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.