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PART I: TOWARDS A STRATEGY FOR EDUCATION

P. H. Taylor, Professor of Curriculum and Method, University of Birmingham

'What are the implications for education?' is a question which comes very readily to the lips of both the professional educationist and the layman. It does so because there is a generally shared belief that education at all levels is involved in both complex and direct ways in the business of life. Implications for education are seen in the rising tide of crime, in the will to revitalise the nation's economic life, in the changing shape of social and moral concepts, in dealing with mass media as well as in the thousand and one factors which shape the personalities of the gifted, the handicapped, the average and the inventive child. All professional educationists are only too well aware of this, whether they are teachers or professors of education and whether they teach in a university or in an infant school, in inner-ring schools or in better off suburban schools. Equally they are aware that to accept each implication as it comes along and at its face value would be a risky business - and perhaps not entirely their business at that.

Perhaps more than most, professional educationists are 'at risk' when implications are raised. Their role is very wide. It has to do with the quality of life, with worthwhile experiences for their own sake, and it also has to do with how people behave in concrete situations, in the here-and-now, simply because they have each and every one received an education. Educationists feel in some respects responsible for what people do and why they do it, for the quality of a society's life and will.

When implications are either few or are of small consequence, educationists can cope from their accumulated experience. But when they are many and of considerable consequence, accumulated experience may not be enough. This is so with other professionals, with doctors, engineers, lawyers and clergymen. In such circumstances each profession seeks for a strategy to help it to deal with the many and formidable problems suddenly confronting it. None rejects the problems.

An effective strategy is not easily formulated. It is not to be found ready to hand. It arises from confronting the problems as honestly as possible and then by a process of hard thinking developing a model for the strategy. This model - a set of proposals for action - is then tested out, modified, re-designed and tested out again. So the process continues, and with the testing out new experience accumulates which gives growing confidence in the soundness of the strategy. The commitment to develop a strategy is of the essence of a professional approach. The confrontation of the problem and the ensuing thinking begin the search for the strategy. It is in this respect that the papers of the Nottingham Conference collected together in the following pages are important. In them something of this process can be seen at work. It is a process which requires both logical rigour and imagination. Old facts need to be put into new categories and the implications reasoned through.

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But rational thought, as Professor Sprott cogently argues in his paper, has created problems as well as solved them. Equally, as Professor Peters suggests in his paper, our desire to promote a better way of life has tended to outstrip our ability to develop an understanding of how to achieve it. Thus, there is potentially a contradiction lying in wait for the unwary. If the search for a strategy to serve education now and for the future is to be usefully pursued, it will clearly be necessary to distinguish between those problems created by the application of rational thought to our experience and those created by setting for ourselves a higher level of social and personal objectives of which we have little previous experience.

But thinking can only be effective in developing a strategy if it results in realistic proposals for actions. Thus, there is a need to focus thinking on the agents of action. In education these agents are the educational institutions, the schools, colleges and universities, the curriculum and the teachers. It is through these agents that the strategy will succeed or fail. It will succeed if it provides young people with intellectual social and moral capabilities for dealing with experiences of many kinds, for understanding what they mean, how they hang together and how they relate to both personal and social attitudes and beliefs. This focusing of thinking on the agents of action can be seen in the papers of Miss Lack, Professor Musgrove, Professor Morris and Mr. Simmons, and Professor Hirst.

That the thinking about action takes a different form depending on the standpoint and role of the thinker is very evident in these four papers. The practising teachers, Miss Lack and Mr. Simmons, concentrate attention on what can be and is being done in schools. Professors Morris, Musgrove and Hirst, though they too are practising teachers, concentrate attention on the much more general systems with which thinking is formulated, on concepts and conceptual models through which we give meaning to collective general experience. Professor Musgrove in his paper on adolescence employs the discipline of history and sociology, Professor Morris that of psychology and Professor Hirst the discipline of philosophy. Each discipline, they seem to say, offers some promise of a contribution to a strategy for education.

For all their differences of approach the practising teachers and the academics are not basically at variance. The 'intrinsic motivation' of which Professor Morris speaks is at the heart of the recommendation which Mr. Simmons makes for the use of film in English teaching. And the clarification of objectives for the curriculum of which Professor Hirst speaks concerns Miss Lack when she asks, 'How do we reconcile these rival claims (for more, and better, teaching of science and mathematics, of languages and creative subjects) and above all how do we meet the claims of an even wider curriculum?'

Each speaker raises issues and asks questions which not only have a relationship to the agents for action but also have a relationship to the context of action, to the school and the society in which they have their setting. Both schools and society interpenetrate each other; they are functionally related, and both have structure and purpose. Thus, the papers of Professors Sprott and Peters have a mutual dependence, as have the other papers which make the school and the people in it the object of their attention.

It is because of this complex interdependence that no simple message about what ought to be done in schools in a changing society can be looked for or, indeed, emerges in these lectures. What does emerge most clearly is that there are available tools which may help to simplify the complex of problems which educationists face. Mainly these are ways of thinking and attitudes of mind which help one to stand away from the problems and see them more clearly. A strategy based on this approach stands some chance of success. At least it offers a hope of our seeing what we are up against, of 'knowing the enemy'.

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And 'the enemy' is not only - and perhaps, not significantly - social change but our own perceptions. This is what Professor Himmelweit is saying when she speaks of stereotypes being dangerous and what Professor Musgrove hints at when he suggests that 'life in our allegedly complicated and demanding society does not really call for the exercise of much intelligence by most people'. He is, in fact, raising an empirical question, to which there is a factual answer were we but to seek it out.

But the teachers are for doing (and are doing) things in schools: new courses, new kinds of involvement for young people and different experiences for them. They are at the tactical level and as Sir Ronald Gould says at the end of his opening address, 'We shall not make real the educational implications of social and economic change unless a considerable number of people are persuaded not merely to talk, or hope, but to act'. This is very true. But it is equally true that without thinking and the words which embody the concepts out of which thinking is made possible, actions can so easily become irrelevant.

In essence this is the dilemma of educationists at this point in time. The call for action was never more strident nor the call for thinking out what purpose the action is to serve. It is this dilemma which will be clear to the careful reader of those conference papers. In that they contribute to our ability to confront this dilemma they will have served a useful purpose in pointing out what to take into account in developing an effective strategy and in helping one to see an important aspect of the implications for education of social change: the need for a strategy. A strategy for education must have regard to the nature of the society in which it has its setting and the principles on which that society is based. It must also examine closely the validity of our perceptions of young people: how educationists see them and relate to them and the nature of the schools in which they are taught, how we organise them and why. It must also look at the means which are used, in particular, the curriculum: what it is, how and whether it works. Finally, no strategy is worth its salt unless it communicates confidence. It is here, in this last point that much is presupposed. One can only hope that the speakers at the conference will find many readers willing to join with them in the creative task of formulating a strategy for education today.

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PART II THE NOTTINGHAM CONFERENCE

1. Chairman's introduction

E. L. Britton, M.A., General Secretary, Association of Teachers in Technical Institutions, Chairman, Schools Council Sub-Committee on preparations for the raising of the school leaving age

May I on behalf of the Schools Council welcome you to this conference. The conference started in the raising of the school leaving age sub-committee of the Schools Council. We were discussing in very general terms our programme for the next four years and it was felt that this exercise was not going to be a success if we just were adding a year on to something that already existed. There was need for a philosophy behind the raising of the school leaving age and unless we attempt to raise the leaving age against the background of philosophy we are not going to make a success of it. Consequently, we thought that we ought to have a look at the idea of change.

It is a truism that we live in an age of change. We hear it on all sides. But people do not think at all clearly as to why we live in an age of change, or what it is that is causing the change. It is easy enough to say that change is due to technological advances, but this is only saying the same thing in other words. We therefore felt that it was important that we should look at the causes of change in our society. So we decided to hold a conference at which people who were engaged in different aspects of education, and in other things which had contact with education, could discuss and try to summarise the causes of social change, and then go on to discuss the educational implications of the changes that are taking place.

I believe that we have got our title right. It is 'the educational implications of social change' and not 'the social implications of educational change'. It would have been easy, starting from the assumption that we are dealing with the raising of the school leaving age (which is an educational change), to start with educational change and then look at the social implications. But we took it the other way, and I believe that this was right. There are many people who think that every social problem can be solved in the schools, whether it is the economic situation of the country, the need to save more money, the need for road safety, the breaking up of benches in the park, or whether it is the somewhat more complicated problem of inequality of our present social structure. There are people who think that we can iron out the social inequalities in which we live by sending everybody to the same school. But our title implies that we start with social change and move towards the educational implications.

There are many different attitudes towards change. The hymn 'Change and decay in all around I see' adopts a depressing attitude to change. Lord Falkland was even more strongly opposed to change. He said 'If it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change'. Some people think that all change is analogous to that of the amateur rider on a horse who changes his position just so that he can place another part of his anatomy in contact with the animal and rest the bit that has become severely bruised. I would hope that our attitude towards change is more than this. Change is an opportunity which we can look forward to as bringing positive advantages. There is possibly no

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more appropriate day than today for a Conference on change, for July 14th is the anniversary of the start of what was possibly the most cataclysmic change in human history.

On a more immediate and recent note I was this morning present at the installation of the first Chancellor of the first Technological University. This in itself is an immense change, and the first person to receive an honorary degree from that Technological University was Mrs. Pandit, a woman who, when other people of her age and presumably of her social background were engaged in acquiring their formal academic learning, was herself engaged in activities that landed her in a British prison. It is significant of the change that is taking place in the world today that somebody who had spent her early years in a British prison should be receiving an honorary degree from a British university. This is but one element in the change that is taking place.

For our inaugural speech, there is nobody who could set us on the right lines better than our speaker for this evening. I do not need to introduce him to you. He is well known by all of you. Somewhere round about the age of 45 to 50, we all become more directly conscious of change. We begin to feel that we have lived through history. Our speaker for tonight has probably been directly connected with educational change longer than almost anybody in this country. This is not because of his advanced years, but because of the ability which enabled him to play a part on the national plane much younger than the majority of us are ever able to do. He has been in on all the changes in education for the last quarter of a century, and not only the changes that have come from the easy sophisticated quiet talk that we are going to have these three days, but also the sort of change that comes from the bitter meetings where it is difficult to make yourself heard because of the objections and barracking of the audience. I remember a meeting in Sutton where he and the late Lord Chuter Ede shared the platform together, and it was only the consummate skill of both of them as experienced politicians which enabled them to get even a hearing from the audience. Educational change does not always come peacefully.

With this background we could have nobody who could talk to us more fittingly about educational implications of social change than Sir Ronald.

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2. Opening address

Sir Ronald Gould, M.A., LL.D., Hon. F.E.I.S.
General Secretary, National Union of Teachers

Some years ago, I was told that if I were given a topic for an address about which I knew nothing, I should shake it and something or other would be bound to fall out. When I was given the topic 'the educational implications of social and economic change', I shook it and five weighty and important words fell out. They were 'educational', 'implications', 'social', 'economic' and 'change'. I shook the five again and they fell into two groups - three adjectives, 'educational', 'social', 'economic', and two nouns, 'change' and 'implications'. I assumed that whoever concocted this title must have thought there was some connection between the two. If there were no economic and social changes, there would be no educational implications. Unless there were many changes and consequently many implications, the organisers would not have brought some 70 busy people from all over the country to gather here to discuss the topic.

In fact, this meeting would not and could not have been held at any time in the past because the changes and their implications would have been so few that the gathering would not have been worthwhile. If, for example, somebody had been bold enough to call a meeting like this 100 years ago, what exactly would they have talked about? They could have said that there had been considerable changes in industry and other changes would follow; that the franchise had been extended and there might be attempts to extend it further. But beyond these no large-scale changes had taken place or were contemplated. In fact, the newspapers, the sermons, the reports of Parliamentary speeches of that time indicate that in most spheres there was little desire for change, and even a resistance to it. The hymn quoted by Mr. Britton 'Change and decay in all around I see', must have been very popular at that time. G. K. Chesterton's words were apposite, too: 'Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes: our ancestors. It is a democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about'. And certainly, at that time, many walking around were being outvoted by the dead.

Of course there were some indications of educational change. There had been some pressure for changes from industrialists and reformers concerned with the extension of the franchise, because of the prevailing illiteracy. This expressed itself in agitation for an increase in elementary school provision. The content of education, however, had varied little from the time of the invention of printing. The methods used in teaching varied very little from those used in ancient Rome.

Today we live in different times. The significant thing about today is not that there are changes, but that there are so many and they rapidly succeed each other. The rapidity of change and the scale of change mark the difference between this and earlier ages. The consequences for the schools are many. The content of education, for example. is changing quite substantially. History is not the history that was taught a few years ago;

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it has greater width and depth. The content of the scientific subjects and of many others is substantially changed. The techniques are different, too. Whereas years ago young children sat in serried rows and were lectured at by a teacher, now their interests are harnessed and there is activity, exploration and experience in every infant school classroom. The organisation of schools is altered; the old age or ability classifications are tending to disappear, and in their places there are groupings based upon children of roughly similar interests in a particular subject. And more than this, too, we are using aids today unlike those that were used in the past. Besides the book, paper, pencil and blackboard, which were the accepted aids for hundreds of years, we are using audio-visual aids of a most sophisticated kind. Changes have come, too, not only in content and techniques, but also in the provision of education. Whereas 100 years ago there was a feeling that there ought to be more elementary schools and a few more training colleges to provide teachers for elementary schools, today we are talking about the restructuring of infant and junior schools, the development of comprehensive schools, and we are about to raise the school leaving age. Plowden, it is said, wants to recommend the development of nursery schools for children of pre-school age. Colleges of education have extended the length of their courses from two years to three, and for certain students will shortly extend them to four. Technical colleges are developing rapidly and new degrees are being established. Universities are expanding, too. So the educational scene today shows that social and economic changes are affecting the content, methods, and the shape of the educational system.

Because there are such vast educational, economic and social changes, it has been necessary to establish a National Plan. Education was included for the simple reason that the educational expectations of this country far outstripped the resources of the Government and the local authorities, and so, as all expectations cannot be realised at once, an order of priority must be established. Furthermore, in any case, in this country today it is necessary to plan education because objectives must be defined, steps towards those objectives must be taken, and the consequences which will flow from the steps taken must be considered. When so many vast changes are contemplated, without planning only chaos could ensue.

Thus, if it is decided to raise the school leaving age in 1970, is it wise to do this without the same time considering whether the increased number of qualified people that come from our schools can obtain suitable jobs, what is likely to be the impact of further education on the minds of young people and parents, whether some young people may not ask for extended courses in schools as a result .of the extended school leaving age, and, if so, whether the greater demand for technical college of education and university places can be met.

I can see three spheres in which great changes have taken place and are likely to take place, and very briefly I should like to describe them and then try to discover the educational implications. They are the spheres of work, home and politics.

First, then, work. I had the privilege of visiting mainland China. Whilst I was there, I saw side by side with examples of highly sophisticated modern technology, things which I would have thought belonged to the Middle Ages or even to an earlier period of history. I saw (for example) a man driving a blindfolded donkey yoked to a pole round in a circle for hours on end, pumping water from a well. I saw many peasants on their hands and knees, hoeing by hand as they moved slowly across cultivated fields. I saw men lifting water in buckets from ditches or lakes, carrying them one after the other to throw the water over crops in fields. This waste of human labour seemed shocking, but on reflection I realised this was almost inevitable where labour is cheap. Why bother to

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introduce large scale machinery, why bother to mechanise, if you can get a plentiful supply of cheap labour? All over the East and all over Africa progress is being inhibited by the plentiful supply of cheap labour. I also realised that another inhibiting factor was the age-old habit in China of dividing the parents' land amongst the children, so that division and sub-division resulted in one person working a small plot. The Chinese Government came to the conclusion that efficient farming demands bigger units, for without them tractors, mechanical hoes, pumps and irrigating machinery to do the job efficiently cannot be afforded. Here, then, were revealed two elements which make for industrial and agricultural change. When there is a scarcity of labour, there will be large-scale industrial changes. When there is large-scale production, there are large-scale resources and the pace of change tends to increase.

Both these are obvious in this country. Shortage of labour and high wages have encouraged technical progress. We are moving to bigger and bigger units of production. A few years ago the building industry was in the hands of a large number of very small firms, and traditional methods were used. But big firms are now erecting the big buildings, and are using large and expensive bulldozers to do all the heavy trenching work; cranes lift huge pieces of prefabricated masonry into position; lifts carry people to the level at which they have to work. Speaking generally (and there are exceptions) this country has moved very quickly indeed towards large-scale industry. All the mergers of the past two years, all the difficulties of the little firms, all the scarcity of labour point to more and more change.

But what are the educational implications? There is now a premium on brains rather than on brawn. In industry today there is a need for more and more trained and skilled people. Technical skill and technical knowledge are needed, and also training in the humanities and the art of living together. For the judgments that often have to be made on the factory floor involve not merely machinery, but men and women, and very broadly trained and cultured people are needed to handle both the technical and the human problems that arise.

At the moment our schools are not producing trained man-power in the quantity and of the quality required. It is imperative that we raise the school leaving age, that we reform our curriculum, that we reduce the size of teaching groups to make quite sure that our young people are educated to a level to be able to take more and more of these important jobs.

These conclusions would not have been reached even 30 years ago. In Charlie Chaplin's film 'Modern Times', he went nearly crazy because minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day, with a spanner in each hand he did nothing but turn nuts. Charlie Chaplin's difficulties are not being repeated, for this sort of job has disappeared or will disappear. A sophisticated industry can do these things mechanically. Thirty years or so ago, Karel Capek wrote 'R.U.R.', in which he described how man would be dehumanised by machines, because human judgments would not be required. Karel Capek has been proved wrong. At about the same time, George Bernard Shaw declared that in a few year's time men would be able to earn their living with a few hours of brainless toil every day. He, too, has been proved completely wrong. Mechanical and industrial changes make greater and greater demands on individuals, and education needs to pull itself together and make quite sure that it meets the needs of modern society.

There is something else that modern industry shows - the rapid pace at which one particular technique is abandoned and a new one introduced. Hence it is not sufficient to train people to be able to do a job mechanically. It is necessary that they should know more about the underlying principles of the job which they are doing so that they

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can apply those principles to a completely new situation. So rote-learning and purely mechanical training are really quite inadequate. We need a great number of people who are readily adaptable. To make people more adaptable, children ought to be forced more and more into a position of discovering solutions to problems themselves. They should be less spoon-fed; learning should be emphasised much more than teaching. We must also break down some of the false barriers which exist between arts and sciences so that a more general training can make people much more adaptable. I see no reason, for example, why if anybody happens to be studying French and German they could not add economics as the third subject. I would have thought this highly desirable. Universities should be prepared to accept such a combination. I would have thought, too, that an examining board could include in the French syllabus, say, a modern book on the Common Market instead of a fourth play by Molière. In these ways it is possible to break down some of the false barriers between subject and subject.

There is yet another economic and social change which is important educationally. The bigger industry gets, the greater the number of employees, the more certain it is that the countryside will be depopulated and there will be greater urbanisation. It so happens that I once lived in the country, and I am now living in a wholly urban district on the outside of London, beautiful in many ways but a district in which most people have no roots. It is the home of the 'fly-by-days'. They move away from the place early in the morning and they come back at night. They close their front doors and exclude the outside world. The society of which they form a part is anonymous, faceless. Of course, a society in which you are known by all has its disadvantages, but its human merits are real. When you are known, you tend to do what is expected of you, just as children do; you are likely to get supported in your difficulties; you are seldom lonely. Mods and rockers, in Brighton and Southend, the 'provos' in Holland, the 'blousons noirs' of France, and the 'stilyagy' of Moscow are all urban, not rural problems. They are problems of rootless communities. What can one expect when many young people have plenty of leisure and plenty of money and no social obligations, when they care for nobody and nobody cares for them, and when they have no worthwhile purpose in life? To all this education must make some response. Leisure must be made meaningful and purposeful for young people. Thus educational developments in the broadest sense are needed for children adolescents and adults. All must be helped to become social beings.

