Blog 9 Developing Ideas at the end of the post war Labour Government.

Towards the end of the Labour Government three documents were published which set out ideas in a range of areas of education. Although these articles dealt with specific aspects of education, what I am interested in them the indications that are given within them as to the nature of education, why we educate and the purpose of education.

The first of these, in 1949, was Ministry of Education Pamphletⁱ by a former primary school head describing how liberal methods could be introduced in an archaic building. The Author Headmaster states clearly his reservations when he writes “Instead of the junior schools performing their proper and highly important function of fostering the potentialities of children at an age when their minds are nimble and receptive, their curiosity strong, their imagination fertile and their spirits high, the curriculum is too often cramped and distorted by over-emphasis on examination subjects and on ways and means of defeating the examiners. The blame for this rests not with the teachers but with the system.” Sadly, not only has this situation not improved over the years but the situation is decidedly worse now with the extension of SATS tests and with the decision to apply base line tests as soon as children start school. He expresses his hope that “Improved methods adopted by local education authorities for allocating pupils to secondary schools at the age of eleven are beginning to relieve the examination pressure on the junior schools, and it is hoped that these schools will take full advantage of the new freedom which is being offered to them.” Such hopes were not fulfilled and today the situation is considerably worse with the introduction of Academies and Free Schools. He gives his opinion that without undervaluing in any way the importance of the three R's, there are things of much greater importance, interest, concentration, imagination and movement. The development of the personality of a child, their growth as a whole, demand greater attention than the three R's.

In 1951 a motion at the Labour Party Annual Conference read as followsⁱⁱ “This Conference calls upon the Government to implement the Labour Party's declared policy of the comprehensive school, in secondary education, and to ensure that the Ministry of Education do everything to assist those local education authorities who are including such schools in their development plans; and that, due regard being paid to local circumstances, permission to proceed with comprehensive schools be not withheld on grounds of size alone.

There is a general agreement that the purpose of education is both to enable and to help the individual to grow to his full stature as a member of the community to which he belongs and to whose welfare he should contribute. The educational process cannot, in fact, be dissociated from the social philosophy with which it is contemporary. English education, in so far as it has been successful, has always both responded to, and contributed to, changes in the social order.”

The Policy Document goes on to say “The Declaration of Human Rights gives international expression to this conviction, which must be the cardinal principle for education today. If this is to be the 'century of the common man', it must be made the century of the common child. As a nation we are advancing steadily towards full social democracy and are committed to the belief that all men are born equal; not that every child will grow to the same stature, but that every child must be given an equal opportunity of growing to his own full stature. The principle of equality of educational opportunity is inherent in a social democracy. Originally, the tri-partite system was never planned on educational lines but developed accidentally. It consists basically of three educational streams which are class divided in a way that reflects the social structure of the nineteenth century.The White Paper issued before the Education Act of 1944 envisaged a perpetuation of these three streams in three types of secondary school: 

 

1. Secondary Grammar School; for clever children.
2. Secondary Technical School; for children with technical or commercial ability.
3. Secondary Modern School; for the rest.

The three types of school are bound to inherit the old traditions of class segregation. This has two bad effects. It leaves some children resentfully concluding that they are inferior to children attending the grammar schools. And it can implant in the minds of grammar school pupils an assumption that they are superior to the rest. Even in a tri-partite system making its selections upon special qualifications and not upon wealth, this objection remains. The tri-partite system involves some method of selection at an early age. It is this that gives rise to many of the more trenchant objections to the tripartite system. The limitations arise from the nature of the tests imposed. Selection at 11 has meant, too, that primary schools are tending more and more to measure their success by the number of pupils who reach the grammar school. The primary schools have thus, in fact, become cramming schools in which children are not educated in the liberal sense of the word, but are trained to face the competitive hurdle of English and arithmetic tests and intelligence tests.If the primary schools were freed from this pressure they would be able to adopt a more liberal education policy by which the percentage of educable might well be increased.”

I quote this section in full because it states clearly the arguments which were correct in 1951 and remain true 70 years later. Where I would disagree is with the definition of equality. The document talks about equality of opportunity. To my mind this is inadequate. There is a much more fundamental concept of equality, that all people are inherently equal in every respect, and this concept should govern all our thoughts and actions.

