democratic societies by means of those societies’ education systems. In this sense, one thing that is common to Rawlsian scholars’ and Rawls’s own understanding of the role of education appears to be a concern over the stability of a politically liberal society since it is highly dependent on the character of its citizens. Also, it is usually believed that a politically liberal account of education can be implemented in a developed politically liberal society. In contrast, this study discusses the possibility of implementing a politically liberal account of education in a developing liberal society that may become a developed liberal democracy under an overlapping consensus.     

Education,Democracy and the Economy

This paper provides a critique of neo‐liberal political economy of education. It is argued that neo‐liberal ideology trades off democracy against ‘economic efficiency’. However, the consequence of the application of neo‐liberal principles to education is that overall standards of education are likely to decline, thereby creating the conditions for a low skilled, low morale workforce. It is suggested that this outcome is consistent with the Neo‐liberal creation of a low wage low technology economy. On the basis of the critique, an alternative education system concerned with meeting the aims of an education for a democratic, economically sophisticated, society is sketched.     

Attitudes to lying in children aged 8/9 and 11/12

Abstract

The paper considers the way in which white teachers and students make sense of ‘race’ in a multiracial college of further education. It argues that within white cultural forms there are two main ways of comprehending race, the ‘nationalistic’ and ‘liberal’. It suggests however that these two forms are interrelated and that paradoxically the nationalistic may feed in and support a white ‘liberalism’. It is argued that the liberal form's denial of structure serves to sustain a white racism. On a more positive note it is argued that teachers’ concerns with equal opportunities provide an important resource in the development of an anti‐racist education.     

Education and Democracy: confronting the postmodernist challenge1

This paper takes seriously the claim that postmodernism has seriously undermined our‘modern’ understanding of what the role of education in a democratic society should be. It therefore seeks to reinterpret this role in a way that confronts the challenge that postmodernism has posed. In order to do this the paper clarifies how postmodernism has now discredited the‘modern’ assumptions on which our view of the relationship between education and democracy has been erected. Drawing on the philosophy of John Dewey, it then reconstructs the relationship between education and democracy so as effectively to resist the challenge that postmodernism has posed.     

Education,Competence and the Control of Expertise

This paper is concerned with the rise of the ‘competency’ movement in education and beyond. It argues that ‘competency’ should be understood in terms of a change in the social control of expertise in society involving a move from a relatively autonomous form of liberal professional community to more direct State control. This, in turn, is located within a broader analysis of the nature of regulation in late modern societies and draws upon the recent work of Guldens and Bernstein in order to analyse the positioning of expertise between its primary theoretical base in higher education and the social relations of everyday life with which it is concerned. The move by the National Council for Vocational Qualifications into the area of graduate level occupations ('NVQ level 5') is discussed with reference to the role of ‘functional analysis’ as a methodology for translating expertise into ‘competencies’ and controlling professional practice.     

The ivory tower revisited

The corollary of the concept of the ‘ivory tower’, as reflected in the writings of Plato and Newman amongst others, was, paradoxically, the vital importance of the university for wider society. Nevertheless from the mid-twentieth century, the esteem in which a ‘liberal’ university education was held was diminished by rising expectations that higher education institutions would actively contribute to addressing broader socio-economic challenges through ‘knowledge-transfer’, education for employment, and community service. However while this linear conception of universities' ‘third mission’ eroded their ‘ivory tower’ status, the death knell of the ‘ivory tower’ rings in contemporary literature on higher education, which articulates a dialectical view of its historical development in which the university and wider society are synthesised in the ‘engaged university’. With its focus on reciprocal ‘knowledge-exchange’, the co-creation of knowledge through teaching and learning, and civic engagement, the ‘engaged university’ embraces the ‘other’ as intrinsic to its identity. Yet arguably the increasing instrumentalism and democratisation of higher education are irrevocably eroding the academic freedom and institutional autonomy upon which universities' immeasurable contribution to society ultimately depends.     

Courage,Uncertainty and Imagination in Deweyan Work: Challenging the Neo‐Liberal Educational Agenda

In my paper, I attempt to accomplish a twofold task: first, to argue that in order to understand important features of Deweyan work, a thorough analysis of the roles that uncertainty, courage and imagination play in Deweyan thought is required. Second, based on such an analysis, I try to show that such features are essential for education to happen. Moreover, courage, imagination and uncertainty taken together work to frame an understanding of education and learning as challenging and even risky enterprises. I develop my analysis against the current, ‘official’ picture of education promoted worldwide, one in which courage, imagination and uncertainty are exactly the features that come to be eclipsed by the neo‐liberal educational agenda. Thus, I claim that education with its roots in imagination and courage is directed toward ‘unattained possibilities’ as its own, proper aim.     