Then, too, economic and social changes have affected the home. Compare the modern home with homes of 40 or 50 years ago. The people are in better health. School milk, school meals, better meals at home, or the antibiotics of the medicos have all played a part in this. Life in the homes is easier, too. Gas or electricity for cooking instead of coal has lifted burdens from the housewife. Refrigerators, washing machines, telephones, and central heating, have all made life easier. Pleasures are quickly at hand; there is a radio, TV, and a car in the garage, and families may even raise the money for a foreign holiday. All these were unthinkable 40 or 50 years ago.

These social changes have educational implications. The schools should teach children how to handle the monetary problems, the problems of spending, saving, taxation, and the economic problems which face the country and the world. All these ought to be part of a modern education, whether the child happens to go to a modern school or one called by any other name. The schools, too, must consider the educational implications of leisure and easier living. Some of us are so lucky, our jobs are so interesting, that leisure, being almost non-existent, creates no problems. Happy is the man who can find such interest in his job that he has no problems of leisure. Most people, however, are not so fortunate. I doubt if the answers to their problems will be found in the solu-

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tions advanced in the 1930s. Teaching children hobbies, fretwork, sewing or keeping hens or rabbits in the backyard are not enough. These don't occupy the minds of people sufficiently. What is needed is a lively interest in all that is going on around them, so that they themselves can find many ways of filling their leisure time profitably.

Another recent change affecting the home is the development of the mass media, including the most potent of all, TV. Some of the American books on the hidden persuaders have taught us how all-pervasive is the effect of a simultaneous attack upon the brain through ear and upon eye. This affects the mind more profoundly than single attacks through the eye or the ear. It is all too easy for teachers and fathers to ignore or despise these popular means of communication. I have often heard teachers speaking in derogatory fashion of the popular press, but most of them buy and read it. Many people who condemn television in words cannot be dragged away from their television sets. But I hope that educationists as a whole would neither praise nor blame unadvisedly, but critically. I hope they would lead children to do the same. I do not myself condemn 'Coronation Street' out of hand, for it has its merits. But if I were a teacher today I would be tempted to ask the children to examine with me an episode in 'Coronation Street' and with it 'King Lear' or another of Shakespeare's plays, and ask in what ways they differ, in what ways one appears to be superior to the other. It might easily be that not all would arrive at the same conclusion. So be it. The important point is that they would have thought critically. In music, too, I do not see any reason whatever why teachers should not be prepared to examine Mozart and Wagner with the 'Top of the Pops'. Equally in art, teachers could examine with the children the way in which magazine advertisements make their appeal. They could look at the techniques that are used and the ideas that underlie the techniques and ask whether these do really tell the truth about the product which is being advertised. In other words, I am sure that mass media, uncritically accepted, can easily degenerate people's minds to such an extent that they become mass adherents to nostrums, half-truths and untruths, and this being dangerous for a free people, the schools should provide an antidote.

Now I come to the third sphere, politics, people acting as citizens. Our political situation has changed fantastically, It was about 80 years ago when America was having quarrels with the Philippines that Rudyard Kipling talked about 'taking up the white man's burden' and 'waging war for peace'. Now the white man's burden has changed enormously. Our Empire has virtually disappeared; large numbers of our old dependencies have become independent; colonisation as we knew it has gone. We look upon the struggles to establish independence with pleasure or anguish according to the success or failure which attends their efforts. We feel from time to time that we ought to lend a helping hand economically or technically, so that independence becomes a reality. But these enormous political changes have important implications.

Britain has now no guaranteed power or influence, no guaranteed sources of raw material, no guaranteed markets. Nobody owes us a living. We have to fight for our markets in a way we have never had to fight before, and consequently industrial and commercial efficiency is more important to us than ever. There are educational implications here; we cannot afford to waste manpower; we cannot afford to waste the ability of any child. Every child must get the best education that can possibly be provided.

There is, I think, still another consequence in this great political change, though this will be difficult for Britishers to appreciate. We are no longer a powerful nation, and our influence in the world depends not so much on the bombs, guns and soldiers we possess, as on our moral and intellectual resources. These will determine our influence in the councils of the world. Educationally, the implication is quite clear. We cannot

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again afford to waste any human talent; we must nourish it to the full, and schools must help to develop moral and intellectual resources, for on these our influence largely depends.

All that I have said about the educational implications of social and economic change is well summarised by John Vaizey, who in a contribution to 'Education and Economic Growth' said: 'Education should be relatively abundant, flexible, and capable of producing people with a high general level of culture which makes them adaptable to changing economic and social conditions'.

Now I propose to elaborate slightly by commenting on four suggestions which were made in the Crowther Report. Crowther said if we were going to hold our own we needed, first, more pure scientists; secondly, more people with some understanding of scientific concepts; thirdly, more people with mechanical concepts; and fourthly, more people who were adaptable.

May I take these in reverse order? I have already said something about adaptability, so there is nothing to add there. On mechanical commonsense, it has always seemed to me extraordinary that some people proudly boast of the cars they run, but cheerfully admit to complete ignorance as to what happens underneath the bonnet. Many women use their sewing machines, but haven't the faintest idea as to how they work. Equally, many men use the telephone and have no idea how that comparatively simple instrument works. It seems to me fairly easy for the schools, whenever they are doing anything in any of these or similar fields, to show how these things work. Of course, they would be running counter to strong inherited traditions, for it is 'unladylike' to think mechanically and it is 'not done' for professional people to soil their hands. The sooner we get away from these outmoded concepts, the better.

To increase the knowledge of scientific concepts, to make people numerate as well as literate, as Crowther put it, the barriers between subjects should be broken down and arts people should study some things in the scientific sphere. Alas, little of this nature can be done unless we produce more pure scientists. I suppose that the quality of scientific teaching at the higher level in this country is as good as anything in Europe. Our universities and technical colleges can all hold their own, but more places are required to accommodate the many applicants.

The picture in the schools, however, is rather less rosy. Eighty per cent of the science teachers in modern schools are non-graduates. This is rather shocking. We have twice as many English graduates in our schools as we have mathematics graduates. The number of people reading science at sixth form level has somewhat declined, and this of course is related to the supply of teachers. Why have we insufficient teachers? Let the Director of Scientific Affairs for OECD, Alexander King, speak: 'As there are labour shortages in many science subjects, the forces of the market directed the best of those produced to industry and expanding research positions. Consequently too few of the best science graduates are willing to teach in secondary schools. There is no equivalent demand for historians and classics scholars, such individuals of considerable intellectual standing come willingly to school. The young vigorous teaching in the fields where the problem of catching up with contemporary thought is not difficult contrasts all too often with drab and uninspiring instruction in mathematics and the physical sciences. As a result too high a percentage of our bright young minds are repelled by science.' I do not propose to elaborate on this, but I draw the attention of the Secretary of State for Education and Science to the wise words of Alexander King, and leave it at that.

Besides this, however, some of our schools lack the facilities for teaching science. There are all too many secondary schools with no laboratories and no proper facilities for teaching any form of science. If, as some people have suggested, in reorganising,

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existing schools are turned into comprehensive, many middle schools for children between the ages of 9 and 13 will lack all the necessary facilities for teaching science unless vastly greater sums of money are available for adaptation than at present appear possible. In such circumstances, some children who once would have gone to a grammar school at 11+ and would have been given adequate teaching in science will be denied the opportunity. This is not progress, call it comprehensive or call it what you will.

I do not know precisely what this conference is supposed to do, or what is intended as a follow-up. But if we merely express hopes, no child will benefit. Victor Hugo once wrote: 'In the twentieth century war will be dead, the scaffold will be dead, hatred will be dead, frontier boundaries will be dead, dogmas will be dead'. He was wrong on every count. He should have known that all too few people would be prepared to do anything about his hopes. Equally, we shall not make real the educational implications of social and economic change unless a considerable number of people are persuaded not merely to talk, or hope, but to act.

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3. The individual in society

Hilde T. Himmelweit, M.A., Ph.D.
Professor of Social Psychology, London School of Economics and Political Science

My task as a social psychologist at this conference is to tell you something of a study of adolescent boys (reinterviewed ten years later as young adults of 25) on which I am at present engaged. The study is still in progress, but some of the results already obtained have implications for this conference.

First, what is social psychology? Let me explain its concern with education by relating it to the better known disciplines: sociology and general psychology. Sociology is the study of society and its institutions. In education, therefore, its main concern is with the place of the educational system in society, the way it influences social mobility and affects change. It is also concerned with the recruitment of teachers and pupils to different types of schools. The main concern of general psychology is with the individual, with the way the mind functions and develops. Its concern is with child development and with an understanding of the way the individual feels, acts, behaves, the way he learns about and perceives the world around him.

Social psychology draws on both disciplines. It is concerned with understanding the individual as he relates to the immediate group and to the wider social system and in the way attitudes are formed and changed. In education, for instance, it seeks to understand how the school is seen and reacted to by those associated with it, how teachers and pupils interact and how the pressures imposed from outside (e.g. in the grammar school, to use the final examinations as selection sieves for further education) affect the attitudes, expectations and norms of teachers, parents and pupils.

In 1952, I studied 600 middle and working class adolescent boys, the entire third form intake of four grammar and five secondary modern schools in the Greater London area. The schools varied greatly in the social class composition of their pupils. My interest lay in seeing how far an adolescent's performance at and attitude to school, his aspirations for the future, his social attitudes and his relation to his family could be accounted for in terms of his social background and how far in terms of the type of school he attended. In addition to information collected from the boys themselves (over a period of seven hours in all) using open ended questions, inventories and tests, teachers rated their performance and behaviour and gave us the boys' intelligence test results at age 11. American theories on child rearing had drawn attention to the fundamental way in which social background influences child training. But in the United States, there is no division into different types of school at the secondary stage. Under these circumstances, i.e. within a unified school system, social class differences are likely to stand out. How far in our culture, where there is a separation into different types of schools, is it more meaningful to speak of a pupil from working class background or of a grammar school pupil?

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The results were clear cut. The differences obtained between types of schools were far greater than those between the social classes. A characterisation of pupils' attitudes and behaviour is more meaningful in terms of the type of school an individual attends than in terms of the home he comes from. This was found to be so, not only when looking at the 13 year old age group, but even more sharply when we followed the pupils through into adult life.

, Ten years later, we were able to reinterview 75 per cent of the original sample, 463 young men. We obtained from them their educational and occupational history, their recollections about their school days, their attitudes to their jobs, their expectations for the future as well as their perception of themselves, their family, and their attitudes to a wide variety of social issues. Where applicable, the same questions were asked as at the age of 13. In this way we could trace the formation of attitudes and the way they changed.

In addition, in collaboration with the Home Office, we traced all who had come before the courts each with a 'twin' drawn from the same class room, social background and intelligence level. Unlike other studies of delinquency, our aim was not to show that underprivileged children living in underprivileged neighbourhoods were more likely to become delinquent than those whose circumstances were more favourable. Instead, we were looking for differences in the quality of relationships and type of social attitudes experienced, which at the age of 13 already might differentiate the delinquent from the non-delinquent in cases drawn from the same ability level, background and neighbourhood.

The results of the follow-up study show convincingly that the decision about secondary schooling made at 11 is a decision which affects the individual's whole life. And it must be remembered that the decision is institution-centred, not candidate-centred, i.e. the the selection is competitive, aimed at filling available places with the best candidates. In no sense is it a procedure aimed at selecting all those capable of benefiting from grammar school education. It is this aspect which makes the procedure indefensible. Once the decision has been made, it affects not only how long the boy stays at school, what he learns and what examinations he takes, but also what use he makes of available further education, and with it, his access to different levels of jobs. The effects extend further beyond those aspects of his life which are clearly linked to education. As I shall show, it affects his view of himself as a person, his view of society, his involvement in school and in learning.

The power of the school was brought home to us forcibly by studying, within our sample, a group of 64 boys, half of whom were '11+ under-achievers' in that they were assigned to a secondary modern school though of grammar school ability, half of whom were '11+ over-achievers'. These groups showed exactly the same pattern of attitudes as the remainder of the two school populations which were clearly differentiated on the basis of the 11+ intelligence test result. You might argue that all that this says is that the tests are not reliable. Surely this is not the only answer. It is much more probable that, once assigned to given types of schools, the pupil learns to internalise the norms and expectations of the school and to respond to the particular type of teaching and teacher-pupil interaction.

After all, the two types of schools differ sharply. Society has imposed a structure on the grammar school making its final examinations serve as entrance tickets to further education and to higher level occupations. Its objective, apart from teaching children, is clear, namely, to induce the maximum number of suitable pupils to stay, enter the sixth form and to do well in 'A' level examinations. To this end, many schools stream

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their pupils by ability and by so doing, as our research clearly shows, assign success to those in the 'A' stream and with it a sense of 'not counting' to the remainder. This came out clearly in the differential early leaving rate which was affected far more by which stream the pupil had been assigned to at the age of 13 (in those schools where stream mattered) than by his social background.

By contrast, the objectives of the secondary modern school are unformulated. There is not clearcut end examination which has long range significance. The pupils are characterised as 'not being grammar school material'. Since they constitute 80 per cent of the age group such characterisation lacks specificity. Lofty sentiments are expressed, but neither parents nor pupils are given a clear indication right from the start as to what constitutes success. Lack of clarity in the educational objectives affects teachers and pupils alike. At least this was the case with the age group with which I was concerned, who were 15 in 1953. The situation may well have changed today. But has it?

Here are some of the differences which we observed between secondary modern and grammar school pupils. I shall express them in terms which characterise the pupil from the secondary modern school, since it is this group with whom we are primarily concerned.

1. Secondary modern school pupils find it less easy to communicate with their parents and more often report lack of warmth on the part of the parents. They are less confident that their parents approve of them.

2. They more often agree that it is best not to stand out from the rest, and to be content with what you have rather than strive for something better. They show a strange acceptance of the status quo and seem to have little drive towards achievement.

3. Asked to choose between different job characteristics, they opt for security rather than interest and for being told what to do rather than for striking out on their own.

4. Their involvement in school is small. Although they consider marks very important for getting on in the world, they are ready to skip school.

5. They tend to agree with rather authoritarian statements like 'might is right', and to think more readily of fighting as a way of resolving differences.

6. Their way of thinking seems to be dogmatic, black and white, prejudiced rather than liberal. In fact, they exhibit the type of attitudes that Eysenck and others have shown to be characteristic of the working class adult who left school at 15, the only difference being that they exhibit these attitudes already at 13 and 14. It looks therefore as if these attitudes are formed at the secondary school and are not the result of lack of further education.

An alternative explanation would be that the pupils bring these attitudes to school and that the teaching offered does not act as a sufficient counterbalance.

The picture then is unfavourable; unfavourable because there is reduced impetus to consider school a central part of the adolescent's life. Further, a set of attitudes are formed which see society in power terms and give little encouragement to striving. It is better to be content with what one has. This division of society into 'we' and 'they' coupled with less satisfactory relationship with parents gives the secondary modern pupil little confidence in his own ability.

Looking now at the grammar school sample, we found that those who did not enter the sixth form or, once there, did not take the examinations shared some of the characteristics of the secondary modern pupils I have just discussed. But the single factor of

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overriding importance was the stream to which they had been assigned, in schools where streaming was stressed. In a school where the 'A' stream was considered the elite stream, 27 per cent of the 'A' stream left before entering the sixth form, compared with 85 per cent in the 'C' stream. The same type of distribution was obtained in a second grammar school where once again streaming was highly stressed, even though, in this case, ability as measured at the age of 11 played no part in assigning the pupils to a stream at the age of 13. The importance of stream in affecting a pupil's view of himself, the need to experience success if the school is to hold the interest of and retain the pupil beyond the minimum school leaving age, came out very clearly.

The organisational structure of the school, then, has unintended side effects, some of lasting significance. Equally, what happens in the first years of secondary school seems critical to the pupil's evaluation of his capacity to go in for further education and his interest in it. Thus when we asked, at the age of 13, at what age, if they were free to choose, they would like to leave school, the answers given were found to correlate very highly with the actual leaving age some years later. This suggests that important pre-decisions are made early. The first two years of secondary school may well be crucial here.

The follow-up aspect of the study showed that remedial action or rescue operations for those who left grammar school early were few so that what happened at the grammar school, and what examinations were passed there, tended to be decisive. There was one exception, the pupil who happened to enter some large scale organisation which made a special point of providing facilities for and stimulating their young men to acquire additional qualifications.

It has always been said that working class children leave earlier, middle class children leave later. Actually the relationship is very weak. When we looked at our four grammar schools we did not get a leaving rate corresponding to the distribution of middle and working class children among them. We looked particularly at schools which should have an earlier leaving rate, namely one which had a high working class component and another which had a rather low overall intelligence level. Both these schools had a performance record at 'A' level identical to that of the other two schools and a corresponding entry into the sixth form.

These schools had managed to compensate for their difficulties. They did this by developing a very strong school structure. School became the important reference point for the pupils. The schools produced the kind of identity which overrode the differences existing outside.

Another example of a different kind comes from our secondary modern school sample. When, in one of the secondary modern schools at the back of King's Cross which had a high delinquency rate, we examined the number of pupils who had come before the Courts, the proportion turned out to be 30 per cent for our age group, which was much higher than that of any of the other schools. Yet, when we considered when the delinquency had occurred, we discovered that here, far more than in the other schools, offences were committed after leaving school. The Headmaster, realising that he was taking children from a somewhat unstable neighbourhood and from a high proportion of problem families, had managed to create an environment for the children which was supportive and meaningful. In this way he was able to contain the forces that acted against good social behaviour.

But once the secondary modern child leaves school with no qualifications and is launched into the world, often gravitating to a dead-end job, the shock and discon-

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tinuity are too great. What happens then is that the forces of the neighbourhood take over.

We ought to consider how to ease the transition and how best to encourage the school and the community to work more closely together.

Allow me now to state some of the implications of the results of this enquiry and in so doing to draw on other studies even though there will not be time to make specific reference to them.

1. Each child develops an attitude to learning and to school which is of great significance. If he comes from a supportive and interested family, the preconditions for a favourable attitude are given, and perhaps reinforced through positive experience, during his primary school stage. At present the transition from primary to secondary school is abrupt. From being an important member of the primary school, by virtue of seniority at least, he is small and insignificant in the secondary school. This is particularly true where, as in the case of the working class child attending grammar school, this is seen not as the natural course of events, but as something unexpected, to be assessed rather than to be taken in its stride.

Schools should make explicit attempts to involve the children when they first enter secondary school and to create for them meaningful success experiences. There is need to discover when the critical period occurs where a child tells himself that 'school is not for me' and so contracts out of the school system, at first in spirit and later in reality. In the case of the secondary modern school pupil, this may already have happened in the primary school. If this is so, then the opportunity of changing schools must be used to remedy this. The need to get involved applies equally to grammar, secondary modern and comprehensive schools.

2. The internal organisation of the school, in particular its grouping and streaming policy, gives off signals to the pupil. Every organisational structure operates as a set of signals and, depending upon the frame of reference that the pupil brings to the situation (the orientation derived from home and from the primary school), he will respond strongly or weakly to these cues. It is important to avoid a fixed self-reference point. There is need to rethink our streaming policy, irrespective of the type of school considered, and to do so in terms of the perceptions that the policy generates among the pupils rather than in terms of the intentions of the teachers.

Intentions may explain why a given structure was developed, but it is the way these structures appear to the pupils that determines their impact. A pupil acts on his perceptions, especially where he has a choice, as for example in the age at which he wishes to leave school. We have got to accept that today it is the child who determines whether to leave or to stay, and to build this awareness into our system.

