Old heads on young shoulders

Press, 29 November 1977, Page 21

Old heads on young shoulders

A confidential paper, which argues for political education in British schools, is now circulating in Whitehall and among selected academics. Written by two school inspectors at the Department of Education, its case

is that such lessons win help to provide children with “intellectual weapons” to resist “anti-democratic movements.” The sure , of the National Front in seb j this year has given the issue a> added urgency

—yet politics, like consumer affairs, sex education, and law, is not widely accepted as a school subject If there is to be a compulsory “core” curriculum in schools, should this include at least some of these new

“adult” subjects and not just the more traditional three “Rs”? The London “Sunday Times” education correspondent, PETER WILBY, reports:

1 A classroom in 1 Southwood comprehensive school, Corby, Northants. The teacher hands out envelopes to his fourthvear class. Inside the envelopes are 20 irregular wooden shapes. The children, divided into three groups, are told that it is a puzzle and that they are to solve it In one group, the teacher appoints a leader whose orders must be obeyed without question. In another, there is a leader who accepts advice on how to solve the problem. In the third group, there is no leader at ail. The aim: to help the children think about the respective merits of dictatorship, democracy, and anarchy as ways of solving problems. A classroom in 2 Bishop Thomas Grant School, South London. A fourth-year class of 15 girls and five boys are designing their owi story-books for pre school children. The class discusses the importance of reading to a nursery-age child, the right age to start, and the best technique for telling a story. Later, this class will try out the story-books in a nurserv class or playgroup. The aim: to help youngsters learn how small children deve’op so that, among other things, they themselves may make more understanding parents. ’ 1 A classroom in 3| Clissold Park comprehensive. 1 AJ north London.

Four boys and girls return with meat, vegetables and groceries from an expedition to local shops. They compare prices, weights, quality, standards of service, and of hygiene. The aim: to help the children get into the habit of shopping with judgment and discrimination. None of these lessons should require much educational justification. Every child will one day have the right to make politcial choices through the ballotbox. Yet politics, like child development, consumer affairs. money management, sex education and law, is not widely accepted as a school subject. A survey in Britain earlier this year showed that 63 per cent of children receive no political education. Even the Cabinet has discussed how to counter the National Front and how to reverse the declining membership of the established political parties. Ministers agreed that schools should be encouraged to pay more attention to what is now being called “political literacy.” Shirley Wililams, the Education Secretary, has gone further. She has ordered an urgent report on the present extent of consumer education from one of her school inspectors. Some of these inspectors believe that the Government should introduce a compulsory core curriculum in the schools which would include politics, sex and consumer affairs as well as literacy and numeracy.

They point out that, besides the Communist countries, Western democracies such as the United States and West Germany have compulsory “civics” courses in their schools. And the Scandinavian countries have compulsory sex education, usually starting at the age of eight. In Britain, however, the Government has generally left decisions about curriculum to the school — and any depature from this tradition would be bitterly resisted by teachers. In the past, the British Government has been reluctant even to collect information on w'hat is being taught in schools. So it is hard to assess how many schools are responding to Mrs Williams’s appeal last month that they should reflect “more of the realities of modern Britain.” Marion Giordan, writer and broadcaster on consumer affairs, has just completed a survey of consumer education in British schools for the E.E.C. She concluded that there was “wide-spread apathy and ignorance” about" the subject. In one Merseyside district, for example, only four out of the 19 comprehensive schools were covering it. “That’s fairly typical,” says Ms Giordan. The Hansard Society completed a survey of political knowledge among school, leavers earlier this year. The results were

alarming: a quarter of the youngsters questioned thought that the Conservatives favoured nationalisation while 44 per cent thought that the I.R.A. was a Protestant organisation. The Governmentfinanced National Child Development Study, interviewing 16-year-olds in 1974-75, discovered that a quarter has not received even a basic education in the physiology of reproduction and that nearly half had never had lessons on venerea' disease. Many teachers and schools acknowledge the need for more work on ■what the current jargon calls “life skills.” But they point out that such subjects present several difficulties. First, nearly all of them are controversial. Political and sex education, particularly, can land teachers in trouble with school governors, parents, and local councillors who may have fears of children being "indoctrinated.” Even consumer education may tread on the toes of some local retailers, while courses on child development may involve implicit criticism of the pupils’ own parents. Second, many teachers do not believe that they have any special expertise in these subjects. One influential curriculum expert said: “Teachers may be politically naive, morally ambivalent and ignorant of any career except teaching.’ B

The London University Institute of Education is the only teacher training establishment in the country that has a lecturer specifically concerned with political education. There is not an aurhority that has a fulltime adviser on political education — though Sheffield has just advertised for one. It is estimated that only one in 10 teacher training colleges have sex education courses. One solution is to bring outside experts into the classroom: but they tend to have difficulties in putting the subject-matter over and in keeping adequate discipline. A girl at Southwood school, for example, remarked that a nurse who had given a talk on sex education “went round and round the subject — she seemed to think we would be embarrassed.” Third, many teachers argue that the curriculum is already too overcrowded to introduce new subjects. Terry Casey, general secretary of the traditionally minded National Association of Schoolmasters, says that the first priority must be basic literacy and numeracy. Semi-literate, youngsters if taught politics, he says, may easily leave school with oversimplified and possibly distorted opinions which would be as damaging as no opinions at all. Other teachers claim that the so*called new

subjects have always been adequately covered in the traditional curriculum. Political education, they say, is part of history, consumer education comes into home economics, sex education into biology, and money management into maths. The advocates of the new subjects reply that this is exactly the problem: the existing coverage is too haphazard. Gerald Sanctuary, of the Law Society, whose film strips and packs of law documents are now used in about one-fifth of the nation’s secondary schools, says: “Law doesn’t belong to the lawyers —- to the solicitors and the barristers and the judges. Law belongs to the people. And we have a responsibility to tell young people about their law —- the law they will meet at every turn on leaving school. In their rights on dismissal or filing sick. In their ownership of bikes and cars. All this is surely more important than Henry VlH’s wives.” Like most teachers, Rosaleen Mansfield, who teaches child development at Bishop Thomas Grant, is reluctant to make extravagant claims for the effects of her work. But she says: “Unrealistic expectations of small children are a chief cause of baby-battering. So courses like ours might help children realise that babies need hard work.” In any case, on most ot J

the new subjects, children are already getting some form of education, albeit unconsciously. The school itself, for example, is bound to mould children’s political attitudes, whether it likes it or not. The appointment of an elite of school prefects, the enforcement of school rules, the use of corporal punishment —- al! these aspects of school life carry implicit political messages. Again, as Marion Giordan points out, most schools make heavy use of educational films, posters, and pamphlets distributed by commercial concerns. Nearly all of them have a strong advertising content. Yet teachers, who use them because they are cheap and well-produced, may fail to point out that the children are being “got at.” Despite the enthusiasm of campaigners like Marion Giordan, many teachers who have tried out the new subjects warn that they are not a magic solution to the problems of teaching bored and fractious adolescents who have long ago lost interest in anything that schools have to offer. A teacher at Clissold Park pointed out that lessons on income tax and superannuation can be as remote to 15-year-olds as the Wars of the Roses. But. at least, say the teachers, they have a more plausible answer now to the old question: “Why do we have to learn this, Sir?"