SOME PROBLEMS INVOLVED IN THE EXPERIMENTAL COMPARISON OF TEACHING METHODS

The Great Debate began with a criticism of the education system: schools are failing to provide the increasingly skilled and intelligent workforce required by industry as it becomes more technological. In fact, under capitalism, which divides management from labour, advancing technology concentrates intelligence on the side of management and de‐skills labour. The combination of expanding education with contracting skill at work produces employees who are more, not less, educated than their jobs require, and who are less efficient because more dissatisfied. In this situation, the demand for a more educated workforce is in fact a demand for more discipline in the subordinate ranks of industry's political hierarchy. Education should accept the invitation to establish ‘closer links’ with industry, but must resist the cosmetic operation being planned.