Our 'C' stream children become 'C' streamers in that school assigns to them a low status. None of the children in the 'C' stream bothered to get qualifications subsequently. School set a stamp for life.

No one would suggest that pupils of widely varying ability can be effectively taught together, but if we are clear about the negative effects of streaming, other ways of teaching or grouping will be found. Equally - and I cannot emphasise this too strongly - any new structure needs to be studied not in terms of what it intends to do but how it is seen through the eyes of the consumers, i.e. the pupils.

3. The example of the secondary modern school with the high delinquency rate showed that a strong supporting school atmosphere can offset deficiencies in home and

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neighbourhood life, but that its effect will cease the minute the pupils leave school and are faced (unprepared, for there is no way of preparing them) with the full impact of an underprivileged neighbourhood and dead-end jobs. Just as the transition from primary to secondary school needs to be more smoothly managed, so does the entry from school into the world of work.

For this, Youth Employment Officers are insufficient and are all too often influenced by the stereotypes of the young worker of the neighbourhood.

What we need is for the community and the school to come more closely together, so that a different sense of involvement is created between school and subsequent employers. The school as we have seen did an excellent job within its power, but its power was too limited. One of the good by-products of involving the community (including craftsmen and others) with the school would be an appreciation on their part of the boys' capacity for hard work on matters in which they are interested, their staying power and sense of responsibility.

4. Teachers' views of pupils' abilities are often as much shaped by their stereotypes about what a boy from a given background is like or what it takes to be in a 'C' stream, than by the boys' real capacity. Lacey, in a recent article in the British Journal of Sociology (Vol. 17, No. 3, 1966) has demonstrated this convincingly. In another study carried out by a former graduate, it was found that those secondary modern school teachers who enjoyed teaching felt they could do a good job with the children under their care though these were the same children whom the less contented teachers dismissed as difficult to teach because of the homes from which they came. The teacher's personality, motivation and contentment with his role as teacher enter into his assessment, particularly where past scholastic experience has been unsatisfactory.

We all build up stereotypes which help to simplify our reaction towards complex problems, and teachers are no exception to this rule. Also, their training has done little to warn them of the power of the self-fulfilling prophecy.

5. Bernstein's work on modes of communication is of particular relevance. He suggests that children from different social backgrounds learn different modes of communicating with one another. He distinguishes between the restricted and the extended code. The former, characteristic of children from unskilled working class homes, lacks flexibility. Subtle shades of meaning are difficult to convey and are indicated by how something is said rather than by what is said. This does not matter as long as the individual stays in the group whose verbal and non-verbal cues he can correctly interpret. However, it creates difficulties once he moves away from the group.

In addition, we have the findings reported earlier that working class children, especially those in secondary modern schools, experience difficulty in communicating with their parents or in understanding how their parents feel towards them. Given these handicaps, it would seem very important to give pride of place to improving children's capacity to express themselves and to communicate, if necessary at the expense of traditional academic subjects.

The school's principal task is to prepare the individual for adult life, develop in him such skills as will ease his relation to others beyond the immediate circle in which he has grown up. To do so he must be able to express his fears and hopes, to analyse a problem and to use language effectively. We must place at his disposal other ways of dealing with disagreement than just by fighting.

To achieve (a) the use of language as a means of expressing oneself and (b) precision in its use requires practice, from the earliest years onwards, in an atmosphere in which

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the pupil is encouraged to express his views and to have them respected. It requires a non-authoritarian relationship between teachers and pupils.

Familiarity with the written as well as the spoken word is equally important. The capacity to comprehend forms, to devise forms, to read small print, all these are essential as preparation for the complex life of an adult. Modes of communication vary. So does the ease of writing, telephoning - all these are aids to adult living and need to become as familiar to all children as they are to children brought up in middle class homes.

6. In some secondary modern schools, little responsibility is given to pupils; hardly any homework is assigned, i.e. there is no practice of doing work without supervision. Is it then to be wondered that, as adults, the young people only work when supervised? Far greater and more varied assignment of responsibility should be important features of all secondary schooling, once again begun in the earliest years and accentuated later. Not in the form of the old prefect system, but by creating an organisational structure which ensures involvement not only in the running of the school, but also in social service provided for the community. This is successfully done in some schools and could be readily extended to all.

7. The capacity for compassion, the need to help, are present in all children, and are generally heightened during adolescence except among the unfortunate few to whom life has shown that no one cares for them. I believe that far too little is being done to build on this capacity and this need.

This could be done by systematic and important teaching of life saving, whether through first aid on the roads or through the kiss of life on the beach. Work in hospitals, with old people, with the handicapped, work with the social services or with individual social workers where pupils assume real responsibility would be important here. Different experiments should be encouraged which suit the neighbourhood, not as an optional extra, but as an important part of teaching adolescents to become responsible adults.

Summing up

What is needed is a systematic analysis of the problems that children from given types of schools face (a) in their relation to school and to learning and (b) in life after school, which I consider even more important. If problems of communication, of displaying initiative and of assuming responsibility loom large, then we need the structure of the school and its timetable to provide the necessary teaching. This will entail a rethinking of the relationship between teachers and pupils and the giving of greatly increased responsibility to the pupils.

We also need to bring the community into the school (a) to ensure that likely employers gain a greater respect for the capacity of the pupils and their readiness to work hard provided they are interested, and (b) to create awareness on the part of the pupils that they can provide important social service for the community. New types of relationships between schools and the existing social services might have to be created.

We need greater respect, on the part of the teachers, for variations in intellectual and social development (for the plateaux and the spurts) and provision for a structure within the school that permits ready response to such variations. No fixed self-reference point should exist, especially where this carries with it the unintended implication that the pupil is not much good at learning or at being assigned responsibility.

GPs found the exclusive training in hospitals as medical students an inadequate preparation for their work. I believe the same is true for teachers. Young teachers,

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especially those who attend training colleges, enter teaching with little experience of life. They were good and obedient pupils, generally prefects; at training college they are again pupils, though at a more exalted level. They leave and begin to teach. Their experience of how people live will be restricted to their own background and that of their friends, all of whom, if at training college, will have been model pupils rather than rebels.

I should like to see built into the training a probationary period where teachers enter (not as teachers but perhaps attached to health visitors or to social workers) the homes of families whose backgrounds differ from their own; where they sit in at outpatients' and ante natal clinics, attend courts, and become aware of the problems of communication that parents have, of the way the families live and spend their time. This is best done while at training college, because once one is a professional teacher, it is not easy to gain entry.

In their training too, teachers need to be made much more aware than they are now of the fallacy of stereotypes, even such respectable ones as that of the Newsom child.

All this requires a different attitude by the Department of Education and the local education authorities, especially in relation to their syllabuses and examinations. I cannot believe that the concentration on three set books that is characteristic of 'O' level examinations in English is the best stimulus for creative work in English.

The case of a certified patient has to be reviewed by law, whether he demands it or not. I suggest that examination boards at fixed intervals should review their examination procedure, drawing for this purpose on university experts in each subject. Each review would entail a through and detailed analysis of the skills, concepts and modes of thinking required for that subject, and should affect the content of the examination.

We cannot ask for a more rational organisation of the school, a more exposed and draughty mode of training teachers, without at the same time demanding from the authorities and the Department of Education the means for periodic evaluation of what is done, as well as the systematic collection of statistics in such a way that progress can be built on the successes of the past and on the avoidance of its mistakes.

Nothing of what I have said is possible if it is begun only during the last year of school life. It needs to begin in the first year of secondary schooling and so create a natural transition from the varied and experimental approach to the child so characteristic of the best primary schools.

But if I had to opt for one or two reforms for the last year of schooling, I would opt for devoting maximum time to learning how to communicate, to developing role playing and the facilities for expressing thoughts about problems meaningful to young people. To this I would add the assignment of responsibility and the expectation that unsupervised work will be well carried out. This may lead to disorder but, if well handled, should help to ease the transition from school to work and increase a pupil's self-confidence and enjoyment of a job well done, which is the first prerequisite for assuming responsibility as an adult.

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4. Society: what is it and how does it change?

W. J. H. Sprott, M.A.
Emeritus Professor of Psychology, University of Nottingham

The title to which I have been asked to speak is, as you will appreciate, the title of a book some 700 or 800 pages long. I have to try and compress it into three quarters of an hour. I want first to change the title because this abstract word 'society' I do not find meaningful unless it is used in a particular context. So I am going to change it to the following: 'What is a society and how does it change?'

What is a society?

The answer to the first question - 'What is a society?' - is that it is a figment of the imagination. You can see this is so if I remind you of what the so-called father of sociology, Comte, said. 'There exists necessarily a fundamental difference between the whole inorganic philosophy. In the first we have to explore a system where the elements are better known than the whole and are usually even alone directly observable, but in the second, on the contrary, where man and society constitute the principal object, the opposite procedure becomes often the only rational one, as another consequence of the same logical principle, because the whole of the object is here certainly much better known and more immediately accessible.'

You can see that the author is absolutely wrong. The fact is that in physics and chemistry you start with lumps of matter; you then analyse things into their chemical elements, into different combinations of entities, electrons, protons and the like. Far from being directly acquainted with the elements, it is not unknown for philosophers to question the existence of them. Equally nonsensical is it to say that we have a direct acquaintance with society. We do not. We have direct acquaintance only with people interacting, i.e. the elements of which society, in so far as it exists at all, is constituted. So I say that society is in some sense a figment of the imagination. But we do in fact have in our minds models of the society in which we live. You can, if some foreigner asks questions about your society, refer to your model - not a very clear one perhaps; 'scheme' would be a better word to use. But you have some sort of model of the society with its political system, economic system, legal system, religious system, class system and so on. You have some sort of model in your mind of the society in which you live and, if you go abroad, you prepare a model which you hope will correspond in some sort of way with the society they happen to have.

Furthermore, you have certain beliefs about membership; that is to say, you distinguish between those you call members of your society and those who are not, people who are in and those who are out, we and they. The models of course will vary from person to person; each person sees what he thinks of as a society from an idiosyncratic perspective. At the same time they must be sufficiently similar, otherwise we shall not be able to talk intelligibly in terms of them. So that there is a certain similarity in terms of which we talk about our society. We know what we are talking about when we speak

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of the economic or the political system in our society, comparing it with the systems that we have some idea of in other societies, and we all have some sort of agreement about who belongs to the society and who does not. This means that in some sense of the word these models and these beliefs are shared. This makes all the difference to the status of these images, models and schemes that we have in our head, because, being shared, they do achieve a certain quasi-independence of the individual. It was this which made the sociologist Durkheim take the line that what he called social facts confront and constrain the individuals who act in their context. If you say, 'Is society real?' in the sense that there is some entity over and above interacting individuals I would say definitely: no. If you ask whether the shared beliefs and models are real, I would say - and the cliche is extremely appropriate - that to all intents and purposes they are, because our intents and purposes are determined by these shared beliefs.

Let me come down to the present situation. Supposing I were to ask someone here to show me the conference, he might say, 'There is the conference'. I would say, 'It is not, it is a collection of people who have the fate of listening to me. I want to see a conference. It is a thing which is supposed to come into being on certain days and I want to see it.' Of course anyone would say that this is absurd and you cannot see it. What is happening is that you have been invited to come with certain expectations. You have already been to a great many of such interaction patterns and so you know the sort of thing to expect of what is known as 'a conference' and you have certain expectations of other people and they have certain expectations of you. This kind of patterned performance is what is called in shorthand 'a conference'. The conference as such does not exist, it is part of you, part of your beliefs, part of your expectations. Supposing one of those present were to go out tomorrow night and get roaring drunk and woke up thinking he was attending a session of Alcoholics Anonymous, he would find himself very oddly placed. And so would you. If he went on to make a nuisance of himself you would say that the conference was wrecked, that he wrecked the conference. What would have happened would be that the interaction pattern had gone wrong. That is what his wrecking of the conference would mean.

What I am saying about a society is that it is a complex pattern of interactions. Let me put it in rather more formal language. A society consists of a collection of individuals whose patterned interaction takes place more frequently amongst themselves than with members of other collections, who share a belief that they are co-members of the society, who also share beliefs about the structure of the society, the different activities that have to be carried out for the benefit of at least some, if not all, numbers of the collection, who also share beliefs about the standards of appropriate behaviour, and who interact in terms of these beliefs. You will see that it is a figment of the imagination.

As to the most convenient model for sociologists (part of whose job is to make the generally shared models more sophisticated), I think that for general purposes it is convenient to envisage a network of positions with their appropriate roles; then, as it were, to set the thing going and imagine the vast interaction process partly governed by the roles which are involved and partly governed by the interests of their incumbents. This last, the interests, is of vital importance because this is where conflict very frequently comes in, and conflict is clearly of vital importance when it comes to the problem of social change. Thus in terms of the interaction pattern, the interchange in terms of the roles, you will find that the positions, the relations between human beings change gradually and change slowly. Slowly, because there are vested interests which keep the status quo going and also because the vast majority of people cannot easily envisage any alternative. Of course there may be rare occasions when you have a sudden rapid change as in some form of revolution, but with those I cannot deal on this occasion.

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Social change (1)

Now let me turn to the problem of social change. How do societies change? There are two general approaches to this question. The first approach envisages an inevitable serial process of which the individual members of a society are as it were, the victims. Some examples will show what I mean. Take Comte's theory of the three stages: it tells you that by some inner propulsion man's social destiny is determined by changes in his view of the world. He starts viewing the world from a theological view, then reason erodes it, and he views it from what Comte called a metaphysical point of view and finally he views the world from a scientific or, as Comte put it, positivist point of view. This is merely an example of a theory in terms of which social change is due to some inner propulsion. Spencer thought that society was an organism and viewed the changes in society as being due to processes of evolution within the society. Spengler thought society certainly was an organism and that it went through the same processes of ageing that mankind goes through, childhood, adolescence, maturity, old age, and then death. Toynbee has quite a different pattern of creative minorities, a static empire, the barbarian at the gate, the static empire becoming more hollow and the barbarians moving in. Finally, far more important than any of these, is Marx. Marx thought certainly that the process from primitive communism to feudalism, and capitalism to socialism and communism was an inevitable process. Men could speed it up perhaps, but even if they did not, this process would in fact go on. I say that he is the most important of all because his theories were phrased in scientific terms, in the sense that his predictions are falsifiable; the fact that many of them have been falsified does not discredit his methods. Secondly his views of social change, emphasising the importance of technology and so forth, are of great importance and considerable interest. The theorists we have been considering have the following in common: they postulate an inner mechanism or propulsion which operates independently of the wishes or intentions of men. This is what Karl Popper (2) stigmatises as 'historicism' in his rather idiosyncratic use of that word. Secondly they inevitably take a realist or as it is sometimes called 'holist' view of society. It is thought of as an independent entity with laws of its own. Thirdly since they claim to have discovered the spring of change, the propulsive force, they claim to be able to prophesy the future.

I think that none of this is acceptable to modern sociology. They are all of them what might be called 'hidden hand' theories, that there is a hidden hand bending society in certain directions. The only vestige of the hidden hand that I can detect today is Talcott Parsons' insistence on the presence of what he calls a process of social equilibrium, which he thinks operates independently of the wishes and intentions of individuals, and I can only hope that will be abandoned.

If we jettison these rather convenient looking theories, what are we left with? Inevitably, something of a mess. We see that social change comes about by a variety of complex factors, and that there is no overall plan. We agree that social positions and social roles are constantly changing; the question is whether we can detect any patterns at all in the changes from which we might be able to extrapolate a little into the future. Are there any patterns of social change? I am going to suggest to you in a few minutes that I think there are.

(1) See, e.g. Explorations in Social Change edited by George K. Zollschan and Walter Hirsch (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964). Social Change edited by A. and E. Etzioni (Basic Books, 1964). An Outline of the Social Theories of Society, Volume I, edited by Talcott Parsons (Collier-Macmillan, 1965).

(2) K. Popper, Open Society and its Enemies (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963).

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It is convenient to make certain formal distinctions. Firstly we can distinguish between what I will call exogenous change and endogenous change. By exogenous change I mean changes brought about by agencies outside a society itself, as, for example, invasion, settlement or colonisation, culture contact, disease. The Black Death, after all, made important changes in the labour force of the 14th century. It has been alleged that the barbarian invasion of the Roman Empire was due to climatic changes in the middle of Asia. These exogenous changes are, as far as society is concerned, unpredictable, and their outcome will be unpredictable.

Now we come to endogenous changes. Here, I think, one has to make a distinction between what I would call 'episodic' change and 'patterned' change. I am not particularly happy about these expressions, but I hope that what I have in mind will become clear. In the case of episodic changes, what I have in mind is changes that have been brought about within a society by an event that could not have been predicted from our knowledge of the state of the society. Most important of these are discoveries and inventions. I do not see how one could have predicted the harnessing of steam as a source of power, or the invention of the internal combustion engine, or the discovery of penicillin and how to make synthetic fabrics. I do not see how you could have predicted these changes; they are episodic. I dare say if we had knowledge of the full psychological working of Fleming, together with the knowledge of the programme of the laboratory where he was working, we might have predicted that he would have this experience of discovering penicillin. But from the point of view of society it is something which you cannot bargain for. Yet when these discoveries are made, they make tremendous differences. Steam after all changed the industrial pattern from waterpower to coal; the modern car changed the pattern of mobility and social interaction, including criminal behaviour; penicillin has had repercussions on the demographic picture; and synthetic fabrics have affected the class structure. Once these discoveries and inventions have been made, the scene is relevantly altered and short term predictions can be made about them. Once the motor car had been invented, there was likely to be a move to make them faster and cheaper. Once steam had been harnessed, resources of power (such as coal) became important. But then you have the invention of electrical mechanisms which change the scene altogether and the industries are no longer tied to sources of power, but can be moved nearer the market. So you have here episodic changes which alter the scene and then you have a slow kind of change going on and then you have another episode and you can't really say what is going to come next.

Now we come to what I have called 'patterned change'. The question here is: are there any changes over a period of time which follow a pattern? By which I mean: supposing you take any stage in this period of changes, say stage 2, then if you look at stage 3 it seems to emerge naturally and reasonably out of stage 2; it is not a jerk like an invention. We may then, very tentatively, if we see the trends, try and make some predictions.

An obvious, and I think in a certain sense instructive, example of this is changes in population. It is perfectly clear that the size and structure of any generation are, in some sense, dependent upon the size and structure of the preceding one, together with the prevailing marriage and childbearing customs. The subtleties of this example lie in the dangers of long term prediction, which is familiar to us all. You remember that in the late 1930s and 40s it was predicted that the population of this country would dwindle to the size of the population of London. Now, some 30 years afterwards, we are only too thankful for the Pill. Thus, predictions seem to be of only short term order.

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Let me take another example; G. D. H. Cole's (1) analysis of the stages of industrial changes and their repercussions follows a very well known pattern: first we have textile factories near rivers, then there is a change-over from water power to steam, leading to great trouble in reorganisation and so on. The second stage is the 'railway age' which brings important occupational changes; it brings in tertiary occupations and an increased number of technicians, accountants, a system of investment and so on, an expansion of these tertiary occupations. Then you have mass production, with its lightening of heavy labour, its relatively simply learnt techniques, and its cheaper goods, with all their obvious repercussions. Finally you have the electrical change, which frees industry from the source of power; you have synthetic fabrics, a general application of chemistry to industry, involving close contact between the universities and industry and the development of research in industry itself. This is a very sketchy attempt to describe the patterned change, but following Cole's story you have finally the stage today of automation.

