Sunday Times, 13 July 2007
It is one of the most deeply rooted superstitions of our age that the purpose of education is to benefit those who receive it. What we teach in school, what subjects we encourage in universities and the methods of instruction are all subject to the one overarching test: what do the kids get out of it? And this test soon gives way to another, yet more pernicious in its effect, but no less persuasive in the thinking of educationists: is it relevant? And by “relevant” is invariably meant “relevant to the interests of the kids themselves”.
From these superstitions have arisen all the recipes for failure that have dominated our educational systems: the proliferation of ephemeral subjects, the avoidance of difficulties, methods of teaching that strive to maintain interest at all costs – even at the cost of knowledge.
To view the full article please click on Timesonline.co.uk
July 13, 2007
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5 comments:
While usually finding myself on the "Progressive" end of things, I agree with your post. It is very well argued.
What initially drew me to your site was your American Conservative piece on environmentalism. Are you aware that trusts have long been advocated by many whom you would presumably term on the "left"?
Peter Barnes' Capitalism 3.0 (2006) is a powerful argument for trusts as institutions able to accomplish what neither government nor the market can concerning environmental issues. The book is not long, and its meat is in the second half. To really confuse ideological blinkers, check out who endorses it.
I wrote a substantial review of the book on my own blog, and you can find it at
http://www.dizerega.com/?p=66
Hopefully the issue of trusts as means for dealing with important environmental questions is one that can cut across ideological lines that, to me, do more to confuse and divide than clarify and assist.
superficially, i totally disagree - yet i read with a pleased smile, because i feel i totally agree with what you're really saying, or what i imagine that is -
Dear Mr Scruton
I have never met you but wish I had. Being a retired science teacher, I have experienced the whole gamut of the "syllabus updates" and "new curricula" etc, over the last half of the 20th century.
In spite of all that politician-rubbish, I have always managed both to satisfy my political-masters and also to make about three to four scientists or doctors each year - real ones, some very fired up, who mostly went on to do good things for people; getting on for 100 individuals by the time I gave up.
You have to digress a bit, and teach the real stuff (which they love) while nobody is looking. The "relevant" twaddle which the political-officers demand must be taught, then becomes a simple walkover for the children who really matter to you as carriers of a grand tradition. I do not mean to traduce the others, but really they would prefer not to be there anyway. I don't think it's their fault, but they are persuaded persuasively every hour of the day, by their peer-culture, that they really must not spare the time, even if a few minutes only, to realise that they have been robbed, and that it can be fixed.
Thr trouble and tragedy is that we as a people have fallen asleep on the job. Perhaps the "Doing Of The Right Thing" in WW2 was, simply, too much for us, and we collapsed. if so, we did the right thing anyway. Or perhaps not, and we just did not possess the innate European-type pre-capitalist craftiness and guile (which leads logically to the idea that there ought to be a secret-police-force) to spot others who did have it, and who "Marched for Long, Through our Institutions", and did not do that with our well-being at heart.
I don't know what you think, but I have read "England - an Elegy" and "The West and the Rest", and I wonder if you perhaps agree that even if we go down (as I fear we will, as the new Dark Age comes upon us) it was overall a good and decent record to leave to civilisation, and one of which we can be proud?
These two essays describe the dismal limitations of what we moderns call education.
1. www.dabase.org/ilchurst.htm
2. www.dabase.org/spacetim.htm
Where to go now I wonder?
Maybe we should examine the motivations of those who have so modernised and transformed our education system, and try to see their effects on education as they have related to high culture in the best possible light.
They were trying, as far as I can see, to 'empower' and 'intellectually enfranchise' the individual in a dynamic that was basically an extension of class struggle in the supposition that the traditional educational relationship to high culture helped unjustly priveleged and shore up the position of those those born into wealth and status.
So a 'category error' seems to have gone on, if that makes sense. In the hopes of raising the standard of the material existence of the poor (a noble goal surely) they have ended up violating the essence and the heart of high culture despite the fact that these two issues need in no way be interrelated; or indeed might very well be interrelated but in a way that actually serves the poor, not vica versa.
A high irony of all this is that the very lynchpin of western high culture, presuming that religion has underwritten our culture as you suggest, namely Jesus Christ,w as someone who was clearly himself devoted to the poor, or rather to be more precise, to everybody regardless of class and status (most of whom were therefore the poor).
Another suggestion would be that it be recognised that not all children want to learn about high culture at all, at school in any case; and that indeed not all children need to. This way high culture can be taught as it should be to children with the right aptitude and desire so to learn. In this way, both the 'democratic' needs of a child focused culture (which is here to stay I think) and the demands of high culture regarding its preservation can be met without too much of a tension I feel.
Presumably a few egalitarian sacred cows may need to be slaughtered along the way.
I wonder what you think about this.
All the very best for 2008 Roger.
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