The Education Hub aims to promote an exchange of ideas between individuals and organisations around the world who are critical of prevailing 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. In particular we want to make the case for knowledge as an end in itself, for the intellectual emancipation of the child through gaining knowledge, and for teacher autonomy and academic freedom. See the education hub statement of aims for more details. (Read the statement of aims in French, Italian, Spanish, or German.)
European links
We have started to build connections with European organisations that are working towards similar ends. In France, Sauver les Lettres (English version), an organisation that highlights the loss of direction in teaching, and fights for a public, secular education system of great quality for the whole country (see this article from Le Monde). In Spain, the teaching union Asociación de Profesores de Secundaria, which opposes the degradation of teaching. The two organisations have collaborated in the writing of a European Manifesto for Education and Culture.
Articles of interest
You can't beat a traditional liberal education
If you understand physics, you can (and will) wire up a digital home entertainment system, says Jemima Lewis in the Independent, 14 July 2007 .
Information Overload
Government attempts to embed fashionable political ideals such as social justice, cultural diversity and tolerance into the geography curriculum are seriously misguided, says Alex Standish in New Start magazine. Worse, this is damaging children’s intellectual development.
Personalised politics: how 'personalisation' devalues education and diminishes citizenship
'The personal in "personalised public services" has more than one meaning. As well as promising greater flexibility in the provision of services, it also means the citizen taking 'personal' responsibility for them, and consequently that the state becomes involved in the personal life of the individual, helping to "shape the self".' An essay by Michele Ledda on Culture Wars, arguing that 'personalised learning' is part of a wider agenda of 'personalisation'.
The Corruption of the Curriculum
Michele Ledda and Frank Furedi are among the contributors to a new report from the UK think-tank Civitas. It argues that the school curriculum has been corrupted by political interference. 'The traditional subject areas have been hi-jacked to promote fashionable causes such as gender awareness, the environment and anti-racism, while teachers are expected to help to achieve the government's social goals instead of imparting a body of academic knowledge to their students.' Read an edited version of Frank Furedi's introduction on spiked.
Michele Ledda has responded to criticism of 'The Corruption of the Curriculum' on the Guardian's Comment Is Free blog.
'The Corruption of the Curriculum' has been reviewed by Dolan Cummings on the spiked review of books. See also Emily Hill on The wreckage of the ‘education revolution’, and Frank Furedi on Making a Balls up of education.
'Personalised learning' and the attack on knowledge
The education hub held its first meeting at the LSE in London on Saturday 16 September 2006. The introduction given by history teacher Mark Taylor is reproduced here. 'The child-centred approach to education, previously influential but peripheral to the educational aims of the nation, is beginning to dominate the system. In doing so, it is replacing knowledge-centred approaches. This is, of course, just as much a political project to create a particular kind of adult as previous, ‘top-down’ methods were.' More...
Evaluation of competences: why pupils will never achieve their targets
A short essay by French secondary school teacher Véronique Marchais highlights a very serious problem common to Western education systems and most advanced in the UK and the US. An obsession with targets, performance and objective measurement is changing the aims of education. The capacity of teachers to exercise judgment on the quality of their pupils work is being undermined by the use of strict ‘objective’ criteria, standardised marking schemes and regular standardisation exercises among teachers. More...
See also Tick yes to raise standards by Frank Furedi.
Lessons from ballet
In an interview with Josie Appleton, dance critic Jeffery Taylor makes many important points about the failure to teach children dance that can be made for teaching in general. The suspicion around adult-child relationships undermines teachers’ authority and their capacity to transmit their knowledge to children. When teachers have to worry about every word they say and every movement they make and how they could be interpreted by the sick mind of bureaucracy, they are constrained in their efforts to teach their pupils. More...
If you would like to get involved with the education hub more generally, please contact Michele Ledda: email or phone 07951 448 859.