Is there any pattern in all this? Of course, it is a discontinuous story with various inventions, but is there any pattern? I think there is an obvious pattern. If you take Marx's view that at any rate one of man's basic jobs is to cater for his material needs and increase his material enjoyment, then there will be a tendency for him to exploit every method he can and to give his mind to achieve this end. The question is, can we predict anything from this? Popper very rightly proclaims from the housetops that trends are not laws and insists that only short term predictions are ever possible, even if that is the case. There is no certainty that this process of continuous control over nature by continuous exploitation of techniques to increase productivity will go on. We might conceivably have some complete change of heart and decide that productivity is not quite what we want, but I think that this would be change on such an enormous scale as to be rather unlikely. I think that one can tentatively predict that this will go on and that the possibilities of automation will extend, resulting in changes in occupation and the techniques required for looking after the machines, making the machines and servicing them. These are linked, of course, with the shorter working time and the problem of leisure. The point is that if the effects look as though they are going on, and if, looking into the past, you can see what repercussions these changes have had, then you can look a little way into the future and try to envisage the kinds of repercussions which lie ahead. That, I think, is as far as patterned change entitles you to go. I think you can do a certain amount of prediction of a very tentative order along these lines.

I want to turn to another kind of patterned change, the increase in the scope of sympathetic concern for other people and the increase in what I would call rationality. By rationality I simply mean the general habit of questioning, wondering, answering (even if not all the answers are good ones), and so on. I put these two, concern for other people and rationality, together, because I think that concern for other people is in fact closely connected with the increase in rationality.

Hobhouse (2) is a good guide here. He suggests that you start off with members of a tribe having a concern for members of their own tribe, but that other people are fair game. Then somehow or other - it may be because of contacts, or trade, or other reasons - the idea gets about that other people are people like themselves. If they behave decently to themselves, then on what grounds can they discriminate against other people? It may be that they feel bound to treat some other people well; I think that often this is the case. But once the notion that you can have concern for other people

(1) G.D.H. Cole, Studies in Class Structure (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1955), chapter II.

(2) L. T. Hobhouse, Morals in Evolution (Chapman & Hall, 1951).

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sets in, then, in a sense, the rot sets in, because this is the nature of concern; it is something expansive. Similarly, with rationality, it is very difficult to see where you stop. When the Americans wanted to excuse their behaviour towards Negroes they said they were not human. They had to say that because if they were human then they would have had to treat them decently, because they are like us. You have constantly to find excuses for differential treatment of others and this becomes more and more expansive until there is no reason why you should treat differentially any other human being in the world. People say that we are very wicked, but I think myself that more people are concerned with more people in the world than ever before in the history of mankind. However, rational criticism is not confined to questioning differential treatment of other people.

I need not say anything about the way in which reason has eroded our traditional beliefs - religious, conventional, moral - nor how difficult it increasingly becomes to give a rational answer to so many questions which are being asked. We all know about that, because of one issue which I would like to mention. We have to admit that the young are becoming increasingly sophisticated, not only asking questions, but being suspicious and critical of the answers that they get. When I first came to Nottingham in the 1920s, the students there simply accepted the syllabus which they had to work to and the courses which were offered. I dare say that they muttered amongst themselves, but they just had to accept it; the teachers knew best. Now, when I left three or four years ago, things had completely changed. The students would come and say, 'Why should we do this, that or the other? Why should we read so and so? Why should we attend this lecture? Why do you lecture at all?'

There was a time when the less privileged and less well endowed intellectually took their relatively low status for granted. The opportunities that others had were simply not for the likes of them. Now all that has gone by the board. The young people from that walk of life are becoming more and more sophisticated, asking more and more questions, though many of them feel that they are second class citizens. In America, where of course the educational system is different, boys in an analogous position are led to be so angry that, according to Dr. Cohen, (1) they turn middle class standards upside down. 'If middle class people value property, we will destroy it; if middle class people deprecate violence, we will admire it.'

In England, according to the recent work of Dr. David Downes, (2) the position appears to be different. He investigated the young people of Stepney and Poplar and he found that they were not as spiteful as the Americans appear to be, that they do not feel that they should be resentful. It may be because they can earn good money and they are prepared to work for that. But on the other hand they are bored to tears, so he tells us, in their work and what they want is to earn as much as they can to keep their jobs, because it supplies them with the wherewithal to have a jolly good time in their leisure. This is when they really come into their own, where they are real people with interesting things to do. The trouble is that they are not particularly inventive; they want what they call 'kicks' and the avenues to any particular 'kick' are likely in time to become rather unrewarding, so that they have to dream up some other methods. They will say that they have got leisure time and they are entitled to enjoy themselves. If anyone says that they ought not to do such things, they will say, 'Why not?' and what answer can you give? They might conceivably say that you have not provided them with interests; they might say, 'We are going to make the best of our lives and if you say we can make

(1) Albert K. Cohen, Delinquent Boys (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1956).

(2) David Downes, The Delinquent Solution (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965).

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the best of our lives in a different way, it is up to you to show it. We are so far extremely sceptical.' This applies to the whole question of the school leaving age, because they do not suddenly become sophisticated when they leave school; they are sophisticated enough at increasingly lower ages. With the early age of puberty you have also the early age of sophistication. What is to be done if the school leaving age is raised, I do not know. You will either have to dream up something extremely enticing or have a very difficult job on your hands.

Finally, I must mention an entirely different field, the almost laboratory field of sociologists, that is the social change which is occurring in the under-developed countries. The ground pattern of man's desire for material prosperity means that it is almost certain that the industrial-urban type of society will eventually cover the world. Inevitably in the process it comes up against resistance. The type of resistance depends on the type of society which is, as one may say, 'going modern'. In a highly tribalised society (as in many parts of Africa), when the emancipation honeymoon is over there are likely to be tribal rows which will hold things up. In an old civilisation like India, on the other hand, or in societies dominated by religion like the Islamic countries, there will be resistance from those who, for one reason or another, have vested interests in preserving tradition and they will stand out against a great deal of what will seem to be modernisation.

In this very sketchy survey I have attempted to give you my idea of what a society is, and I have attempted to show that a great deal of social change is unpredictable, jerky and episodic, but that there are certain fields where there appear to be tendencies which have some sort of pattern. I suggest that the relevance for educationists lies in these particular fields, where you can see a pattern and make tentative predictions about the direction of change and the repercussions likely if change goes in that direction. Then you have some sort of guidance for the kind of educational ways in which you can meet the future.

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5. The status of social principles and objectives in a changing society

R. S. Peters, B.A., Ph.D.
Professor of Philosophy of Education, University of London Institute of Education

Introductory

Social change is not a phenomenon peculiar to the 1960s. Compared with the far-reaching changes that came about during the Industrial Revolution, when a predominantly agricultural population began to move into the growing towns, the social changes that are now taking place are of only secondary significance.

What is new is not the advent of social change but the more widespread consciousness of what is happening. The growth of sociology is to a large extent responsible for this. It has drawn our attention to phenomena such as class and change in the same way as Freudian psychology has focussed attention on sex - sometimes with equally unfortunate results!

One such unfortunate result might be a tendency to discard or neglect things of great value because we are led to think that they are on the way out anyway. There is, as you are well aware, a long-standing argument in social theory about the part played by human decision and foresight in shaping events. I am one of those who think it can be very large. I also think that one of the many obstacles to it is the widespread belief that our destiny is 'determined' - whatever that means. In this particular sphere of social change, the danger is that things may in fact come about because our morale is undermined by the suggestion that they are going to come about whatever we may think or decide.

1. The modern rejection of absolutes

My interest in sociology was first aroused by the work done by what might be called the British school of sociology on comparative morals and the history and origins of moral ideas. I refer to the work of people like Hobhouse, Westermarck and Ginsberg, which receives altogether too little recognition in these days. The idea that particularly appealed to me in Hobhouse and Ginsberg was that of the emergence of rational morality out of a great variety of customary moralities and religiously sanctioned taboos.

(a) The emergence of rational morality

Just as what we now understand as science gradually emerged from a most bizarre amalgam of mythology and metaphysics, so morality as a distinct form of thought and behaviour gradually emerged from a primordial matrix of custom, taboo and primitive law. Within both science and morality a crucial distinction has to be made between the form of thought and its particular content. This is very important in the contexts both of change and relativism, and of preparing people for a situation of change. By a form of thought I mean the sort of principles that a scientist adopts when he talks to his colleagues or when he tests assumptions. He is committed to the principle that he listens

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to what other people say; he is committed to testing hypotheses by observation; he is committed to not cooking the evidence. These are the principles underlying scientific method to which I would say the scientist is committed absolutely. But there is also the content of science, the particular generalisations established in this way, for instance the gravitation law, Ohm's law, or the law of supply and demand. A similar distinction can be made in morality between fundamental or procedural principles such as those of fairness, freedom, considering people's interests, and respect for persons, and particular rules such as those about sex, marriage or property which can be justified by the underlying form of thought, by appeal to the fundamental principles. For instance, when we discuss sexual morality we bring to bear certain principles such as respect for persons, consideration of people's interests, freedom, and so on. We decide what ought to be done about particular problems in the light of considerations which fall under these fundamental procedural principles. In both cases the principles, characterising the form of thought - what I call the fundamental or procedural principles - are ultimately connected with reason - what Kant called theoretical and practical reason. So when I referred to the sociological theory of Hobhouse and Ginsberg, which first attracted me, what I was referring to was the gradual emergence of a distinctive way of thinking in accordance with fundamental principles, ultimately connected with the use of reason.

Once we have made this sort of distinction, what is to be said about the claims often made by those who are impressed by anthropological and sociological studies that there are no absolutes? It depends very much on that they mean by this claim.

(b) Absolute as non-relative

They can mean 'absolute' as opposed to 'relative' or related to a particular culture There are the usual arguments about the relativity of particular rules in this sense and the failure of many in the world to place much store by a principle like that of fairness. There is a lack of consensus. For example: in parts of Africa they have many wives; in Western Europe only one; in the U.S.A. only one at a time. Therefore all morals are relative. But does this follow? Science would be in a poor plight if it depended on universal consensus. Most people in the world do not think this way and never have. Does this affect either Newton's laws or - more important - the rational procedures by means of which they have been tested? What does it matter if there are some people in the Pacific who do not think it important to be fair? They don't do geometry either or test their assumptions by experiment.

Once the form of thought - be it science or morality - has developed, a certain kind of autonomy and absoluteness goes with it. A man who thinks rationally in these spheres cannot give up the law of non-contradiction and many other principles which are presupposed in the general attempt to decide matters on the basis of reason. A rational man can no more give up, in the moral sphere, the principle that he should consider people's interests than he can, in the scientific sphere, give up the principle that he should decide between alternative hypotheses in the light of the observational evidence. But a degree of absoluteness at this level is compatible with a vast amount of change and relativity at lower levels. The history of science is the history of assumptions that have either been discarded or found to be valid only under certain limited conditions. But what have not been discarded are the principles of procedure by reference to which assumptions have been accepted or rejected. Similarly with morality: a certain degree of absoluteness at the level of fundamental principles is quite compatible with change and 'relativity' at a lower level.

I have heard it argued - I think somewhat implausibly - that procedural principles such as those of fairness, freedom and the consideration of interests emerged into

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prominence in the 19th century when 'moral consensus' broke down with the emergence of the proletariat, and that they are a peculiar prerogative of middle-class compromisers! To which I would reply that culture-clashes are one of the most potent occasions for the emergence of science and morality generally; for it is under conditions such as these that men are thrown back on fundamental principles in their endeavour to reach truth about such matters. These principles are those presupposed in the search for truth in its various forms. So it is not surprising that at times when there are clashes between view points, the principles presupposed in the search for truth should become prominent. The tyranny of tradition is challenged. And if anyone wishes to honour the middle-class with the monopoly of such principles all I can say is 'Thank God for the middle-class! They do not get many bouquets these days!' The question, too, of the origin of such principles becomes of subsidiary importance if a case can be sustained for their justification. I have heard it suggested similarly that Galileo's interest in motion and his postulation of the law of inertia were connected with the increase in economic and social mobility at that time! So what? If there are grounds for thinking that assumptions are justified or have grounds, what do revelations about their causes or origins show? After all they must have come into the world somehow; they do not just appear miraculously from the head of Zeus.

Questions can of course be raised about the justification of fundamental principles such as fairness. So far I have presented them as those principles to which rational people must appeal in order to justify lower-order principles such as those prohibiting theft. But what of these fundamental principles themselves, some of which are presupposed by science as well as by morality? As I have recently published a book in which a justification of such principles is attempted, (1) and as the three years which it took to write it were but the culmination of about ten years' previous probing and puzzlement, I hope you will excuse me if I let that pass for the moment. Suffice it to say that I think that such principles can be justified. If you are incredulous - as many seem to be nowadays - I can do nothing more at this juncture than refer you to the arguments in my Ethics and Education. They attempt to show that such principles are presupposed in the pursuit of truth in the practical sphere. They are presuppositions of asking the question, 'What ought I to do?', as a serious question.

So far I have, perhaps somewhat misleadingly, made a contrast between fundamental or procedural principles characterising a form of thought such as science and morality, which have a degree of absoluteness attaching to them, and lower-order principles and assumptions which are more relative and alterable. But this contrast, in respect at least of relativity, is rather too stark. For in between come many well-established rules and assumptions. Consider, for instance, the gravitation law or a generalisation like 'iron expands when heated'. These laws hold under a wide range of conditions - indeed under most conditions in which we are likely to confront the phenomena in question. They form part of a well-established content built up by those working in accordance with the fundamental principle of scientific thought. In a similar way there are general rules relating to property, contracts, the care of children, etc. which form a well-established corpus of what J. S. Mill called 'secondary principles' of morality. It is difficult to imagine how a society could survive without such a minimum corpus of 'basic rules'. They form the established content of our moral code which can be justified by reference to fundamental principles under most conditions. One of the things which sociologists like Westermarck and Ginsberg did was to demonstrate the widespread prevalence of such rules in the codes of different peoples. Ginsberg maintained that peoples differ mainly in the weight attached to different rules in such codes and in their estimates of

(1) R. S. Peters, Ethics and Education (Allen & Unwin, 1966), especially chapters 3-8.

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the people to whom they thought these rules applied - in their answer, that is, to the question 'Who is my neighbour?'

Such basic rules are of crucial importance not only for stability and predictability in societies but also in the sphere of education. The evidence seems to show that it is only gradually that children come to adopt a rational code. The appeal to principles is impossible for them under a certain age, and they cannot grasp the point of such principles unless they are first initiated into a body of rules which we have to have principles to justify. So they must be initiated into this body of what has been established in a manner which does not incapacitate them for a more rational adherence to a code later on. The palace of Reason has to be entered by the courtyard of Habit and Tradition. This paradox, which I have elsewhere (1) referred to as 'the paradox of moral education', is really the paradox of all education. For, to take the parallel of science again, the procedures of science can only be picked up in relation to the body of scientific knowledge that has been established by means of them. Hence the ludicrousness of the assumption that children could learn to think scientifically if they are just left to explore the world and discover things for themselves. In the light of such psychological evidence about the slow dawning of reason in its various forms - scientific, mathematical, moral, aesthetic, historical and perhaps religious as well - the importance of a solid body of well-established content is paramount. For it should be in relation to this - not in relation to idiosyncratic whims or fastidious fashions - that the various forms of rationality should be developed.

The upshot of this is that when the question of relativity or of changing moral standards is raised, people should be asked rather sharply what level they are talking about.

Are they suggesting that fundamental principles such as fairness, freedom, consideration for people's interests and respect for persons are 'relative' or in process of being abandoned? Are they suggesting that basic rules such as those relating to property, the keeping of contracts, and the care of children are no longer necessary or are in process of being discarded? Or are they pre-occupied with detailed questions about sexual morality, gambling, etc., which are obviously more contingent and debatable?

There are, of course, important factual questions about the spread of this more rational morality, about the prevalence of departures from basic rules (of theft, fraud, lying, etc.) and about actual discrepancies in practices at a more contingent level. These are sociological questions. The answers to them, however, should not distract us from the philosophical questions or blind us to the possibility that some rules may be obviously justifiable whereas others are much more disputable. Is anyone going to dispute, for instance, that we ought to be fair or to respect persons? Is anyone going to dispute seriously that lying and breaking promises are in general wrong? Is anyone, on the other hand, going to maintain that it is altogether obvious that abortion is justifiable or that young people should not live together before they are married? Just because some moral rules are not altogether perspicuous it does not follow that all morality is in a similar condition of uncertainty. My impression is that too many people are bemused by uncertainty about sex into thinking that all morality is in a similar state. This is surely nonsense - and dangerous nonsense at that.

(c) Absolute as non prima facie

I now want to talk about another important contrast: between what is absolute and what might be called 'prima facie'. These two are often confused and they generate a lot

(1) See R. S. Peters, 'The paradox of moral education', in W. R. Niblett (ed.) Moral Education in a Changing Society (Faber, 1963).

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of rather muddled thinking. Often those who are opposed to 'absolute' principles have in mind another type of consideration which is much more pertinent. They maintain that principles or basic rules cannot be 'absolute' because there are circumstances in which they have to be bent a bit. What about 'white lies' for instance? What about breaking a promise to save someone else's life? Do not circumstances alter cases?

Of course, they do - provided that the circumstances fall under some other principle. All principles or rules are subject to an 'other things being equal' clause. And things are not equal if another principle is relevant to the situation. If there is more than one fundamental principle, it must sometimes be the case that there is a conflict. A person has to act in such cases and whatever he does one of his principles is infringed. A 'white lie' is not one told for gain or glory. It is one told when telling the truth might, for instance, cause untold suffering. A choice has to be made between telling the truth and causing great suffering. One principle has to be infringed. Which is it to be? But just because there are some cases like this where a principle has to be infringed, nothing follows about the general duties involved. The general duty to tell the truth is not undermined by the fact that on rare occasions other duties are more urgent.

There are, for instance, many whose life has been haunted by the necessity of making such agonising choices between duties. They tend, therefore, to think of all morality in terms of individual decision and choice. This is surely an exaggerated and overdramatic view of how we are placed. Such conflicts and agonies could not arise unless we had first come to realise that certain duties were incumbent on us. And we could not sensibly be said to 'choose' between alternatives unless we first had principles which made alternatives morally relevant. And it is nonsense to say that as children we 'choose' or decide for ourselves that things like lying or breaking promises are wrong.

Talk of individual decision and of 'commitment' is, of course, the obverse side of the acceptance of relativism. For if you do not believe that there is any possibility of people making mistakes about moral matters you either shrug your shoulders and stick to the tradition in which you have been brought up, or you make a fuss about individual choice. And people draw attention to individual choice more or less apologetically. Individual choice, in my view, is very important in the development of character and in the application of rules to particular cases - either when there is a clash between rules or when there is a more straightforward clash between duty and inclination. But it should not be extended to cover the whole area of morals - especially the acceptance of general principles and basic rules. How many of us have ever 'decided' that lying is wrong or have 'chosen' not to murder our neighbours?

2. Absolutism in the sphere of the curriculum

The same sort of points need to be made in relation to those worthwhile activities that form part of the heritage of civilisation handed on in the curriculum of schools. Again, I think that a case can be made against relativism or treating such activities as matters of individual taste. I think that science and art just are more worthwhile activities than Bingo and opium-eating and I think that arguments can be adduced to show why. And, if no arguments can be adduced, why do we spend so much time and money handing them on to a new generation? And by arguments I do not mean just those showing that they are some 'use' in any ordinary sense of 'use'. That is not the most fundamental justification for their place in the curriculum. Indeed, if it were, history, literature, music, and pure mathematics would be out for a start. But supposing arguments can be produced to show that a class of activities is more worthwhile than another class, this does not show that grading is possible within the class of what is worthwhile. It does not show, for instance, that history is any more or any less worthwhile than literature, or

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engineering than agriculture. What it does do is to show the sphere within which talk of individual choice and 'the self-realisation of the individual' has application.

