The Education Hub aims to promote an exchange of ideas between individuals and organisations around the world who have reservations about contemporary educational policies, practices and theory. We seek to cooperate with and offer support to the many teachers, academics, students and citizens who are concerned about a number of contemporary trends throughout the education sector.

Our concerns

• Society seems to have lost sight of what education is for

On the one hand, education is seen in instrumentalist and utilitarian terms, as nothing more than the provision of skills for the job market. On the other, education is increasingly seen in therapeutic terms – flattering individuals, raising their self-esteem, and tasked with resolving the problems of contemporary alienation and social exclusion.

• The transmission of knowledge is seen as a problem

Teachers who simply want to teach their subject to their pupils are seen as naive at best and irresponsible at worst. Government, public service, schools and universities have come to regard the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake as an elitist and irrelevant pastime, its transmission as an obstacle to the fulfilment of the more important social and economic functions to which the contemporary education system is oriented.

• Subject knowledge is increasingly denigrated

Both teaching and learning seem to have been disconnected from their common object: subject knowledge. It is increasingly popular to see knowledge as something to be constructed by children themselves, a subjective characteristic that develops in the child, rather than an objective body of knowledge about the world that is worth learning. Teachers’ main task is not to teach their subject but to discover aptitudes, talents and special needs in their pupils. Pupils do not learn a particular subject; they above all learn to learn and they learn to know themselves – their favourite learning style, their needs and inclinations, their potential. Increasingly, pupils are seen and are encouraged to see themselves as objects of study rather than learning subjects.

• The proliferation of pseudo-scientific pedagogic theories

Pedagogic theory has been divorced from subject knowledge and now focuses mainly on the child’s mind. Child-centred pedagogic theories now inform most government policy and dominate educational practice. Over the last few years, tests claiming to diagnose children’s potential, learning styles, type and level of intelligence, and other personal characteristics have become the norm in UK schools. They play a very important role in forming teachers’ expectations of pupils. In many schools, children are allowed to drink water at all times because it’s widely believed that incessant drinking helps the brain to function. Vending machines are banned because it is believed that fizzy drinks and chocolate have a negative effect on behaviour and concentration. Increasingly, teachers are asked to develop pupils’ understanding and control of their own emotions through activities such as circle time. Through these pseudo-scientific theories of behaviour, children are encouraged to see themselves as irrational beings whose behaviour is mainly determined by forces outside their control.

• Behind the rhetoric of 'success', 'choice' and 'inclusion' lies a system with little ambition for its capacity to change the live of children and learners

‘No Child Left Behind,’ calls Bush. ‘Every Child Matters’, answers Blair. ‘Success For All Pupils’ proclaims the report of the Thélot Commission in France, before explaining that, of course this ‘certainly doesn’t mean that all pupils should attain the highest school qualifications.’ That would be ‘a social absurdity because school qualifications would not be linked any more to the employment structure’. But where is it written that the employment structure should remain unchanged for the next generation? Have we completely given up on social and economic progress? And why should children learn only what they need to know for the workplace? Why shouldn’t we expect every pupil to achieve a good grade in every subject, even as we know that some will not? Should we write them off before they have even started, or as soon as they encounter the first difficulties?

Politicians assure us that the new system of personalised learning better suits the needs of the individual learner, that it will help children ‘reach their potential,’ whatever their socio-economic background. But in the absence of a clear, objective standard for all pupils, who defines pupils’ individual learning needs? And what magician can measure a pupil’s potential? Who should have the right to do so? Is it helpful that most children in Britain are given Cognitive Ability Tests at 11 in order to assess ‘every pupil’s potential and learning style’ and predict their future grades?

• Education is being increasingly bureaucratised and dehumanised

In spite of the inflation of child-centred rhetoric, education seems to have become increasingly bureaucratised and dehumanised. Some child-centred educators of the past were idealists with high expectations of children. Far from rejecting the transmission of knowledge, they were trying to devise better and more effective teaching methods. Today's child-centred education has lost the creative spark. The subject and its representative, the teacher, have been marginalised, but what has taken centre stage is not the children but the standardised teaching methods and lesson plans. Education has been transformed into a modern factory production line, where processes and outcomes rule over thinking human beings. The art of teaching has been turned into a labour process where both teachers and pupils perform repetitive tasks that must lead to predetermined outcomes. Even that most human of all activities, thinking, has been reduced to a series of routine operations called 'thinking skills', which makes it similar to animal behaviour.

Our beliefs

In opposition to these trends we believe and seek to affirm:

• The value of knowledge as an end in itself.

We stand for the transmission of knowledge across generations and to all sections of the population through an ambitious education system. We believe that, given the right educational circumstances, the great majority of children are capable of learning any subject to the highest level.

• The core aim of education is the intellectual emancipation of the child through the transmission of knowledge.

The goals of creating good citizens, cohesive and safe communities, happy, healthy and emotionally balanced individuals, or a flexible and competitive workforce, whether desirable or not, do not belong in the sphere of education and should never override the main purpose of liberating children form ignorance.

• The necessity of teacher autonomy and academic freedom.

We seek to defend the space for professionals to teach to their fullest ability. The current bureaucratisation of teaching, reducing it to a series of tick-boxes and lesson plans, takes the spark out of lessons. When teachers are automatons working to pre-established goals, they are unable to inspire pupils with an open-ended thirst for knowledge.

We do not seek a return to educational systems of the past. But neither do we reject everything that has gone before in a superficial enthusiasm for the new.

We believe the time has come to begin to establish what a truly meritocratic and egalitarian education system might be. We believe any such vision must begin from a belief in the value of knowledge, in the liberatory potential of education, and in the possibility of all children and adults having the right to a decent and transformative educational experience

Our goals

The time has come to question politicians' and educational administrators' pragmatic and instrumental view education. We must reject the denigration of ‘knowledge’ by ‘skills’ that makes education nothing more than a means towards a job. We must also reject the cynical view that the role of education is to create 'good citizens' in the narrowest sense of the phrase. The time has come to challenge the second-rate system that currently passes for education, and to begin to work out the core principles and practices for an education system fit for humanity in the 21st century.

• Our long term aim is to devise an ambitious Universal Curriculum for the 21st century, based on knowledge and content rather than skills.

• We also aim to campaign and develop policy proposals against the bureaucratisation of education and in favour of teaching autonomy and academic freedom at all educational stages, from primary school to university.

• In order to achieve our long term aims we will start to build an international alliance. We ask all individuals and organisations around the world who are concerned about current educational policies and who believe in the importance of the transmission of knowledge to the next generation to join our project. We welcome their contributions, insights and advice.