The question of what we should teach our children in schools and how we should teach and assess them is obviously a much contested area, and this is likely to continue, given the increasing political polarization in late-modern times.
HOWEVER, in modern Britain education has somehow moved beyond just teaching children subject knowledge, getting them ready for work and providing secondary socialisation (three minimal functions of education, if you like) - it has increasingly become a means whereby the state tries to intervene in order to manage perceived social problems, and this is the sixth (out of eleven) reasons I'm quitting teaching at the end of August this year.
Six ways in which the remit of education has expanded in recent years
Firstly, schools have to be places which champion 'equality and diversity' (ED).
OFSTED criticized my college on its last but one visit for ‘not doing enough to promote equality and diversity’ - apparently in those colleges that do so equality and diversity ‘scream from the walls’, so over the last few years we’ve had to flag up where ED issues are tackled in lessons (in fairness, this is easy in sociology, but Maths, Physics…?), the college has upped the ‘black history month’ propaganda at that time of year (it’s painful, honestly) as well as sexuality-diversity displays; and of course we’ve had a lot of ED material added into our dreaded ‘tutorial programme’.
A second example is that now we’re supposed to compensate for the ‘decline of National Identity’ - by ‘promoting the British Values’ agenda - every classroom now has a little card up which reminds us of what they are... I can’t actually remember off the top of my head.. They’re so empty - something like ‘democracy’, ‘tolerance/ respect for diversity’, ‘individualism’.... All of which are promoted to students through a couple of tutorial lessons in which they are reminded that being British isn’t about just eating fish and chips and loving the Queen, no: it’s about having these five general values, but not actually reflecting on how, once you drill down into the specifics of them, they start to contradict each-other. That’s right - us teachers are now judged on our ability to teach something so nebulous that you can’t even pin it down.
And let’s not bother to explore the role of the British State in tramping on civil liberties over the years, because then we’d realise that the same state that says we must teach British Values actually contradicts them in its actions.
A third and more recent example of the expansion of education is the ‘PREVENT’ agenda - now we’re even supposed to stop hard-core potential terrorists from becoming terrorists... addressed by a few powerpoints (again in tutorial) about the evils of Britain First - at least we’ve had the decency to not perpetuate the Islamic Terrorist stereotype.
Fourthly, we increasingly have to deal with more anxiety and general mental health fall-out from the increasing use of social media - honestly, the pastoral team at my college are just swamped. This particular aspect of social life is a total mess. How educators are supposed to educate in the present system WITH kids with social media addictions, I don’t know.
Fifthly, we have to provide sex-education: educating about healthy relationships - which has become more difficult given the pornification of society: OK maybe there is an element of this being ‘fair enough’, but then again, surely something so private should be down to the family: I mean here we are again having to work harder to combat media myths about relationships.
Finally, we’re expected to provide info on healthy living and exercise - again more difficult since the combination of tech and junk food has made what Sue Palmer calls ‘Toxic Childhood’ seem so common. Thankfully my college has stuck its neck out here and could well be the only college to actually have a 16-19 smoking area on site, even though most of our students aren’t legally allowed to buy cigarettes. Go Freedom!
The problem with this gradual and creeping expansion is that schools and teachers increasingly become judged on their ability to tackle, or mend these social ills, rather than just on their ability to get results (which is bad enough in itself IMO) - and the whipping list just becomes ever longer….
If you like this sort of thing, then trawl back through my blog here for the previous five reasons. You also might like my main blog over at revisesociology.com