Within this sphere of what is worthwhile there is any amount of room for individual choice and experimentation. A good school will be one which encourages this. But those who talk of the curriculum being based on the 'interests or needs of the child' or of it being designed to permit 'individual self-realisation' speak in a mystical way of potentialities within a child which are simply waiting to unfold. I never understand what they are talking about except in relation to some established body of on-going activities, skills, and modes of awareness that are handed down from generation to generation.

In relation both to moral rules and to worthwhile activities our society is a differentiated one. At a certain level there is plenty of scope for individual and group differences. Our problem as educators is to be clear about the common core and to use this to help children to think, act, and experience in these differentiated ways and not just to assimilate an established content. When they are beginning to get inside some of these forms of skill, thought and awareness they will begin to be in a position to know for which ones they have some aptitude. It is difficult to understand what 'choice' means for people who have no understanding of the alternatives between which they are supposed to be choosing.

The same sort of point needs to be made about the historical, aesthetic, mathematical and philosophical forms of awareness as about the moral and scientific. In these forms of thought, distinctive types of truth-criteria and methods of testing have developed which have a certain degree of absoluteness quite compatible with a gradually evolving content. Presumably the endeavour of the educator is to develop these forms of awareness in children by means of the particular content available. His hope is that a few will master the form of thought so that they will eventually challenge the established content and change it. The over-all endeavour of educators to develop these differentiated forms of awareness should not be muddled up with talk about school subjects or the 'integration' of subjects in a curriculum. This is an amalgam of highly contingent questions about the best ways to get children going at different stages. It affects not at all the underlying aim of the development of rationality in its different forms, and the general ideals of the democratic man to which, presumably we all subscribe. What, then, is this ideal?

3. The ideal of the democratic man

Plato caricatured the democratic man as one who tries now this and now that as the fancy takes him, who never does anything with any accuracy, thoroughness, or precision, and never achieves a sense of mastery in anything. He is, to use Whitehead's memorable distinction, all romance and no precision. Liberty for him consists in doing what he likes and equality in the belief that he is as good as anyone else at anything.

But what conception of the democratic man would we substitute for Plato's caricature? What general objectives have we for children as citizens of a democracy?

As I understand it, democracy as a system of government has always emerged as an institutional attempt to put a halter on any form of arbitrary rule. It is the institutional embodiment of the determination to settle things by reason rather than by arbitrary fiat, and of the belief that political matters are fundamentally moral ones and that moral insight is not the prerogative of any elite. It is an attempt to provide institutions which make concrete provision for a way of life in which the principles of liberty, fairness, the consideration of interests and respect for persons are paramount. These principles provide the interpersonal framework within which individuals can pursue the variety of individual and corporate interests which are thought to be worthwhile. Of

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course many will pursue interests that are not particularly worthwhile, and the principle of liberty would demand that they be allowed to do this, provided that they do no harm to others. But if some things are worthwhile and others not, it must be the duty of any educator to introduce children to those things which are, in the hope that they will gradually come to devote themselves to them. As there are many things which come within this category, individuals must be encouraged and trained to find out for themselves the ones to which they are particularly suited. It is to be hoped, too, that they will not develop in too one-sided a way. The 'happy versatility' of Pericles' funeral oration is perhaps an unattainable ideal with the modern proliferation of specialisms. But at least a more negative version of the Athenian ideal holds - that people should not be brought up on a too one-sided diet. Education, as I understand it, is incompatible with narrow specialisation. It is equally incompatible with Plato's parody of the democratic man who is prepared to chance his arm at anything with a full understanding and mastery of nothing.

4. Social change and the ideal of the democratic man

My intention so far has been to build up towards an ideal of the democratic man as a person committed to the development of reason in its different forms. By this I mean a person who has developed to a certain extent the different forms of thought and awareness - scientific, mathematical, historical, aesthetic, moral, and perhaps religious - in which reason is articulated and who is committed to conducting his pursuit of personal good within a framework of interpersonal niles which can be justified by the fundamental principles of morality.

Should there then be any need to modify this ideal much as society changes? I cannot see why. I can see that the particular content of science, of history, of art, of literature, of morality will change. Indeed I hope it will. For if it does not we will not be training people in those fundamental procedures underlying forms of thought and awareness which permit them to challenge and modify the established content into which they have been initiated. The ideal of the democratic man is not that of a man who subscribes to any particular dogmas; it is rather of one who has been trained to discriminate and judge things for himself. He has learnt not what to think or feel but how to think and feel in ways that are relevant and appropriate to the different contexts in which he is placed. But of course the learning how is inseparable from the learning what in the different realms of established content.

Why, then, all this fuss about changing objectives, especially in the realm of education? Not, I would suggest, because any new ideal is emerging, but because we are at last attempting to make a well established one possible for all citizens, and the actual implications of this are giving us pause - to put it mildly. Let us hope that we do not find it so incredibly difficult that we lapse back into some pessimistic position and begin to think of two cultures-that pertaining to ourselves and that pertaining to 'the folk'.

What then, in the areas of change, are the particular points of stress with which we find it difficult to cope, and what are the general educational implications?

(a) The development of morality itself

There is, first of all, the development of morality itself in the sense in which I have outlined it, and the consequent moralisation of institutions and personal relationships. In the old days, when people grew up with a predominantly customary code or within an established religion, most facets of their lives were taken care of. This is particularly obvious in the sphere of an institution like marriage in which personal and institutional relationships are inextricably bound together. There is a sense in which every couple

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nowadays have to make their own marriage. This is much more exciting but much more taxing. The increasing use of the state, too, to promote moral ends poses all sorts of problems to do with the place of individual initiative and responsibility.

(b) Changes in the content of people's interests

The modern welfare state introduces a crucial point about the way in which social change affects our democratic objectives. It is not that we have given up the time-honoured principle of considering people's interests. Indeed with the spread of morality we have become much more conscious of it and have extended it to cover many to whom it was not previously applied - children at work, the insane, and criminals, for instance. What is happening is that, with changes in society and with our developing knowledge, our understanding of what is in people's interest becomes altered. At the level of sheer physical suffering and deprivation it has never been difficult to apply this principle. But when we get beyond this basic level what sorts of consideration count? For people's wants change as their social conditions change. In California, ownership of a TV set is now regarded as a 'basic need' in the sense that creditors cannot deprive a person of this extension of himself if he goes bankrupt. Presumably the notion is that he would suffer terrible deprivation if this sort of want could no longer be realised. Where then do we draw the line in our notion of 'welfare'? And should we, in public policy, be concerned with what people actually want or with what is in their interest, did they but know it? The controversy about subsidising the Arts Council raises this sort of problem.

(c) Development of empirical knowledge relevant to moral issues

There is, too, another aspect of this problem which I have written about elsewhere (1) which concerns the widening importance of empirical knowledge in making moral judgments. The old sort of complaint used to be that man is getting cleverer with the development of science, but his morality is not keeping pace with his cleverness. I advanced the opposite thesis - that man is really becoming moral at last but is not clever enough to keep up with it. The 20th century is littered with cases of unfortunate consequences of well-meaning reforms - the 1944 Act, for instance. The implication is that we should develop social science in a much more concrete way so that we can foresee some of the consequences and not be too ham-handed in implementing our moral convictions. The comprehensive school debate is a good case in point. It is, of course, partly complicated by being a realm (like that dealt with by Existentialists) where moral principles conflict. But it is also complicated by the fact that almost nothing of a detailed nature is known about what goes on in such schools and what the effect on pupils might be of different ways of organising them. It does the Secretary of State credit that, having had to make so many crucial decisions on the basis of almost no concrete evidence whatever, he is determined that he will not leave his successors in a similar plight.

A whole lecture could be devoted to this topic alone. I hope I have said enough to indicate the realm of problems I have in mind. The educational implications are obvious enough - that the school should supplement the home in doing something systematic about moral education. This means not simply exploring with adolescents the complicated questions of conduct and personal relationships within a more fluid institutional structure. It also means introducing them to the elements of sociology, economics and psychology so that they will begin to acquire a more informed and objective basis on which to make judgments about public policy.

This more rational approach to moral education accords well with the preparedness of young people to ask seriously what all this morality business adds up to as far as they

(1) R. S. Peters, Authority, Responsibility and Education (Allen & Unwin, 1959), chapter 11.

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are concerned. They want arguments, not preaching. Like most of us they are rightly unwilling to accept practices simply because they are traditional. This brings me to the next crucial area of social change - that of the attitude of authority.

(d) The changing attitude to authority

There has been, in our society, a healthy reaction (from the point of view of a rational democratic man) against the traditional concept of authority which gave an unlimited prerogative to men over women, to parents over children, to employers over employees. The rights connected with such statuses were often exercised in a brutal and insensitive way - and, anyway, the concept itself was scarcely consistent with a due regard for human dignity. But in revolting against this patriarchal type of authority we have often tended to go too far and to conclude that there is no place for authority at all - save, of course, in the sphere of law and state action. This is, however, an undiscriminating, all-or-none type of reaction, which is fostered by the development of the teenage culture. In the school, in the home, and in the office or factory, as well as in the state, there is an obvious place for authority, provided that it is rationalised and its exercise carefully related to the task in hand and to individual differences between the persons who are being dealt with. We must not confuse being in authority or being an authority with being authoritarian.

Authority is, of course, crucial in education; for it is authority that bridges the gap between the generations. Unless there is identification with those who are regarded as authorities, knowledge can only be handed on by coercion or by bribery. It would be nice, of course, if children came to school glistening with enthusiasm and eager to absorb their cultural heritage. But unfortunately few of them do. In the old days children tended to be coerced into learning things that were difficult. This tended to bring about either alienation from the ideals of the school or a craven sort of conformity. Progressives, in revolt against this, staked everything on the appeal to children's wants and interests - as if their wants were static features of their form of life. This type of appeal is very attractive in modern industrial societies in which there is a regrettable tendency to gear too much to the wants of consumers. But what tends to be forgotten in all this is the extreme plasticity of children's wants and the enormous part played by identification with others. This is relevant both to the formation of wants and to the taking in of standards to control and canalise them. This is where authority comes in - as an intermediary between bribery and coercion. It should not, of course, be used to keep children in subservience, but to bring about by identification commitment to the worthwhile things in a society which have to be transmitted. A child may become interested in learning something like metalwork because he admires his teacher; he may take into himself the code of a beloved parent. But unless he comes to sense what there is in the cherished pursuit, unless he comes to feel from the inside the rightness of a course of action, the teacher and parent have failed in their function. For their task is to use their authority so that another generation will gradually get on the inside of a form of life and see what there is in it for themselves. They must work hard, in other words, to do themselves out of a job.

I would regard the proper exercise of authority and the development amongst adolescents of a rational attitude to authority as one of the most crucial functions of a teacher in a secondary school. I am not chancing my arm on any generalisations about the extent to which adolescents have or have not a certain type of attitude to authority nowadays; that is a sociological question on which it would be rash to pronounce. I am only drawing attention to its importance in a democratic society.

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(e) Unintended consequences of freedom

So much for authority: now a little about freedom. Perhaps it is a bit odd to take the matter of our attitude to authority before what is, morally speaking, a more fundamental and palatable subject - the increasing reality of the freedom of the individual in respect of his areas of discretion. I think, however, that we think too little of the problems involved in preparing people to face such freedom. It is one thing to remove restraints of a formal sort on people's wants and decisions; it is quite another matter to equip them to stand squarely on their own feet and to behave autonomously.

Sociologists such as Eric Fromm have written much (1) about the psychological strains inherent in increasing the areas of discretion of the individual. But what do we know about training children to stand this thoroughly desirable strain? Certainly we know that early permissiveness or allowing children to do what they want has a disastrous effect. But what do we know positively about the type of training that tends to encourage that autonomy which is so essential in our type of society? Are we mindful enough of some of the unintended consequences of our well-meaning reforms? For instance, some observers' accounts of what actually goes on in the 'free day' of some primary schools makes me wonder whether we are not encouraging Plato's caricature of the democratic man who does what he pleases all right, but does nothing with any thoroughness or determination. Are there going to be some unfortunate unintended consequences of this well-meaning attempt to tackle problems of learning?

(f) Unintended consequences of fairness

I pass now from a discussion of freedom to equality. At a time when controversy is raging about the comprehensive school it would be somewhat otiose to discourse at length on the importance now accorded to equality - another classic objective of rational man. The problem, of course, is to give concrete implementation to a principle that has been for a long time accepted. Here again we get the same sort of problem as that mentioned in the context of the consideration of interests. What does it actually mean under modern conditions? And what facts are relevant to its implementation?

I do not take the view shared by many nowadays that those who framed the 1944 Act were Platonists attempting to hatch an elitist system in which the gold, the silver and the iron could be despatched to their appropriate destinations. I think that they attempted to devise with limited resources and existing buildings a fair system of secondary education for all; and they used a perfectly rational interpretation of the principle of 'fairness'. Unfortunately, like many well-meaning people, they were unable to foresee the unintended consequences of their actions. The system has not turned out in practice to work very fairly for the individual. And the nation has suffered through the wastage of a lot of its potential of skilled manpower. But the problem is still with us of devising a system or systems of secondary education which really give the individual a chance to go as far as he can in acquiring his or her cultural heritage and which also, from the point of view of the nation, make the best use possible, on limited resources, of its potential of skill, knowledge and initiative. This is going to be extremely difficult to contrive in practice. Somehow a better deal has to be provided for the majority without landing ourselves with the mammoth mediocrity of the American High School. The educational implications of this are mainly in the field of school organisation.

There is also the necessity, (crucial to any realistic attempt at getting rid of the widespread feeling of rejection) of giving appropriate recognition in the school to many different avenues of achievement. Although practical activities such as cooking have

(1) See E. Fromm, The Fear of Freedom (Routledge, 1942).

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more value if they are informed by theoretical understanding, they also have value in a different dimension if they are done with skill and sensitivity and for the delight that is in them. What we have to do in our society is to get rid of the lingering contempt for the practical. An engineer can be a highly educated man. Whether he is or not depends partly on how he views his engineering and how he engages in it, partly on what else he values and understands apart from engineering. Socrates was, after all, a stonemason and Spinoza polished lenses to earn his living.

(g) Changes in the character of work and time spent on it

Without doubt one of the most far-reaching changes in this century has been the change in the amount of time spent on work and the changes in the nature of work. There are now few occupations where much of a specific nature can be done at school. Firms increasingly prefer to do this sort of thing themselves and demand a level of general education from the schools rather than training in particular skills. The trouble is that they are coming increasingly to equate this with 'O' levels and 'A' levels. How many boys, who are good with their hands, when seeking apprenticeships, have been confronted with the question 'Have you got 'O' level physics, maths, and English language?' This situation, of course, gives the school a great opportunity for education; but it also is fraught with the danger that the school will become increasingly an agency for providing paper qualifications required by employers. What choice has the teacher as an educator got in the face of this growing demand for the appropriate pieces of paper?

This raises, of course, vast issues to do with the role of examinations which will no doubt be discussed later. It also raises the whole question of the appropriate attitude to work in a highly industrialised society. Here again we are not confronted with the necessity of formulating new objectives. For this problem has been with us since the Industrial Revolution. It is rather the necessity of facing this squarely now that we are taking seriously the problems of educating the whole nation, as distinct from educating some and providing the rest with a training in useful skills and appropriate 'socialisation'.

The decreasing time spent on work and the increasing length of life raises, of course, the problem of educating people to make use of their leisure. This, again, is only an accentuation of a situation that has been with us a long time. I cannot see that it raises any question of new objectives which are of particular relevance to education. For I have always regarded the usual sorts of contrasts between education and life, and between education for work and for leisure as singularly ill-conceived. My own view is that an educated person is one who both continues to engage in certain types of pursuits and modes of conduct with certain types of attitude, whether at work or at leisure, and whose general conduct of life, both at work, and at leisure is transformed by the forms of understanding and sensitivity that he brings to them. But if I started on this theme I would be launching into the philosophy of education and, though that is at the moment my main professional pre-occupation, I have not been, as the Americans say 'hired' to discourse to you about such matters this afternoon.

(h) The increasing importance of science and the problem of specialisation

In relation both to the preparation for work and leisure and to the general outlook of an educated person it is a common place to remark that science has become of increasing importance. This, like the spread of morality, is one of the most moment us developments of the rational attitude, of the search for truth in one of its different forms.

I have already touched on the necessity of developing scientific understanding to safeguard us against the too ham-handed implication of our moral and political con-

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victions. It should, however, be stressed that science is only one particular form of rational understanding. It has important affinities with others such as the historical, moral, mathematical and philosophical. But it also differs in very important respects. The increased importance placed on science raises the problem of specialisation and of 'integrating the curriculum'. All this is dealt with later in the conference. But please let us never forget that 'integration' presupposes 'differentiation' and that science is science and not a form of aesthetic exploration and that morality is distinct from both science and literary appreciation in spite of important links between them which Snow and Leavis may discern. One hears well meaning and woolly minded educators complain that the world is all one and that we should not cut it up into bits. This usually goes hand in hand with an attack on school 'subjects' which are systematically confused with the fundamental forms of understanding and awareness. The brutal fact of the matter is that the mind of man has developed by differentiating out these distinctive forms of understanding and awareness. The problem of the curriculum builder in the secondary school is to motivate children towards their disciplined development in a way that is not too one sided. This means both initiating children into the different forms of understanding and arranging realistically for them to supplement each other in appropriate ways. No service at all will be done to the cause of education by attempting to return to a state of undifferentiated innocence when our forefathers were able, because of their ignorance, to see the world 'whole'.

5. Fraternity - the forgotten ideal of the French Revolution

I have so far defended the view that there are really no brand new objectives which are relevant to education. There are different emphases, of course, within the objectives encompassed by the ideal of the democratic man; and there are problems of applying and implementing them under modern conditions. But there is little that thinkers such as J. S. Mill or Herbert Spencer would find surprising in what I have been saying. Our problem is to implement such an ideal in relation to the education of the whole nation.

There is, however, one aspect of this ideal which is too little noticed and which might act to bind together some of the others. I refer to fraternity, the forgotten ideal of the French Revolution. Fraternity I take to be the feeling of kinship that one has with others with whom one is linked by some important similarity. It has obvious application amongst members of the same family or in a small city state where a common life can palpably be shared. I think myself that Marxism has derived much of its dynamic from fraternity; for it appeals everywhere to those who regard themselves as similar in respect of being exploited or oppressed. It provides the dynamic, too, for various forms of nationalism when people feel themselves fellow sufferers - for instance in relation to colonial oppression. Indeed it is in some ways a very dangerous feeling; for it can be attached to all sorts of imagined similarities - the possession of Aryan blood, for instance.

We are a highly individualistic nation. Fairness, liberty, respect for persons, and the consideration of interests are part of our way of life. But fraternity is not something that moves us much. Even the Labour Party have never been able to convert their followers to be moved by such considerations. Witness Sir Stafford Cripps' abortive attempt to instil a new spirit into industry. It was not on, anyway, without a radical reorganisation of industry and economic life. Our class structure militates against such a feeling becoming at all widespread. The differences between us in respect of our origins and backgrounds make it difficult for us to develop any strong feelings of kinship towards those with whom we work or towards those who might join with us in various forms of voluntary activity. The country presents only too often Plato's caricature of the democratic man whose motto is 'I'm all right, Jack'. Equality of opportunity is gazed at

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through the spectacles of envy, and education is regarded as one of the main ways of getting a good start in the rat-race. As a matter of fact, it would be better if it really was a race instead of a somewhat nonchalant amble.

It certainly is impossible to recapture in a large-scale industrial society the joy which the Athenians felt in participating in their common life. But is it impossible to recapture this at the functional level of the factory and the office? There is little in my life that I have found more permanently satisfying than working with others on some enterprise of interest and importance. This feeling of fraternity, as far as I am concerned, extends even to sitting on committees. I groan about them from time to time but really I love them. They permit the feeling of participation in a common life; the sense of To Koinon which meant so much to the Athenians. By working with other more or less rational men and women one feels that one is doing something to link the past with the future and to perpetuate the thin crust of rationality on the face of the earth. Of course particular objectives change. One knows that the type of solution adopted will, in its turn, lead to new problems. But that is how things are. In social life there is no secure resting place, no port to arrive at. The joy consists in travelling with others. Indeed what would count as arriving? Is the joy I feel in participation just a private idiosyncrasy? Or is it something that many more would delight in too, if their work conditions gave them the chance?

