(Educational ideology)
What is education for?
Rupert Wegerif
6th October 2014
What is education for?
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The national economy - beating China?
Personal economy – getting a good job?
Transmitting cultural knowledge?
Socialisation into good behaviour?
Self-realisation – becoming fully human?
General learning and thinking skills?
A better world – towards global peace?
Liberation? Happiness? Democracy? Health?
Child parking place to help parents work?
Education in history
• Orality –> informal education and initiation into
dialogue with the voices of the tribe
• Writing –> elite education into classics plus trade
apprenticeships
• Print –> mass education, schooling for all, 3Rs
plus curriculum of key texts and textbooks
• Internet -> ??? Community learning centres and
Internet educational resources?
The first educational technology?
Eland in cave painted in blood by
San people: South Africa
Why schools?
The disciplining of the body? Foucault
‘The chief purpose of [schools] was to make the divisions of
labor central to industrialization seem natural to twentiethcentury workers. We had to be trained to inhabit the
twentieth century comfortably and productively. Everything
about school and work in the twentieth century was
designed to create and reinforce separate subjects,
separate culture, separate grades, separate functions,
separate spaces for personal life, and all the other
divisions.’
Cathy Davidson in ‘Now you see it’
Writing changes the brain. Literates see words as well
as hearing them. Meanings become visible like things.
There is a shift from holistic perception to analytic.
(Dehaene 2009).
Education shapes not only what you think but what you can
think. It changes the frame.
Ideology or theory?
Ideology is the universalisation of a particular
perspective usually unconsciously reflecting the
self interest of that perspective.
[‘Who is education for?’]
Theory in education is not like theory in natural
science as it has to say what we should teach as
well as how we should teach it and that means
how we want the world to be.
WHAT IS EDUCATION FOR?
Speech by Michael Gove MP to the RSA. 30 June 2009
• ‘Michael Oakeshott said that every human being
is born heir to an inheritance – “an inheritance of
human achievements; an inheritance of thoughts,
beliefs, ideas, understandings, intellectual and
practical enterprises, languages, canons, works of
arts, books musical compositions and so on…”’
• ‘Every child should have the chance to be
introduced to the best that has been thought,
and written’
Transmission versus liberation
Is transmission of ‘the best’ neutral? Or an
ideology of a ruling class?
Bourdieu identifies forms of ‘capital’ held by
individuals and which contribute to social
advantage. Individuals who possess or acquire
these forms of ‘capital’ are able to reproduce
their own privileged positions within society.
Attitudes towards education and academic
qualifications are one form of ‘capital’.
Academic versus vocational
Plato’s system in the
Republic was
knowledge-centered
The mind is best developed
by exposing it to the best
and greatest knowledge
Plato’s curriculum was based on knowledge chosen
not because it is ‘useful’, but because it develops the mind
- in particular ways
Why is our inheritance of the ‘best’ always described as
Shakespeare and Newton not e.g the radio and the combustion
engine?
Traditional ‘banking’
education that gives
‘knowledge’ to people
maintains hierarchy and
dehumanises.
Authentic ‘dialogic’
education works with the
words and concerns and
worlds of people to
increase their
consciousness and
potential for freedom
Transmission versus teaching thinking
e.g: Encylopedia Britannica vs
Wikipedia
Authority of truth,
One-to-many
A dialogue,
Peer-to-peer
Participation
Need to check
When there is so much
‘knowledge’ on the web
how do we select and use
it?
In a time of rapid change is
transmitting knowledge
enough?
Economy versus well-being
• "In the 21st Century, our natural resource is our people - and
their potential is both untapped and vast. Skills are the key to
unlocking that potential. The prize for our country will be
enormous - higher productivity, the creation of wealth and
social justice.
• "Without increased skills, we would condemn ourselves to a
lingering decline in competitiveness, diminishing economic
growth and a bleaker future for all. The case for action is
compelling and urgent. Becoming a world leader on skills will
enable the UK to compete with the best in the world. I am
optimistic.“
Leitch Report 2006
Economy versus well-being
Ivan Illich argued that schooling is part of a
process of becoming inauthentic. We
learn to trust teachers and certificates –
we lose touch with our realities
‘The current search for new educational
funnels must be reversed into the search
for their institutional inverse: educational
webs which heighten the opportunity for
each one to transform each moment of
his living into one of learning, sharing,
and caring’
New models eg SOLE
National or Global education?
Danny and some of his
first cousins
Johannes
Wegerif,
Swedish
Maya Wegerif,
Tanzania/USA/SAfric
a, mt Tsonga
El Shine,
rockstar,
Mexico
Rocio
Mexico
Italy
China
Marianna and Theo
Mex Greek, London,
What is education for?
• Academic knowledge? Vocational skills?
• Transmission of culture? Liberation from
oppression?
• General thinking skills? Economic skills?
• Acquiring cultural capital? Conviviality and
happiness?
• Transmitting the past? Creating the future?
• “British values” ? “Multi-culturalism”?
I think it is about joining a dialogue with many
voices – this is mind expanding
Over to you
• Education has a history and a context – as well as
being within the world it creates the world
• Everyone has a view of education, conscious or
unconscious
• ‘Common sense’ is mostly just embedded
ideology – the perspective of the winners
• Theories of education influence how teachers
respond in the moment
• Teachers can and do make a difference in many
people’s lives – what kind of difference do you
want to make?
Links, refs and further reading
Background to talk in: Rupert Wegerif (2013) Dialogic: Education for the Internet Age.
And Rupert Wegerif (2010) Mindexpanding: teaching for thinking and Creativity.
infed.org is a good source for articles on Illich and Friere and social reproduction.
Google names and key words for other reading.
Ivan Illich, De-schooling Society; Guy Claxton, Building Learning Power; Plato The
Republic; Hirsch E. D What every American needs to know; Paolo Friere, The
pedagogy of the oppressed.
YouTube Videos: Suli Breaks: Why I hate school but love education;
http://youtu.be/y_ZmM7zPLyI also Ken Robinson, Michael Gove, Sugatra Mitra
BBC iPlayer audio: ‘The Educators’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04dwbkt/episodes/guide
A few official library-type References (so last millenium! So inefficient)
Davidson, C. (2011). Now you see it! How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn. New York: The Viking
Press
Dehaene, S. (2009). Reading in the Brain. New York: The Viking Press.
Lewis-Williams, J. D. and Pearce, D. G. (2004). San Spirituality: Roots, Expressions and Social Consequences. Walnut Creek: Altamira Press.
Oakeshott, M. (1989) The Voice of Liberal Learning: Michael Oakeshott on Education (T. Fuller, ed.). New Haven and London: Yale University Press.