Towards an Aesthetic Education? Rorty's Conception of Education

The ‘liberal utopia’ presented by Richard Rorty in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity is a unique attempt to address the ancient problem of the relationship between individual and society or, in Rorty's terms, that between the private and the public. This article examines Rorty's influential conception of education and asks: can his book be regarded as utopian? Is it possible to establish an education for democracy on his ‘postmodern’ premises? I conclude that Rorty's attempt to separate private from public and to promote a fusion between irony and solidarity is tantamount to founding human existence on an aestheticising orientation. This entangles Rorty in self-contradiction and raises educational and political problems which remain unresolved.     

Education and liberalism: pursuing the link

This paper uses data from the 1970 Birth Cohort Study in the UK to explore the well-established link between ‘liberal’ social values and education. Whilst the link itself is well-established, the underlying mechanism is not; the paper explores empirically mechanisms that have been proposed for this link. In particular it considers the effects of social background, ‘ability’, personal efficacy and field of study on social values to explore both direct and indirect effects of education. The paper finds that, whilst there are important effects of social background and ability on social values, these do not explain the effect of educational attainment. Moreover, differences according to field of study suggest that the most likely mechanism linking education with liberal values is one of socialisation.     

Internationalising the University

‘International’ and ‘internationalisation’ are two terms frequently used today in association with the university. In this paper I consider the way in which the notion of internationalisation connects to the contemporary university, which I have termed ‘Neo‐liberal’. I begin by outlining the main characteristics of the contemporary university and then discuss some of the problems that arise in relation to the notion of internationalisation; it is strongly associated with an economic rather than a cultural imperative. Alternatives to the Neo‐liberal model of the university are then considered and rejected. In the final section of the paper I suggest a different interpretation of internationalisation, one that is cultural rather than economic because such an internationalisation degenerates into instrumentalism and robs higher education of what should be essential to it.     

Editorial. Globalization: a moral phenomenon

Abstracts

This article explores the idea of lifelong education as expounded by a number of writers published under the auspices of UNESCO. There is a short discussion of the problems involved in subjecting this kind of idea to critical analysis and it is suggested that a policy for education rather than a new concept of education is being expressed. Nevertheless, an implicit concept of education can be deduced from the policy, and there is a review of the role of concepts as a means of distinguishing and classifying areas of experience and areas of thought. It is suggested that writers on ‘lifelong education’ tend to blurr a number of distinctions traditionally drawn in education and it is suggested that the concept of ‘education’ is defined too broadly. As a result, it fails to distinguish between the totality of formative influences which determine our individuality and those influences which are intentionally chosen to form or influence us in desired and desirable ways. ‘Education’, it is suggested, should be restricted to areas of learning that are chosen because they produce effects which we and society wish to bring about. There is reference to the place of ‘knowledge’ in lifelong education and an extended discussion of some of the consequences which follow from failing to separate the concept of ‘training’ from the concept of ‘education’. It is argued that ‘education’ implies a concern for moral and evaluative issues consistent with a Humanistic approach, whereas ‘training’ being task and role oriented can ignore moral issues in the interests of efficient performances. This argument is, in effect, a case study to support the claim that finer conceptual distinctions are of practical importance.     

British values and virtues: schooling in Christianity and character?

This article examines the antecedents of the ‘British Values’ (democracy, rule of law, equality of opportunity, freedom of speech and the rights of all men and women to live free from persecution) which it is incumbent upon British schools to teach. But it also seeks to move the debate forward by pointing to the ‘British Virtues’ without which it is impossible to live by ‘British Values’. The argument advanced here is that the inculcation of virtues (moral habits and dispositions underpinning good character) as well as values (beliefs and ideals) is foundational in schooling for life in a liberal democracy. On the view that schools are both ‘by’ and ‘for’ society (being the products of the society they seek to serve) the article problematises attempts to conceive of schooling in general, and character education in particular, in exclusively post-Christian terms. Although increasingly secular, as British culture is not quite the palimpsest that easily permits a millennium of Christian social and legal ‘writing’ to be ‘over-written’, some of its central concepts are drawn upon in the recommendations made here for the curriculum and governance of schools.     