Similarly at the national level I get sick and tired of all those nostalgic laments for our imperial past and progressive panaceas for the future. Is it not time that we began to take a genuine pride in the democratic institutions that we have done so much to develop in the world? There is nothing that makes me more patriotic than to go abroad and to hear the sort of things that are now said about this country. Yet what nation has done more than ours to develop a system of government which a rational man can accept and in whose institutions he can genuinely participate at all sorts of different levels? But pride is one thing and real active participation is quite another.

It may be said that the new comprehensive schools can do much to break down the barriers between us and encourage a more fraternal attitude to work and more active participation in local activities. I wonder about this. We will have to see. It is a question of how much the school can do in the face of other pressures and attachments. My guess is that in this matter we have to do a lot about convincing ourselves before we can do much about convincing our children.

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6. The schools' response

Miss G. O. Lack, M.A.
Headmistress, Rosebery County Grammar School for Girls, Epsom

So far we have been given a very clear picture of the problems that the schools have to face in a time of rapid social and economic change. In this paper we are considering the responses of the schools to these problems.

The speed with which the many changes are taking place naturally leaves us confused and uncertain. The pattern of society from which most schools draw their children is constantly changing; moral and religious values on which we have based much of our community life are being questioned; our educational beliefs and methods, our assumptions about the psychology of those whom we teach, our traditional curriculum, and our examination system, are all, quite rightly, being subjected to criticism and change. Nor can we ignore or forget secondary reorganisation: we cannot even be sure of remaining the schools we are, from one month to another.

Obviously, in the face of changes such as these, simply because we are so busy trying to keep up with them that we have not time to think, there is a great danger that we shall take the easy ways out. We shall either cling to our well tried systems and methods as long as possible, refusing to admit the need for change until it is forced on us, or we shall try to keep up superficially with what is fashionable in educational gimmicks, merely because they are new and fashionable, without really evaluating them.

Something much more radical than this is needed. If we are to make an adequate response to these vast changes that we are seeing all around us we cannot afford to waste any more time on superficial experiments, but must get down to a consideration of the basic questions: 'What kind of a world is it into which our children are going?' and 'What are we doing to prepare them for it?'

The prospect before young people

Young people now face a world unlike any world into which other generations have been born. In the first place it is a tremendously exciting world with unbelievable opportunities opening out before them in every field of experience. The expansion of knowledge which is moving so fast that we think of it as 'an explosion' is accelerating daily, opening up unlimited possibilities for good and evil. This, to the young, is an extraordinarily moving challenge. They become aware that these things are happening now, in their life-time; that they necessarily must, whether they want to or not, become involved in them and take part in them, and that if they have the imagination and knowledge they can change the face of the world.

But, and this is a very important 'but', if this is the most exciting and challenging world into which children have ever been born, it is equally the most dangerous one, because unless human beings learn to live together, the unlimited powers of destruction

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and evil which this explosion of knowledge has unleashed will have their way. There will be no world for them to live in at all.

This fact, too, is only too apparent to the young, but, instead of presenting a challenge, to many of them it is an inhibiting force. The feeling of insecurity which comes from the world situation, from their anxiety about their own futures, and from their uncertainty about values - an uncertainty shared by the adults to whom they might have turned for help - produces the 'teenage world' which presents such problems for us at the present time. It is this insecurity which clearly accounts for the nature of the adolescent groups and gangs, for the rebellion against authority and discipline, and (to adapt the Biblical phrase) for the feeling 'Let us eat, drink, and be married, for tomorrow we die', which affects so many of them. This situation must not be ignored because of a feeling of hopelessness on our part. The danger is that we as adults subconsciously hope that we shall at least live out our own lives in peace of a kind. We tend to feel that there is nothing that any of us as individuals can do, and to look with a certain amount of discomfort at nuclear disarmament committees and marches, preferring to regard the leaders as cranks and fanatics. But this is not a possible attitude for the young. They cannot await the tide of events or ignore the challenge of the future. They have before them the choice that Moses once put before the Israelites. 'I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life' Deuteronomy XXX:19.

We in schools must recognise that for this generation a decision is inevitable. Ignoring the situation is surely to choose death.

It is then, these two facts - the extraordinarily exciting world, and the extraordinarily dangerous world, into which our children are going - that must be made the basis of our thinking when we are considering the task of the schools at the present time; and if we really face up to the challenge which they present, we shall have to do some very hard thinking about most aspects of the life of the school. Here we ought to be getting much more help from other countries because many of them, and especially the United States Of America, have been asking these questions for a very long time, and although we may not agree with all the answers they have given, we have a great deal to learn from what they have written about the curriculum, educational aims and teaching methods, and from some of the radical changes and experiments which they have not been afraid to make. What many of us would like at the present time is more opportunities of hearing about these experiments, and more possibilities of seeing for ourselves what is happening in the schools of other nations.

The need for a restatement of values

Most of us in facing this challenge begin, I expect, by reaffirming our basic values. In his 1966 Joseph Payne lectures, Mr. D. H. Morrell expressed a wish that we should form a society, like the Society for Broadening the Curriculum, for stopping people from merely 'nattering' about values. It is this association, if it existed, that we should wish to join. We must once again state clearly what values should underline the life of the school, and make these explicit not only to ourselves but to the whole school community.

I expect that we all should put first a genuine concern for others, and respect for the dignity of other human beings as human beings, regardless of their race, ability, wealth or personality. Whatever precise meaning we give to the gospel command 'Love your neighbour as yourself', we should all agree that this is the foundation on which any satisfactory community life should be built, and that it should underline our relationships with each other, the organisation and discipline of the school and its

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curriculum. It is the schools' response in these four spheres of school life that I am describing in the rest of the paper.

Relationships

Let us begin with relationships. We in the schools are re-thinking our relationships with the communities from which the children come. Most of us are aware that there must be a much closer partnership between parents and school, and that we are failing in our job if we do not make the partnership a real one, and do not make it clear to the children that home and school are working together. Whether this is done through parents' associations or through more informal contacts does not matter much, provided that the relationship is really there. For schools where contact is difficult, this may mean visiting homes; for others, frequent meetings and interviews may be sufficient; but the schools are becoming more and more aware that these difficulties I have been describing must be discussed with the parents, that the parents too must become aware of the urgency of these problems, and must share the responsibility for helping their children and the schools to solve them.

The relationships of our pupils with their local communities is also to be encouraged in every possible way. Already the work done by the young in helping the old and the ill through voluntary societies is proving of tremendous value both to those who are looked after and to those who are doing the jobs, and most schools are realising the need for finding ways of using the strength and willingness to help of even their more difficult members. We hope that local government officials will give every opportunity for work of this kind. If this kind of social work is integrated into the school curriculum as it should be, it can also serve as a necessary introduction to a realisation of the many evils of society, such as drugs, gambling, sexual immorality and crime, which the children inevitably must meet. It should also obviously lead to discussions of ways in which these evils can be overcome.

As the children move up the school, Voluntary Service Overseas, the Peace Corps, and other similar movements provide an outlet for those who begin to think internationally, and with greater precision, of how they can create the 'one world' which will give them a hope for the future. More and more of the older boys and girls are using the opportunities given by cheap foreign travel to get in touch with those of the same age abroad. But here again, in the senior school it is necessary that they should become aware of the hard facts of the international scene: racialism, nationalism, world poverty, the difficulties of conflicting ideologies and conflicting loyalties. They are quickly stirred by the challenge to a discussion of ways and means of attacking these problems and of taking their share in helping to solve them, in whatever direction their talents lie.

We have been speaking of relationships with the communities outside school, but the relationships within the school itself are even more important. Here there is no escape from the fact that much depends on the attitude of the Head. If the Head is autocratic, discourteous, and inconsiderate in his dealings with the staff or the children, the whole school is affected. The qualities that are demanded of him are more than most of us can provide, but I suppose that the most important one is a genuine belief in young people, a belief that all but the few - and they are usually those who are sick in mind or body and need special help - are fundamentally anxious to do the right thing, to do good provided that they can be helped to find out for themselves what it is. A story of Aesop illustrates the importance of this attitude towards people. He was asked by a traveller on his way from Argos to Athens what the people of Athens were like. 'Can you tell me what the people of Argos are like?' asked Aesop. 'They are thieves and robbers and thoroughly quarrelsome' was the reply. 'I am sorry to tell you', answered Aesop, 'that

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the people of Athens are just the same'. A second traveller came by and asked the same question. Again Aesop asked where he lived and what the people were like. 'I come from Argos', the man replied; 'the people there are friendly, honest and good neighbours'. 'I am happy to tell you', said Aesop, 'that you will find the people of Athens just the same'.

This belief in people also leads to the establishment of a staff community working on free and equal terms with the Head, because, for a Head working on these lines, once responsibility is given it is given in complete trust. Those taking responsibility are more likely to be equal to the work, and to enjoy it, if they feel that it is really theirs. Linked with this should be a determination on the Head's part not to demand that he should be told everything. Naturally, as a matter of courtesy, he hopes to be informed of what is going on at school, but the insistence that everything must be brought to his attention puts a very severe limitation on the freedom of the staff.

A courtesy which is extended to old and young, clever and stupid, co-operative and non-co-operative, is a second essential quality. This implies a determination to govern any tendency to bad temper or irritability and not to have personal reactions to disagreements about principles. Once irritability or temper has been vented on children or members of staff, it damages their self-respect - an almost unforgivable sin; they have lost their sense of security, and can never approach the Head with the same confidence or ease again.

Enough has been said to suggest that human relationships are the basis of the life of the school. If these are right at the top of the school, this makes it possible for the staff to have the same courteous, considerate and easy relationship with their pupils, and the senior girls with the younger ones, and the girls as a whole with those who work for them, including the canteen staff and cleaning staff.

Perhaps if we are considering the schools' response to social and economic change we should say a word about the changing pattern of the staff room. More and more schools are welcoming part-time and married women to their staffs. I say 'welcoming' with intention, because in spite of difficulties of timetabling, and of sharing fairly the responsibilities of pastoral care and out-of-school activities between full and part-time staff, these newcomers bring a fresh interest and life into the school, are often specially helpful with the adolescents, and of course help to remedy the desperate staff shortages in most subjects, This new development is undoubtedly a permanent one, and the more ways we can find of integrating these very valuable people fully into our staff rooms, the better.

The organisation and discipline of the school

The values of which we have been speaking must also underline the organisation and discipline of the school. We in the schools are realising that concentration on the able children in the community, and the domination of the curriculum by the examination system, are not in harmony with these ideals. More and more of us are trying to find methods, whether by reorganising schools on comprehensive lines, by getting rid of streaming, by setting, or by other means, of ensuring that the organisation of the school takes into account, not the desire to increase its reputation for examination successes whether at 11+, 12+, 16+ or 18+, but the welfare of each child whatever his or her abilities may be. We are experimenting with methods whereby children can move at their own pace in different subjects, with, as far as the Head's timetabling ingenuity can manage it, the timetable fitted to the child, not the child to the timetable.

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This, incidentally, means that, far from not recognising the differences between human beings, we should try to develop a more perceptive awareness of them. In our attempt to exert a universal benevolence, to make all men equal, to give everyone a chance, we are at the present time perhaps in danger of deliberately blurring these differences and making the old mistake of confusing equality with identity. Surely it is important that we teach children to give excellence of all kinds its due. We recognise in others musical and artistic gifts; equally both we and the children must be ready to recognise that some are more intellectually gifted than others, just as others are stronger physically, and some blessed with happier and easier personalities. As teachers we recognise that many of the children we teach are very much abler than we are, and that part of growing up is to recognise value where we see it, and to be humble in the face of gifts greater than our own. The attempt to blur differences is to deny values, to make it even harder for the young to distinguish what is good from what is less good, and what is worthwhile from what is less worthwhile. Let us rather pray with Thomas à Kempis that we should learn 'with true judgment to distinguish things that differ'.

We are also trying to see that these values we have been discussing underlie the discipline of our schools. This is no longer arbitrarily imposed from above nor thought of purely in relation to the school, but must make sense as much to the children as to the staff, and must appear to have relevance to their life outside school as well as within it. It should be an intelligent way of life planned by the members of the community in the best interests of all, but with authority and respect as part of the pattern. Here we try to work closely with the parents and ask them to help us, because the permissive society, from which many of our children come, can conflict with what we are trying to do in the schools. Personally, my own experience also leads me to believe that this way of life can be realised fully only in a community which is not too large for the members to know one another. When the school gets too big it is in danger of ceasing to be a genuine community and the best education must surely always be worked out in terms of community life.

Equally we try to find every way we can of giving responsibility. Within the school's community of mixed ages this is easy, because the older members enjoy working with the younger ones once they have tried it, and the younger ones enjoy it too. provided that the relationship is based on mutual respect of the kind described earlier. This is developed in terms of school societies, often run by the senior pupils themselves, 'houses', and the school council. And lastly the schools are trying to provide means whereby the energy and idealism of the young can be used to the full whether within the school or, as we have shown, in the local community, or most important of all in the choice of a career, where the deciding factor can be and should be, not primarily how to make more money, or how to get on in the world, but how best to use their talents and energies in the service of their fellow men. This is not merely a sentimental wish of the teacher; many of those leaving school are ready to accept this criterion, once they have considered it, because to them it makes sense.

The curriculum

Finally we come to the most controversial of all of all the issues arising as a result of social and economic change - the curriculum; and here there is no doubt again that some fundamental rethinking is needed. The pressure on the schools is tremendous and is growing daily. There is the pressure of this 'explosion' of knowledge that we have been talking about; in mathematics, new fields and new methods; in science, research which advances so quickly that we are aware of new facts and new discoveries becoming

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common knowledge before they have filtered back through the intricate channels of the examination system. For us in the schools there is also, unfortunately, all the dead wood which there has not been the time, nor always the inclination, to remove from the examination syllabuses.

Pressure comes from experiments such as the Nuffield projects, excellent in themselves, but demanding a bigger share of teaching time and money. But at what other subject's expense? Pressure comes from the demand for more languages. How is it that only English children can manage only one or two languages, and many barely one; when those in Denmark, Sweden, or Germany can manage several with comparative ease? Pressure comes from the need to give children work-experience or more contacts with the activities of the community in which they live. One can enumerate a dozen other claims for a place on the timetable - more creative work, more emphasis on, technical training, more social studies, car driving, homemaking, sex education, general studies.

How do we reconcile these rival claims and above all how do we meet the claims of an even wider curriculum, if we are tied to an increasingly elaborate and confusing examination system? There is no answer to these questions at the present time, nor unfortunately a sufficiently co-ordinated attempt to get to the root of the problems. Surely it is time that we moved away from orthodox subject teaching, with its content determined in a great measure by the demands of the Universities, and experimented with other and new approaches to the curriculum such as were discussed at the Conference on the New Curriculum held at York University this year. Most of us are experimenting in one way or another, but are aware that we are only scratching the surface. Perhaps the Schools Council will help us to dig more deeply.

One fact that is becoming obvious, however, is that whatever form the curriculum takes, it must be one that takes into account the world situation described at the beginning of this paper. This is what the young want, what they feel makes sense, and what they are prepared to remain at school for. We have had a remarkable example of this at my own school in the response to a General Studies course of this kind provided for the Sixth Form. We allowed a quarter of the timetable to it. A further quarter is spent on private study, and only roughly half, or two thirds for some students, on 'A' level work.

The course consists of an integrated series of lessons to which most of the departments contribute. It is placed firmly in the centre of the sixth form course with the 'A' level subjects linked to it as illustrations in depth of what is being discussed at the centre. We started with what we call the Philosophy lesson, as being the one in which the questions are asked: questions such as 'What do we know?' 'What can we believe?' 'Where do our loyalties lie?' 'Are moral values purely subjective?' This lesson does not attempt to provide a history of philosophy or to give answers, but to make the girls think, discuss, and read. Religious instruction is linked to it as our Western society's answer to the questions asked in the Philosophy Course. This implies that other societies give other answers, and leads naturally to some study of comparative religions. There is no attempt to suggest that Christianity is the only answer, but only that girls should be aware of what it teaches before accepting or rejecting it.

We next consider the girl as a member of society and add political philosophy and of course current events, and (because to understand our society it is necessary to be aware of its roots) a classical background lesson. The scientists come in with a discussion of scientific concepts and of the changing pattern of society caused by the extraordinary development of technology and scientific research. Mathematics plays its part, and the girls themselves asked for some economics.

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To give opportunities to a third area of human experience which is very important in most people's lives we bring in music and drama, art and literature; and finally, because communication with other people must play a big part in the lives of our sixth formers, we make available four beginners' courses in languages - in Italian, Spanish, German and Russian.

This builds up to about a quarter of the timetable, but although most of the courses consist of single lessons, they run for the full two years, and are designed not primarily to give information, but to make the girls think for themselves, to stir their imaginations, and to give them some understanding of the problems facing them as they go out into the world.

This is a 3-form entry maintained girls' school which, before we started the scheme, had the usual pattern of only about a quarter of the intake remaining for 'A' level work and the rest leaving at sixteen. Ever since we provided a non-examination syllabus of this kind we have found that virtually a hundred per cent remain in the sixth form for the General Studies programme. More than this, almost as many girls again ask to come into the sixth form from other schools for the sake of the wider curriculum, with the result that we have a Sixth form of well over three hundred in a 3-form entry school. And yet many people still say that girls will not stay in a single-sex school after sixteen! Since following this scheme, the university entry has risen steadily; the quality of work has not deteriorated but improved, and both staff and girls feel that what we are doing, limited in scope though it is, has a relevance to life in the modern world that makes it enormously worthwhile.

From this paper it can be seen that some schools are attempting, difficult though it may be, to respond to these social and economic changes outlined for us in the previous papers. Because of our belief in our pupils we can go on with hope. 'The teacher who walks ... among his followers gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness. If he is indeed wise, he does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.' (1) In trying to do this we can look forward with confidence. The future is in the hands of our pupils, and we hope, as they do, that they can learn to live in love and harmony with their fellow men, and that with them they can enter into their heritage of a world opening up unlimited possibilities, but possibilities for good rather than for evil.

(1) KahIil Gibran in The Prophet (Heinemann, 1926), p. 66.

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7. Childhood and adolescence

F. Musgrove, B.A., Ph.D.
Professor of Research in Education, University of Bradford

A. The social function of the theory of adolescence 1760-1950

The Elizabethan Statute of Artificers isolated the period we now call adolescence from childhood on the one hand and adulthood on the other. The selection of the middle and late teens as a time of vocational training and (theoretically) careful moral guidance does not appear to have been based on any educational or psychological theory. Many young people were in fact expected to engage in adult work before the age of ten, often, (as we read for instance in Thomas Holcroft's 18th century Memoirs) shouldering remarkable responsibilities. It seems likely that the age 14 to 21 was strategic in regulating the competition of the uprising generation with their seniors; and by the age of 14 a young person had demonstrated, in an age of very high child mortality rates, his capacity to survive. He was worth taking seriously, a reasonable risk for educational investment. Many vocations for which apprenticeship was required did not in fact need seven years' technical preparation. The justification of apprenticeship for many, perhaps most, 18th century vocations must be found in other terms than the demand for expertise.

It is perhaps no coincidence that Rousseau elaborated a psychological theory of adolescence at the time when apprenticeship was ever less necessary for technical reasons. The theory of adolescence has stressed the discontinuities between adolescent and adult personality and values; it has emphasised the unfitness of the adolescent to shoulder the same responsibilities as adults and to enter into open competition with them. Apprenticeship had previously regulated the entry of young people into the social and economic world of the mature. A psychological theory has since been used for the same purpose.

