Education for responsibility

The issue, What is schooling for? is narrower than the question What is education for? More education takes place outside of schools than inside, over a lifetime and not just during years of compulsory schooling. There are different models, such as

• The transmission of valued knowledge (raising questions of who values it)
• The inculcation of a moral viewpoint
• The inculcation of ideology (and the prohibition of banned ideologies)
• Motivation to learn (pupil-centred approaches).

Preparation for adulthood might be added to this list so long as we bear in mind that schooling, like childhood, is properly a ‘thing in itself’ and not just a preparation for something else. The quality of schooling is part of the quality of childhood: poor schooling can disable a child intellectually, emotionally and psychologically. Getting it right is a solemn duty.

In the UK, being responsible is a thing in itself and not just a preparation for being responsible later as adults. At first, responsibility was seen as coming from religion-based morality (specifically from Christianity). The rise of secularism transmuted this in the 1960s into moral education, though early forms of this retained their Christian ring. By the 1970s this had again been transformed into pastoral care and personal and social education: pastoral care offered pupils adult mentors to guide their social and moral choices, with some staff paid extra to do this, and others being form/class tutors or teachers. Personal and social education became a taught curriculum subject at the same time, and was called ‘Preparation for Adult Life’ in one school I taught at (Wiltshire,UK, 1970s). By the 1990s, the fashion was for Citizenship Education, exploring not only democracy but also how to be a good citizen – social and political responsibility.

The NC was organised under subjects such as history, geography and English, so these other topics had to be additional, cross curricular. One cross-curriculum theme was Economic and Industrial Understanding, which amongst other things was a preparation for adult life and work.

In the UK, education for personal responsibility has been a stable educational aim, for which many strategies have been tried. Teachers generally would pay lip service to its importance. However, the structural pressures on schooling and the curriculum have emphasised curriculum subjects, which use up the majority of school time available; very little time has been available for pastoral subjects such as personal, moral and social education, or religious education. Teachers are not trained to plan or deliver pastoral subjects. To a small extent, education for responsibility permeates curriculum subjects such as English, if the teacher wishes it to. The lack of structural time in the timetable has meant that other topics such as responsibility, morality, enterprise and understanding of work are covered in special events rather than in the daily timetable. This suggests that these topics are marginal, although sometimes special events are more memorable and enjoyable than daily grind.

Education for responsibility needs to be better planned, through special programmes and permeation throughout the subject curriculum. Every subject could develop lessons applying the subject to life. My colleagues and I suggested ways to do this, subject by subject, a decade ago in Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural Education, edited by Stephen Bigger and Erica Brown.

International Primary Curriculum

In 1988, the Conservative Minister of Education Ken Baker launched Primary Schools into a mind-numbing and stultifying two decades  of facts facts facts and tests tests tests. Those of us who expected Labour to reverse such stupidity were disappointed. Pupils have been turned off and demotivated by irrelevant material. Teachers have been overloaded, because when this error was pointed out, they were tasked to deliver in addition moral education, citizenship education, environmental education, economic and industrial understanding and anything else that hit the tabloids.
The International Primary Curriculum (http://www.internationalprimarycurriculum.com) was developed for international schools abroad with funding from Shell. A friend, a primary teacher in Pakistan, is totally enthusiastic. Whilst covering National Curriculum subjects, it organises its termly work around topics which interest young children and offer opportunities for active creative endeavour. She had just finished 'Airports'. Rainforest, Mission to Mars and Beyond, Chocolate, Fit for Life, The Olympics and Making the Newsare also available. The teacher receives a pack with information and activities which cover the different curriculum areas. The school has to plan ahead for curriculum balance. A team of advisers guide and approve the school plan. A number of English primary schools are also finding IPC useful. Primary teachers and teacher trainers from the 1970s and 1980s are chuckling. As my friend said, "Its great. This was the way I was taught."

Interviews

Mark Twain once wrote about interviews, interviewing and being interviewed. This will eventually become available on http://www.marktwainproject.org. (My source: BBC Radio 4 today). There are lessons for the unwary researcher, and for those interviewed. Twain condemns the interview as an intrusion into personal life which can do damage, psychologically and socially. The interviewer has his/her own agenda, explicit or implicit, in which the welfare of the interviewee has no secure place. The interviewee is faced with a range of questions, most of which are hard to grapple with simply. The interviewer wants a soundbite answer that can be easily quoted.  The interviewer moves from question to question, and before thoughts can be marshaled, has moved on to the next topic. The interview therefore ends up being unsatisfactory in human terms and unreliable in research terms. The interviewer at last finds an area of interest that the interviewee can get his/her teeth into. It is relevant, appropriate, authentic... Sorry, the interviewer says, its not on my schedule, can we move on?
There are lessons here for the qualitative researcher. Interviews are not the magic answer to data collection. The interviewee might be open and honest, and might not be. The interviewee might have a grip of the questions, and might not. The real insight offered by the interviewee might be missed by the questions asked. I have been interviewed by researchers. Once, I was misquoted (the words were on the tape but quoted without the contextual meaning). Once, the questions allowed no reflection and required soundbite answers. Interviews are only as good as the skills of the interviewer.

Interviews need to be flexible and semi-structured. A first interview may be necessary to identify areas of particular relevance that a second interview can then focus on. Informal contacts, even emails, could help to determine what an interviewee is and is not interested in. An interviewee may not tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I would not, for this requires a depth of trust that will be hard to achieve. The interview would emphasise how the interviewee would like history to be written. The interviewer needs not to be a passive receiver of information, but an interrogator of it. "Yes, but, why did you do that? Is that ethical? is it fair?". A line of questioning that would inhibit the interviewer to open up. The interview is therefore a problematic data collection method. That is not to say it should be avoided - it may be an only way of eliciting information - but that it should be used with caution.