Toward a dialectical notion and praxis of scientific literacy

Received conceptualizations of scientific literacy are grounded in (1) the notions of ‘knowledge’, ‘concepts’, and ‘skills’ that science students have to ‘acquire’, ‘appropriate’, or ‘construct’ or (2) the notion of ‘practices’ to which they have to be ‘enculturated’ so that they become part of a ‘community of practice’. All such notions articulate scientific literacy in a static form, which does not correspond to the dynamic nature of the literacies that can be observed in society. This study proposes a dialectical notion of scientific literacy, which makes thematic its nature as a situated, distributed, collective, emergent, indeterminate, and contingent process. It articulates the idea that knowing a (scientific) language is indistinguishable from knowing one's way around the world. As a consequence, the goal of science education can no longer be to make individual students exhibit particular forms of knowledge but to provide them with contexts in which it is more important to deal with, select, and negotiate different forms of expertise and knowledgeability. This leads one to think of science education as but a part of a democratic liberal education that allows students to become competent to participate in any conversation that includes others with different forms and levels of expertise than their own.     

From the Crick Report to the Parekh Report: multiculturalism,cultural difference,and democracy—the re‐visioning of citizenship education1

This paper attempts to develop a more sophisticated notion of multiculturalism in Britain. It starts by examining the philosophical basis of the Crick Report on citizenship education to resolve the theoretical tension between liberal and multicultural approaches to the subject. To achieve this resolution, it compares the Crick Report to the Parekh Report on the Future of Multi Ethnic Britain, published on 11^th October 2000. The Parekh report is then used to critique the Crick report and re‐theorise the practical imperatives of multicultural citizenship education. I claim that the Crick report, typical of liberal analyses, is suspicious of departure from the presumption of a unified social structure, and represents citizenship education as the imposition of a uniform standard applied to all groups and peoples. On this basis it is claimed that, although the Crick Report’s conception of citizenship fails to adequately take account of cultural difference, it need not do so, as there is room within liberal approaches to citizenship education for a recognition of difference. The paper explains how such a resolution can be effected.     

Book Reviews

This paper reviews an ongoing debate about moral standards for vocational education in German speaking countries. At the centre of the controversy is the question of universalistic versus domain‐specific moral orientations, namely the question of whether business people ought to develop different moral points of view in different situations (such as ‘private’ versus ‘professional’). Of pivotal importance in this context is also a prominent ethical approach (by Karl Homann, a philosopher in the tradition of liberal economists) which serves as a foundation for those who advocate domain specificity and which is strongly criticized by their counterparts. This approach is also presented, since the author believes that it does not entail all of what its protagonists claim. Moreover, as argued in the last section, the purported dichotomy of universalism versus domain specificity may even be entirely overcome. The point is that Homann's ethics perhaps do not fit into the framework of Kohlberg's six stages and might therefore be reconstructed as entailing moral segmentation. However, it is well accommodated by a more comprehensive stage taxonomy suggested by the author.     

The Dakar framework: constructing and deconstructing the global neo‐liberal matrix

The paper’s focus is The Dakar framework for action—education for all: meeting our collective commitments, which presents the UNESCO, G8, World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s blueprint for the ‘development’ of education globally by 2015. Taking a discourse analytic approach, discussion of the Dakar framework make two claims. The first is that the Framework has a Matrix‐like effect in that it potentially closes out other ways of thinking about and practicing education. The second argument is that the apparent contradiction between its deployment of a human rights centered discourse and neo‐liberal discourse that establishes this Matrix‐like effect, must be understood as something more than simply an exercise in lies, deception and rhetoric. Rather, the Matrix‐like effect of the Framework succeeds not because the Framework lies, but because it doubly exploits the very same ambivalence in liberal‐humanism that facilitated the European control of ‘Others’ in an earlier era of globalisation. Gandhi who challenged the Matrix‐like effects of globalising British Empire power in this earlier era of globalisation is referred to in the paper as a real figure of history to exemplify the Neo figure in the discussion of the Matrix as a metaphor for the neo‐liberal EFA policy.     

Justifying Compulsory Environmental Education in Liberal Democracies1

The need for education for (as opposed to about) sustainability is urged from many sides. Initiatives in this area tend to focus on formal education. Governmental, supra‐governmental and non‐governmental bodies all expect much of this kind of education, which is to transform children—and through them society—in the direction of sustainability. Due to the combination of great transformative expectations or ambitions and a focus on schooling (the idea of) compulsory environmental education poses potentially severe problems for governments committed to liberal principles, in particular the principle of state ‘neutrality’ with respect to ‘comprehensive conceptions of the good life’. The central question of this article is whether liberal governments can make environmental education of this kind compulsory without coming into conflict with the liberal principle of state neutrality. I discuss three defences of the compatibility of compulsory environmental education with liberal neutrality, namely those put forward by Derek Bell, Andrew Dobson, and Simon Hailwood, as well as some problems inherent in these defences. In the final section I sketch a form of compulsory environmental education that realises at least some of the aims commonly stated for Education for Sustainability and Education for Sustainable Development, and can be justified on the basis of liberal principles.