In fact this new regulatory device was premature. The theory as developed by Rousseau was enthusiastically accepted in England by educational theorists like Edgeworth and Thomas Day; but with abundant industrial opportunities for young people throughout the following century, the theory was unnecessary. It went into cold storage for more than a century; it was revived and further elaborated at the end of the 19th century when adolescents were losing their economic functions in the technologically developed economies of Britain and America. (1)

The theory of adolescence which we have inherited is based on Rousseau, Darwin and Freud. The theory grew up, and prospered, without benefit of much systematic investigation of actual adolescent behaviour. Stanley Hall, who grafted evolutionary theory on to Rousseau's conception of adolescence, was fully aware that actual adolescents (in America) were not at all as the theory required them to be. American

(1) See F. Musgrove, 'Population changes and the status of the young in England since the eighteenth century', Sociological Review, Vol. II, 1963.

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adolescents were failing to be 'neo-atavistic": they were all 'precocious', 'leaping rather than growing into maturity'.

The theory of adolescence which has come down to us from Rousseau, Stanley Hall and Freud emphasises that adolescent values and attitudes are unstable; that adolescence is a time when adult values are critically examined and often rejected; that adolescents are prone to fantasy and are lacking in realism; that relationships with their coevals are of paramount importance and the main source of socio-moral values.

This picture of the adolescent was not seriously challenged until after 1950. The work of anthropologists like Margaret Mead and sociologists like Riesman, Hollingshead and William Foote Whyte filled out the picture. All focused our attention on the peer group's importance in the adolescent's life and development. Whyte tells us how 'Home plays a very small role in the group activities of the corner boy. Except when he eats, sleeps, or is sick, he is rarely at home, and his friends always go to his corner first when they want to find him'. (1) Hollingshead draws our attention to similar behaviour and values in Elmtown. Even when the adolescent has left school, 'his only intimate associations are with his clique mates and dating partners. As a group the withdrawees resent advice from parents, employers and adults in general'. (2)

The values of adolescents are represented as the outcome of their conflict with adults. The world of adolescence is a distinctive subculture, even a 'contra-culture'. During this period of instability and turbulence, adult authority, guidance and values are rejected. The uncertainties of this age give rise to characteristic values, notably intolerance. The psycho-analytical approach of Erikson tells the story in a slightly different idiom: we now hear of 'role confusion' and 'the inability to settle on an occupational identity' which lead to intolerance and peer-group conformity. Cruelty and clannishness are their defence against a sense of 'identity confusion'. (3)

This basic theory has received remarkably little modification since Stanley Hall, even since Rousseau. The idiom has somewhat changed. Instead of a period of 'saltatory' development 'suggestive of some ancient period of storm and stress', we now hear about 'role-conflicts'. And a view of society which is complementary to the traditional theory of adolescence has also remained remarkably constant: that society (outside the family) is in some sense evil, a source of contamination, from which the adolescents must be protected, in which they should not be involved. This notion of society preceded 19th century industrialisation; we find it fully developed in the writings of Rousseau and William Cobbett. I don't think we find it so strongly before, at least in educational writings, although the view has Puritan antecedents. This notion is absent, for instance, in the work of Locke and the social and educational essays of Isaac Watts. Before this time the public school was truly public, and thought the better for that; the new view of society and of adolescence required that the public school became private, withdrawn, protected, secluded. (Indeed it often withdrew physically from the town into the surrounding countryside.) The public schoolboy since the later 18th century has been granted private asylum.

Two centuries of theorising about adolescence culminated in 1950. In that year Riesman published The Lonely Crowd and Erikson Childhood and Society. A couple

(1) W. F. Whyte, Street Corner Society (University of Chicago Press, 1964).

(2) A.B. Hollingshead, Elmtown's Youth (John Wiley, New York, 1949).

(3) E. Erikson, Childhood and Society (Nelson Doubleday, 1950). (Further editions published, Norton, U.S.A.)

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of years before we had Margaret Mead's essay on 'Social Change and Cultural Surrogates'. (1) Also in 1950 appeared Valentine's influential text-book Psychology and its bearing on Education. Here, for the benefit of intending teachers, we have recapitulated the view of adolescence as a period of great instability of interests and values, of fantasy and unrealistic perceptions of the world and of the self.

Ginsberg's study, Occupational Choice, which was published in 1951, is, in my view, one of the most remarkable instances of forcing facts to fit existing theories. Ginsberg admits: 'We did not attempt to present new materials and new interpretations of old materials. In fact, our departure was, if anything, the reverse. We desire to make use of the generally accepted approaches to the theory of adolescence and the years immediately preceding and succeeding, and against the background of this commonly accepted knowledge to arrange and order certain basic facts pertaining to the problem of occupational choice'. It is hardly surprising that the 'commonly accepted knowledge' appeared to find still further confirmation in Ginsberg's work.

B. Testing and theory 1950-1966

I think that we shall look back on the year 1950 as a turning point. In the past 15 years we have stopped looking for facts to fit the theory; we have looked for facts to test the theory. And the theory has not stood up to the testing it has received. Since 1950 we have had, in America, a major programme of empirical research designed to test the truth of the Riesman typology. This was published, in 1961, in Lipset and Lowenthal's Culture and Social Character. We have had Peck and Havighurst's Psychology of Character Development (1960) which explores the nature and sources of socio-moral values among the adolescents of 'Prairie City'. In England we had Tanner's Growth in Adolescence (1955) which questioned the notion of emotional instability in adolescence, at least as a product of adolescent physiology. We have had the work of the Eppels in England, and of Miss Veness; and we had an important paper by J. F. Morris in 1958 in The British Journal of Educational Psychology on 'The Development of Adolescent Value-judgements'. All this empirical research - and much more which is scattered through the research journals - throws the traditional theory of adolescence into disarray.

What this work does, essentially, is to question the discontinuity between adolescent and adult personality and values. One of the most telling studies in this field is Percival Symonds' book, From Adolescent to Adult, which was published in 1961. This book reports a follow-up study of an (admittedly small) sample of urban Americans for 13 years, from middle adolescence to the age of 30. Symonds concluded that 'the concept of adolescence as a separate period in life. with distinctive characteristics recedes ...' 'One of the outstanding findings of this study is the remarkable persistence of personality trends over the thirteen-year period'. There were changes - but toward more fantasy, more wishful thinking and depression. The adults were more inclined to retreat from their problems into a world of fantasy. And while Valentine makes much of the deep depression which is experienced in adolescence, Symonds found depression more characteristic of maturity. 'The increase in depression from adolescence to early adulthood ... is one of the clear-cut findings of the study.'

(i) Research on parental influence

English and American research over the past 15 years questions adolescent 'rejection' of adult (and particularly parental) values, guidance and authority; the degree of 'role-conflict' in adolescence (compared with maturity); the lack of realism, and the intolerance of adolescence; and the intensity of peer-group conformity.

(1) M. Mead, 'Social change and cultural surrogates' in C. Kluckholm and H. Murray (eds.) Personality in Nature, Society and Culture (Jonathan Cape, 1949).

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The idea that adolescents progressively reject parental values, guidance and authority had some basis in empirical research conducted between 1890 and 1940. Even Stanley Hall reports that 19th century surveys of the occupational preference of thousands of American adolescents which show a diminished inclination to follow in father's footsteps after the age of 13. Jersild reports enquiries conducted in the thirties which show that between the ages of 11 and 17 young people are even less inclined to talk to their parents when in trouble but ever more inclined to consult a friend. (Stanley Hall referred to inquiries which showed a similar trend in the preference for the authority of teachers as opposed to the authority of parents.)

Studies carried out since 1950 do not support this picture. Perhaps there has been some change in the nature of adolescents; more likely in the nature of family relationships - as the Newsons suggest in their Nottingham study. (1) Even Margaret Mead was driven to concede - in the 1962 Pelican edition of her 'Male and Female' - that 'the breach between adolescent children and parents, so characteristic of American middle-class culture a generation ago, has narrowed ...'

Another common index of the 'rejection' of parents is the declining preference of parental companionship and in increasing preference for the company of coevals. An enquiry which I conducted recently confirms this fairly obvious observation; but it does not show a corresponding rejection of parental values or of parental authority. In fact between the age of 11 and 16 I found that boys (but not girls) were ever more inclined to refer with approval to the exercise of parental authority, to say that parents should set an example to their children and give them guidance. (2)

Morris's studies of the attitudes of English adolescents questioned the potency of the 'peer culture'. (3) My own study showed that boys (but not girls) became more critical of their friends between the age of 11 and 16. Contemporary work in America is throwing up similar results. A study of 2,500 American adolescents by Riley and Moore shows them nearer in their values to the perceived values of their parents than to the perceived values of their friends. (4)

In general, the values of adolescents seem to diverge little from the values of their parents. There is no strong evidence that there is any marked divergency even in the case of socially mobile adolescents, (5) although they may change their more outward habits of speech and deportment. (6) In their 'Prairie City' study Peck and Havighurst found that the socio-moral values of 16 year old boys and girls were derived to only a minor extent from the school curriculum or from friends; the main source was the parents, particularly the mother. Rather than standing in opposition to parental values, the friendship group appeared to confirm them. 'The informal peer society tends to reproduce the moral atmosphere set up by the parents. It is a vital testing and training ground in the details and the specific skills which implement those adult-derived socio-moral values; but, by itself, it seems seldom to alter these values'. (7)

(1) J. and E. Newson, Infant Care in an Urban Community (Allen & Unwin, 1963).

(2) F. Musgrove, 'Inter-generations attitudes', British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, Vol. 2, 1963.

(3) J. F. Morris, 'The development of adolescent value-judgements'. British Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol. 28, 1958.

(4) M. W. Riley et al., 'Adolescent values and the Riesman Typology: an empirical analysis', in Lipset and Lowenthal, Culture and Social Character (Glencoe Free Press, Chicago, 1961).

(5) A. N. Oppenheim, 'Social status and clique formation among grammar school boys', British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 4, 1955.

(6) R. F. Peck and F. J. Havighurst, The Psychology of Character Development (John Wiley, New York, 1960), p.146.

(7) Ibid., p. 186.

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No doubt there are youthful 'contra-cultures' which support values which differ from, and even invert, the values of the adult world. Delinquent groups and Beatniks are fairly obvious examples. (But CND is not; this has been a very middle-aged movement with elderly leadership; (1) it seems to have become a youth movement only recently as it has lost its political fire.) But the broad picture of Western youth highlights the continuities of outlook and belief between adolescents and their elders. Westley and Elkin expected their study of adolescent values in suburban Montreal to confirm the thesis of The Lonely Crowd; and they were astonished to find that it did nothing of the kind. They were unable to discover those 'cultural discontinuities' of which Margaret Mead once wrote so eloquently. They conclude that by the age of 14 or 15, adolescents 'have already internalised the ideals and values of the surrounding adult society. The adolescent appreciates the keen interest of the parents in their activities and feel that their parents are working on their behalf; they are in close agreement with their parents on general career and marriage goals and the manner in which these goals are to be achieved ... they do not reject adult values or participate in an anti-adult "youth culture" ...' (2)

This inquiry in Montreal was conducted with middle-class adolescents; but recent studies of the outlook and aspirations of working-class youth have produced similar results. Joseph Kahl investigated the occupational aims and social values of 'Common Man' boys and found that their aspirations reflected the values of their parents. 'The interviews indicated that the boys learned to an extraordinary degree to view the occupational system from their parents' perspective. They took over their parents' view of the opportunities available, the desirability and possibility of change of status, the techniques to be used if change was desired, and the appropriate goals for boys who performed as they did in school.' (3) We have similar indications in English studies of vocational choice, although there are signs that parental influence is greater among middle-class children. One enquiry into vocational choice in 18 English schools concluded that in 16 'the influence of the home was greater than that of the school in career choice'. The two exceptional schools drew their pupils mainly from working-class families. Parental influence 'was greater among pupils in the independent and direct grant schools'. (4) The families of fifteen year old grammar schools boys investigated in another recent study were by far the most important influence in their educational and occupational plans. (5)

At the age of 15 our secondary modern school children appear to identify strongly with parents, to only a minor extent with their teachers. It is teachers rather than parents whom they 'reject'. This was the broad conclusion of a study conducted in secondary schools in Oxfordshire, which concluded that teachers are unlikely to have the influence on values, attitudes and social awareness which is nowadays thought to be part of their job. The study concludes 'it is of interest to note that the opinion sometimes expressed that adolescents are, in general, rejecting parental influence, receives no confirmation

(1) For an analysis of CND supporters in Welwyn Garden City see The Guardian 25 May 1963, p. 3.

(2) W. A. Westley and F. Elkin, 'The protective environment and adolescent socialisation', Social Forces, Vol. 35, 1956-7.

(3) J. Kahl, 'Education and occupational aspirations of "Common man" boys', Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 23, 1953.

(4) J. H. Pheasant, 'The influence of the school in the choice of science careers', British Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol. 31, 1961.

(5) R. C. Rowlands, 'Some differences between prospective scientists, non-scientists and early leavers in a representative sample of English grammar school boys', British Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol. 31, 1961.

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here.' The general indications are that 'for this age group and type of child, parental influence is still very strong'. (1)

Indeed American educators are now disturbed because adolescents are not in conflict with their parents. They suggest that their concern to be adult leads them to early decisions about career and marriage goals and prevents their experimentation with roles, or questioning of basic values. At Vassar today there is little evidence that adolescence has been a time of strife or rebelliousness for the majority of students. (2) At Sarah Lawrence in the 1950s there were no such radical social and political attitudes as existed in the 1930s and 1940s. Students hold the same political attitudes as their parents; they are 'relatively quiescent and uninvolved'; 'they tend to accept their society as they find it'. (3)

The recent work of Abrams and Little on the political attitudes of British youth tells the same story. In general, young people are offering no radical criticism of adult society; and if they perceive its shortcomings, they are not prepared to do much about them. If they are at all in revolt it is against being in some way characteristically youthful; they are in revolt against being in revolt. Abrams and Little were unable to find any specifically youthful political attitude when they analysed the data provided in 1964 by National Opinion Polls Ltd. Young people between 21 and 24 have, to quote, 'no collective political self-consciousness. There has been no break-through, and there is little prospect of one'. (4)

Here is no deviant age-group in its political orientations. Abrams and Little are driven to the conclusion that 'Both commitment and appetite for change are alien to contemporary British youth. They are for the most part "realistic" about British society, seeing it as class-ridden, exploited by speculators and trade unions, governed inadequately rather than well, difficult if not impossible to change. And for the most part they adapt their expectations to this image, confining their interests and ambitions to a purely personal sphere: a happy marriage, friendship, success in a job, these are the values they cherish. They have, as a result, and despite their dissatisfactions, no use for political action or involvement'. (5)

These seem to be the characteristics of contemporary youth: and a sober concentration on private (and usually modest and attainable) satisfactions within an accepted social framework. This seems to be true on both sides of the Atlantic, and at all social levels. Logan and Golberg's study of 18 year old men in a London borough showed us cautious, realistic attitudes to life and work, acceptance of the social order, and concern to find stability and security within it. (6) A more recent inquiry into the values of Canadian adolescents, sponsored by UNESCO, produced similar results. Adventurousness and daring are not important ideals to the majority of Canadian adolescents today. What they looked forward to, above all, was a happy marriage and economic security. (7)

(1) D. S. Wright, 'A comparative study of the adolescent's concepts of his parents and teachers', Educational Review, Vol. 14, 1962.

(2) H. Webster et aI., 'Personality changes in college students', in N. Sandford, The American College, 1962.

(3) H. Taylor, 'Freedom and authority on the campus', in N. Sandford, The American College, 1962.

(4) P. Abrams and A. Little, 'The young activist in British politics', British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 16, 1965.

(5) P. Abrams and A. Little, 'The young voter in British politics', British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 16, 1965.

(6) R. F. L. Logan and E. M. Golberg, 'Rising eighteen in a London suburb', British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 4,1953.

(7) Vuchnich, 'Values of Canadian young people', International Journal of Adult and Youth Education, Vol. 16, 1944.

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In our universities, on both sides of the Atlantic, similar values appear to prevail. The famous 'Jacob Report' in America characterised university students as quiescent, offering no radical re-appraisal of their society. (1) The Cornell study of values which was carried out between 1950 and 1952 showed similar cautious, sober attitudes. Few students yearned for adventurous careers; their hearts were set on sober vocations with certain returns. (2) Zweig has similarly reported that the ambitions of Manchester students were mostly restricted 'to getting a good job, having a family, achieving a certain measure of security, and being happy'. Even at Oxford there seemed to be a preference for happy mediocrity over unhappy greatness. (3)

Abrams and Little speak of 'the primacy of personal and domestic values' among young people today. All the evidence of recent research supports them. Hancock and Wakeford concluded from their survey of the values of 2,500 English technical college students that 'their outlook is home-centred: most of the time they get on well with both parents. ... Nearly two-thirds said that they would first turn to a parent if they were in serious trouble, and under one per cent would turn to a college tutor.' (4) Berge's international study of the values of youth again illustrates the similarity of outlook between adolescents and their parents in France and Canada; the young and the mature were in close accord; 'as a conscious model for behaviour (in Canada), the respondent's mother or father was the most favoured choice'. The general outlook of young people was 'very much the same as that of their eiders'. (5)

Young people appear to find in their families of origin, and hope to discover in their families by marriage, the relaxed, informal, sensitive and unaffected personal relationships to which they attach so much importance, and which they do not find so readily at school or at work. At home you do not have to 'put on an act'. What young people value above all is unaffectedness, the freedom, as they say, 'to be yourself'. This is why 'peer group conformity' turns out to be a myth; the constraints of the group conflict with the concern to be an individual in one's own right. This is what Morris found when he explored the reasons for resistance to peer-group pressures: 'pupils felt that they should resist social pressures in order to become persons in their own right ... it is felt that one should be able to stand against them when necessary in order to assert one's own rights'. (6)

Recent inquiries which I have carried out in Yorkshire (7) indicate that in general young people are very appreciative of their parents and value their homes highly for the emotional support they afford and, above all, for the relaxed personal relationships that generally prevail. Around the age of 15 girls seem to find home life more trying; but in the main young people between 14 and 20 see home as a place where individuality is recognised, and there's always someone to listen to your problems.

(1) P. E. Jacob, Changing Values in College (Harper & Row, New York, 1957).

(2) M. Rosenberg, Occupation and Values (Glencoe Free Press, Chicago, 1957).

(3) F. Zweig, The Student in the Age of Anxiety (Heinemann, 1963).

(4) Hancock and Wakeford, 'The young technicians', New Society, Vol. 5, 1965.

(5) Berge, 'Young people in the orient and occident', International Journal of Adult and Youth Education, Vol. 16, 1964.

(6) J. F. Morris, 'Adolescent value-judgements', British Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol. 28, 1958.

(7) F. Musgrove, 'The social needs and satisfactions of some young people', British Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol. 36, Parts 1 and 2, 1966.

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School, on the other hand, is generally seen as an impersonal organisation in which the individual is lost. This view is particularly strong among grammar school pupils, especially in sixth formers. One sixth former in my study claims that his predominant feeling, at school, is that he's 'one of a conformist rabble'; another maintained: 'you have to try hard to preserve your individuality'; a third that he felt 'obliged to follow all lines of authority, with no expression of radical thought'. These were widespread views held by pupils from nine grammar schools.

I believe this to be one of the outstanding characteristics of our adolescents: the high value they place on being natural and unaffected. And I think we have failed to realise how bureaucratised our schools have become, and how resentful are young people of the apparent regimentation and impersonality they appear to entail.