A further Ministry of Education Pamphlet gave further details of the approach to be taken by sixth formsⁱⁱⁱ Again my interest is in the educational principals stated and not in the detailed policies and structures outlined. It is the parallels and similarities between this document and the earlier ones that interest me. The writers states that “a boy should not reach the sixth form completely unprepared for the kind of work which he will find there, while on the other hand he need not be endeavouring to learn at the age of eight something which could perhaps be learned with greater ease two or three years later when it is really needed.” Such sentiments are also expressed in a recent book entitled ‘Too Much Too Soon’ which deals with the work in Primary Schools which today are expected to instill within their pupils knowledge at an early age which they would much more readily understand and learn naturally at a later age. He goes on to write “All this needs a nice understanding of the pupils, and a gift for exact timing; the best and most coherently planned curriculum is that which offers the best promise of fitting the work to the individual, without forgetting that the individual pupils have much to develop in common. Such a conception implies neither the inculcation of mere knowledge for its own sake, which sometimes characterises the older approach to education in its weaker moments, nor yet the notion of mere "self-expression" which has at times lifted up its head in more recent years, though without ever winning general acceptance. If high standards are to be reached, they must be reached through work which is really relevant to the boy or girl who is being educated.” Such sympathetic approach is true of all children, pupils and students. He goes on to ask the pertinent questions “if more boys and girls than ever before are to be educated at school until the age of 18, will they grow up into men and women who are lively and complete persons in their own right, yet aware of their duties in society? Are they likely to be perceptive? Will they be able to think clearly and honestly, and also to feel as well as think? Will they be able to act with decision and to stand up to the crowded conditions of work and life in today's world, without losing the quietness and strength of their own inner life at the centre? The very word "school" comes from the Greek word for "leisure"; the word "education" is derived not from the Latin "educere" (meaning "to draw out") but from "educare" which means to "rear", "bring up", "nourish".” He adds “If education is to have any hope of helping our children and our world as it should, there must be an element of tranquility about it. What is needed will be neither teaching nor teaching time alone-though these are necessary-but also an atmosphere in which boys and girls are not always so occupied that they fail to grasp the opportunities in the air around them for developing this or that aspect of a deeper personal life. Such an ideal is well defined in the "Memorandum on Curriculum, Eleven to Eighteen" (published in 1950 for the Association of Assistant Mistresses) in the course of the first chapter on the "Underlying Aims and Principles" of grammar school education:

Never has the world had greater need of men and women capable of understanding themselves and others - men and women whose personality is harmoniously developed, whose culture is ever deepening, and who possess that quality of spirit through which they are strengthened, rather than defeated, by the experiences of life. In order to attain this balance or harmony, the school must endeavour to give to its children some measure of 'the vision of greatness' - the enlarging of experience, the inspiration which comes from daily contact with the good and beautiful, and the satisfaction which is derived from the utmost use of intellectual powers.”

The writer concludes “ there is no single aspect of education which can be considered sufficient in itself; underneath each and all of them runs a deeper stream. Much of it seems to belong to the unconscious though insistent needs of our nature, but the conscious mind is needed too. Do the boys and girls in a school have occasion to think and feel deeply, though according to their years, about the purpose of their education and existence, the ultimate aim of the life for which they are preparing? Or can they ever pause to reflect on what they have to give to the world in which they find themselves? In a world in which good and evil are so conspicuous and so intermingled, education must help boys and girls to work out their own salvation, so that they are not left rudderless, and the result will be seen in the spiritual quality of what they do and become. Individual schools approach this part of their task in many different ways. The origin and tradition of English education is essentially religious, and this tradition, for those schools which cherish it, may or may not be denominational. Many schools believe that by basing their work on religious foundations they can give their pupils something that can be got in no other way, and not a few can recall in the bidding prayer their founder, by whose benefits we are brought up in godliness and good learning". But all schools alike appear at the present time to be deeply concerned with the good growth and well being of their children, and to take account of the problems and purpose of living in the contemporary world into which the pupils are growing up. A great deal of hard thinking is going on about the whole purpose of education, though the full effect of this thinking has naturally still to be reflected in practice. That there is still a long way to go would be accepted by most grammar schools as. self-evident.”

It is not necessary to have a religious approach to life to respect other people. The role of religion within history and in daily affairs from Government policy to how those from a different religion are treated raises serious questions. But this is a matter for individuals. My fundamental belief in socialism/communism and my view of the equality of all people makes a consideration of religion unnecessary. Why it is considered that such sentiments, expressed above only apply to pupils in Grammar Schools has never been explained. As the document on Comprehensive makes clear, all of our children, from the age at which they enter nursery school to day at which their education ends, which is actually at the very end of their lives, have the same needs, each and everyone has a personality to develop and a contribution to make to society. Such development and such contribution is different for every individual, but is of equal importance. It is necessary that society should be organised in such a way as to make this possible. The very existence of different types of school, whether it be the coexistence of Public (ie private schools) and public (ie the schools for the mass of the population), or the tripartite system (which of cause actually has four types of school, Public Schools are ignored), or the present system of a hodge-pot of Academies, Free School, local Authority Schools (not forgetting Public Schools and Home Schooling), ensures that our children are prevented from growing up in the type of egalitarian society which necessary for a quality existence of the individual and the whole of society. The fundamental requirement of a democratic society is that wealth is not a factor in decisions and that education for all, means that all are educated in a manner that respects the individual.  

Scribart 22.07.20

i STORY OF A SCHOOl A headmaster's experiences with children aged seven to eleven LONDON HIS MAJESTY'S STATIONERY OFFICE 1949

ii The Labour Party A policy for secondary education (1951)

iiiThe Road to the Sixth Form (1951) Ministry of Education Pamphlet No. 19