I found no differences in attitude to school (or home) among children of different social background. Middle class children were as critical of the constraints and bureaucratic features of their grammar schools as working class children. At least with regard to the values I am talking about - personal and domestic values, concern for genuineness and dislike of impersonal organisation - we seem to have few social class differences. The main social class difference appears to be in levels of social and occupational aspirations; and it is in this sphere that schools appear to be most effective in reducing social class differences. Some of my own work shows how potent membership of the grammar school fifth and sixth forms can be in raising the aspirations of working class youths. (1) Our school system effectively cuts across social class differences at least in this respect. What is less certain is the extent of concomitant changes in values. Do we know, for example, whether highly aspiring sixth formers from working class homes tend to vote conservative when they come of age? I think we too readily assume that changes do not in fact occur.

(ii) Differences between adolescents and adults

My emphasis throughout this paper has been on the similarities between the values of the young and those of their elders. (Their only major revolt - teenage marriage - is a move to become more, and not less, like their seniors.) One of the difficulties in comparing adolescents and adults is that we have many studies of the former, few of the latter. Until we know far more about adults, we can say little about what is characteristically adolescent. Of course various crude comparisons are possible from demographic data. Adolescents are less psychotic and suicidal than adults, although the males, at least, are rather more prone to crime.

There is one area in which adolescents may differ significantly from their elders; the probability is that they are more tolerant. The evidence for this comes mainly from America; but it seems likely that the same is true of Britain. If this is true, again we have a major refutation of the classical theory of adolescence. The conflicts and uncertainties of adolescence, the role strains and ambiguities, are supposed to lead young people to the reassurance of peer-group conformity and antagonism to all outsiders. This argument is advanced, for instance, by Erikson, who maintains that adolescents not only help one another temporarily through much discomfort by forming cliques and by stereotyping themselves, their ideals, and their enemies; they also perversely test each other's capacity to pledge fidelity. (2)

Bettelheim and Janowitz have collated all the post-war research on prejudice and age in the latest edition of their Social Change and Prejudice. Young people appear to

(1) W. Liversidge, 'Life chances', The Sociological Review, Vol. 10, 1962.

(2) Erik H. Erikson, Childhood and Society (Nelson Doubleday, 1950).

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be more tolerant than their elders perhaps simply because they are better educated (in the sense that they more often endorse statements which express liberal sentiments).

It is curious that Bettelheim and Janowitz interpret these data in terms of the classical theory of adolescence - that is, they interpret them as evidence of a revolt by the young against the (comparative) intolerance of their elders! But I suggest that the tolerance of the young - and their general agreement, in other respects, with the values of their elders - is much more simply explained. Postwar adolescents have had a more comfortable time, and more assured future, than their predecessors in the thirties and forties. There has been no very apparent reason why they should be intolerant, or why they should rebel. Parents are probably more humane and understanding than ever before in history: and the young have had a scarcity-value as the product of an abnormally low birth-rate in the mid-thirties and early forties.

This is changing: and the picture I have presented of modern youth may be completely out of date in five years time. As we move towards a million births a year in the 1980s (compared with little more than half a million in the mid-thirties), I think the position of young people in our society may deteriorate quite dramatically, and that their values will undergo a corresponding change. And clearly the increasing bureaucratisation of our social institutions is not to their taste. Perhaps it was their displeasure in this regard which largely accounts for their sudden lack of quiescence at Berkeley last year. And indeed Berkeley may be a portent and Brighton and York too. As we organise ever more young people in vast and somewhat impersonal institutions, their good nature may turn sour. On the other hand, their appreciation of home and its unbuttoned informality may be still further enhanced.

C. The future: adolescence as (enforced) 'identity-play'

The concept of adolescence as a distinctive phase of the life-cycle, marked off by clear boundaries from childhood and adulthood, found clear expression in the inter-war years in the Spens Report on Secondary Education. The school should offer for the adolescent years 'a life which answers their special needs and brings out their special values'. My argument has been that these 'special values' are largely illusory. Of course there are dangers in placing younger and elder adolescents in the same category; there are changes in values and attitudes between 13 and 25. But Strong's work in America indicates that changes in interests between 13 and 25 are very heavily concentrated in the first two of these dozen years. (1)

If the discontinuities between adolescence and adulthood are less marked than is commonly supposed - and those that exist are largely the product of the special social circumstances in which adolescents find themselves - two major problems face us: (1) Is the now traditional concept of adolescence likely to be revised in the light of research conducted over the past decade? (2) What changes in our educational practice would this revision entail?

I believe that a wide range of circumstances will cause us to play down the similarities between adolescents and adults: demographic and economic trends; contemporary theories of education and social justice. This means, quite simply, that even more non-vocational education will be given to even more young people for even longer.

(i) The problem of vocational choice

There are, of course, obvious objections to early career decisions and vocational training. The strongest of these are educational; there are plenty of indications - notably in the Cornell study of values - that changes in values and attitudes are less likely to

(1) E. K. Strong, Vocational Interests of Men and Women (McGraw-Hill, 1943).

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occur in students whose career-choices have been made. They respond less readily to ideas and experiences which have no obvious bearing on their chosen calling.

But it does not appear to me to be proven that more extended education for more young people is made necessary by the advanced skills and knowledge demanded by most employment and by present-day social life. The decline in I.Q. scores among people in their twenties and thirties is probably quite simply accounted for: life in our allegedly complicated and demanding society does not really call for the exercise of much intelligence by most people.

There are doubtless excellent reasons for cultivating talents which will seldom, through force of circumstances, be called into use. (But if abilities are not functional - required to maintain and develop existing institutions - they are likely, in most people, to deteriorate.) We have remarkably little systematic knowledge of the abilities and skills required - actually called into regular use - in different areas of modern life. What our curriculum developers need, for more than their array of facts about what schools are doing, is an array of facts about what society is doing. We need a content-analysis of life in various populations defined by age, sex, occupation and life-style. What skills are called for in a typical day, what intellectual problems are faced, what moral dilemmas dealt with or evaded, what social, political, economic and cultural judgments required? And over and above the 'typical day' we need some study of the a-typical, of life's emergencies: what reserve powers and skills are periodically demanded in different people? Until we have had wide-spread anthropological investigations of this kind I do not believe we can arrive at a school curriculum that makes sense. The school curriculum in the secondary modern school is an elaborate device to fill the time available.

It is questionable whether adolescence is an appropriate time for formal education for most people. I suggest that we need to think about the provision of educational episodes at various stages of life. The longer expectation of life makes this possible; the rapidly changing needs of society (and the state of knowledge) make it desirable. But my guess is that we shall continue to see adolescence as the obvious time for formal education; and that we shall justify this arrangement by settling on a concept of adolescence as a period of 'identity-play'.

We shall make it a period of identity-play. And, clearly, there is something to be said for devising curricula which enable young people to find out what they can do, what sort of creatures they are. Two things are necessary: that the curriculum shall be wide, so that the pupil does explore himself not only on a narrow front; and that all verdicts (as provided by tests and examinations) shall be clearly seen as tentative and provisional. Our system of evaluation shapes the self concepts of the young. It is time we found out how much falsehood we teach the young about themselves through our examination marks and grades.

(ii) Naturally unrealistic adolescents?

The problem of conceiving adolescence as a period of extended play ('role-playing, identity-play') is this: that the adolescent is prevented from arriving at an occupational identity. Attachment to an occupational identity, which our culture emphasises so greatly, is discouraged and deferred. For most men and women work and occupation provide a focus for the organisation of personality. The adolescent who enjoys a protracted liberal education is denied this focus.

Erikson suggests that the adolescent is in fact unable 'to settle on an occupational identity' (this is what makes him adolescent). Ginsberg also suggests that at least before 16 or 17 young people are unable to think realistically or specifically about occupational

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choice. But the inability to settle on an occupational identity or to make realistic occupational choices probably arises from the unreality of the circumstances, when employment is far in the future. It is not an inevitable function of 'the adolescent personality'. Specific, concrete and realistic decisions, based on interests, abilities and values, are made by adolescents about matters of more immediate concern, like the choice of particular specialist subjects for further study. (1)

To be prevented from acquiring an occupational identity is likely to cause disturbance in anyone in our culture, whatever his age. It is a serious deprivation for a 17-year-old arts student, a middle-aged man who becomes redundant, or a person in retirement. We should not underrate this deprivation. It is, as Erikson recognises, a major source of role confusion and conflict in adolescence; and perhaps for this reason secondary modern school children who are about to leave for work seem to suffer less role conflict - according to some measurements I have taken - than grammar school pupils of greater maturity who are still far from deciding on an occupation and entering employment. (2)

This, then, seems to me the great dilemma in the more protracted education that all our adolescents will doubtless receive: that if it is non-vocational, and career choices are pushed even further into the future, pupils may remain open to more ideas and experiences; their view not only of their world but of themselves will change and develop; but they will lack the kind of focus for their image of themselves which our society approves. By deferring vocational choices we aggravate the problem of establishing a sense of identity. Whatever role conflict, confusion and ambiguity we have had in adolescence in the past, we are likely to have very much more in the future.

(1) Martin Katz, Decisions and Values (College Entrance Examination Board, New York, 1963).

(2) F. Musgrove, 'Role conflict in adolescence', British Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol. 34, 1964.

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Select bibliography

Erikson, E. Childhood and Society. Nelson Doubleday, 1950. (Further editions published by Norton, U.S.A.)

Ginsberg, E. Occupational Choice. Columbia University Press, 1951.

Hollingshead, A. B. Elmtown's Youth. John Wiley, New York, 1949.

Katz, M. Decisions and Values. College Entrance Examination Board, New York, 1963.

Musgrove, F. Youth and the Social Order. Routledge, 1964.

The Family, Education and Society. Routledge, 1966.

Peck, R. F. and Havighurst, R. J. The Psychology of Character Development. John Wiley, New York, 1960.

Super, Donald E. Career Development: Self Concept Theory. College Entrance Examination Board, New York, 1963.

Symonds, P. From Adolescent to Adult. Oxford University Press, 1961.

Tanner, J. H. Growth at Adolescence. Blackwell, 1955.

Zweig, F. The Student in the Age of Anxiety, Heinemann, 1963.

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8. The school: How do we see it functioning (past, present and future)?

(a) Ben Morris, B.Sc., M.Ed.
Director, University of Bristol Institute of Education

and

(b) H. W. Simmons, B.Sc.
Headmaster, Bedminster Down School, Bristol

(a) Ben Morris

My own title for what I am going to say is simply 'Whither the school?' This is an enormous question and it would be absurd to try and deal with it in any complete way. What I will attempt to do is to point to some salient and specific questions which arise out of the general one 'Whither the school?' I shall raise many more questions than I shall attempt to answer, but I shall not withhold my own answers to some of the questions. Such answers as I suggest will not be predictions about the future, but rather an expression of the values - not, I hope, unshared by the members of this conference - which I think ought to guide us in making the choices with which we are faced and will continue to be faced. My emphasis will not be on the future as such, but on the here and now in terms of the tensions and dilemmas which face us in attempting to shape the future out of the past and the present. For shape it we must. It is our inescapable duty.

One of the professional tasks of the social scientist is to analyse social systems and to point to patterns of life, to the observable tensions and trends, that go with them - but in a non-evaluative way. This is essential for him. But most of us are not social scientists. We are educators. Education is an enterprise with values built into it by its very nature. More and more these values have to be the results of conscious choices rather than of tradition, as Sir Fred Clarke pointed out many years ago. (1) As educators we have to try and take rational decisions in terms of what we value most.

To an important extent, man is not only endowed with a nature; he also creates his own nature. He creates it on the basis of the perceptions he has about himself and on his success or failure to act on these perceptions. Among our perceptions of ourselves to which I give the highest place is that we are persons. We are not merely responding organisms or the helpless victims of social pressures. We are agents, capable in an important degree of intention, choice and responsibility. This does not mean that as individuals we are complete masters of our own destiny. We are beings with a particular biological nature, and we are reared in the ways of a particular society. But we are also persons in a community of persons, capable of love, of reason, of foresight and of responsible action - in a word, of all we mean by freedom. To realise our freedom is to choose our values and to act on them. But to do this we have to become as conscious as possible of the constraints, the restrictions, and the fears which limit our freedom. (2)

I have chosen therefore to look at some of the pressures and challenges that face us in our schools, and to discuss the kind of choices which are open to us, the values on which these choices depend and the criteria by which we ought to judge our actions.

1. What are the pressures and challenges?

The pressures and challenges facing us may be divided into two main groups, in terms of their major sources. There are, first of all, a group of pressures arising from political/

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-social/technological changes, and secondly a group arising from educational thought, innovation and experiment. These two groups of pressures are of course interdependent - but it is important to distinguish them.

Since it is choices with which we are basically concerned, we need guiding questions which will point to our criteria of choice. I suggest that the following questions are fundamental and that we must keep returning to them. Firstly, what ends do we seek to promote through education? Secondly, which means are appropriate to which ends? We are very prone in this country to believe that ends are simply lofty ideals - proclaimed by theorists and old-fashioned philosophers. On the contrary, ends are expressed through and live in means - in what we do every day. To practise what we preach means discovering which means are appropriate to our chosen ends and which means are not. (3) At the moment there is an enormous discrepancy between the ends we proclaim and the means we adopt. The third question is what price are we prepared to pay for our choices - for everything has its price, and the good is often the enemy of the best. What things among those we may quite rightly cherish may we have to sacrifice for things we cherish even more?

Pressures arising from political/social and technological changes seem to me to point in two main directions. Firstly, they point towards a very much greater equality of educational opportunity. However much it may be distorted by some of its advocates, does this not enshrine an absolutely basic value? What are the appropriate means? Many of us feel that some kind of comprehensive system is essential. Many of us feel too that we must abandon rigid forms of classification for learning within schools. What price are we prepared to pay? To eliminate educational slums, ought we not to be prepared to pay a very high price? When does the price become too high, if ever? Is it a question of large schools and the lack of real community which they bring with them and consequent lack of care for the individual? I personally do not believe it is beyond our capacity to invent forms of organisation which produce real communities and adequate personal care in a large and truly common school. Let us not forget experiments that are now going on with such forms of organisation. The introduction of counselling by specialist counsellors, with a view to increasing the capacity of the class teacher to engage in counselling, is surely an important development also. How much are we prepared to sacrifice? How much may we have to sacrifice in pursuit of what is, quite simply, social justice ?

The second direction in which these pressures point is to the need to attempt to prepare the young for the demands of life in a new kind of world and in a changing society. A number of very important questions have to be asked here. Many of us are convinced that our traditional curricula will not do, and in practice curricula are so closely bound up with methods that it follows that our traditional methods won't do either. It is fundamental for us to ask if the equality of opportunity we seek means merely extending to more children what we have been offering to the few? Or can we make a serious attempt to meet the genuine aspirations of youth for a relatively unimpeded, smoother, much more hopeful, much more responsible and more fully human induction into life? I happen to agree with much that Professor Musgrove said. But I do not know why he wanted to chastise Freud, Mead and Erikson, because I do not think it strengthened his case. He seems to me to have misunderstood all three. I say this on the basis of considerable knowledge of all three, in two cases personal knowledge. There is nothing substantial in what he said with which they would not have agreed. His remarks about identification and adoption of values are straight Freud. The fact is that Freud, the Bible and adolescents are very similar in many ways. They are inexhaustible sources of material to support quite divergent views!

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My second group of pressures are those arising from educational thought, innovation and experiment. I am going simply to outline three of these sources and then discuss, the kinds of choices which face the school in meeting them-not singly but as a set of related challenges.

First of all, there are innovations within education itself. These are already upon us. Some belong to what we may properly call educational technology - new media and new tools of learning such as programming. The question about these innovations is how we are to relate them to our basic purposes. How to do this is in many cases far from evident, and many years of active experiment and experience lie ahead. These new devices offer great opportunities of liberation from outworn practices and concepts, but they also offer opportunities for new, more subtle and even more fatal forms of enslavement than was ever possible on the basis of chalk and talk. (4)

What is the point of having efficient programmes for teaching things that shouldn't be taught at all? In this connexion we have to become more aware than we are that the findings of research require interpretation in terms of a framework of values and consideration which go far beyond the actual research itself. For example, we have all heard of this business of children reading at two and so on. Supposing this to be possible, the important question is whether we should encourage it and what price we might have to pay if we did. These are large questions, involving not only empirical knowledge which we do not yet possess, but some critical value judgments also. (5)

There are of course other kinds of innovation like team teaching, the use of auxiliaries and so on which strike at the roots of our traditional organisation and at the roots of current conceptions of the teachers' role. How can we make effective use of all this? What price are we prepared to pay for a more vitally living education? (6)

Secondly there are the challenges arising from investigations into the results of existing practices. I would sum these up very boldly and dogmatically as a great wastage of talent, a great misuse of time, a gross distortion of minds and personalities and the crippling of imagination arising from merely reproductive teaching and examining, and lastly, widespread incapacity in the essential arts of life.

Thirdly there are the challenges arising from deeper understanding of human learning and development. Here again I think it is possible to sum up very quickly:

(i) Intrinsic motivation is better than any other kind. (7) It is not only the most efficient kind of motivation; it also produces no injurious side effects. It is, of course, often far from easy to induce.

(ii) Optimal development of mind and of personality is a very slow matter. In each of us there are built-in maturation programmes which must be respected. Their realisation can be facilitated but not forced without grave damage. Maturation processes depend on interlocking appropriate experiences, and this is where the educator comes in.

(iii) Adult conceptions of subject-matter are inappropriate until a fairly late stage of development.

(iv) Thought and feeling belong together. If divorced, as is so often the case at present, personalities are distorted and the springs of creativity dry up. Why? Because reason must be fed by impulse, by desire; love is the mother of reason - not its child.

(v) A child's self-image - any person's self-image - is of vital importance to him and many of our traditional ways of behaving to children are grievously damaging. I am often appalled by the examples that I come across of some teachers' behaviour. This is not a simple matter, but the way in which (as Professor

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Musgrove has said) we give our pupils quite false notions of their own value and belittle their powers in their own eyes is tragic. Examples of ordinary, everyday things which are very telling in this respect will be found in an article by Staines. (8)

(vi) Children and young people want to give as well as receive - to produce, create and serve.

(vii) The fundamental basis for all true morality is love - and respect for others. This is not a philosophical theory, it happens to be fact. Rules are secondary, and even rational discussion of rules is useless and may be harmful unless there is a foundation of love and respect, a belief in others. I often wonder how our so-called Christian civilisation seems to have forgotten the basis of its whole existence. 'A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another.'

(viii) Lastly, love and sex are as integral parts of growing up as they are of life. Ideally we see them as united - but this is an ideal which cannot be achieved all at once in most cases. These two have to have time to grow together. We have at the present moment a large number of well meaning explanations of teenage sex behaviour: it is due to anxiety and loneliness, to trouble between parents, to the need to search for affection outside the family, to the influence of television, magazines and advertising, and so on. I was struck quite recently by a report in one of the Sunday newspapers in which various young people were being questioned about this. A reporter asked one young man why he had intercourse with his girl friend, hoping to get one of the stock sociological or psychological answers. The boy looked at him rather quizzically and said 'We like it'. Have we forgotten that sex is enjoyable in itself and that the relation between love and sex is very complex? What is essential is respect for others and their feelings. I'm not saying the young do not need guidance and protection but moralising about sex is largely useless; it is the surest way of demeaning it and making it more guilt-ridden then ever.

How is the school going to respond to all these challenges? I think the response will have to come in two main areas, curriculum, methods and examinations, and the concept of the school itself. What are the choices before us? Let me look briefly at curriculum, methods, and examinations.

Are we prepared to abandon a good deal of tradition, because a good deal of it is largely a device for filling in time? I think this may now be less true than it was, but if you look back at the history of arithmetic teaching I cannot find any other adequate reason for what went on. Do we accept that curricula and methods have to be learner-centred - in fact, that the future lies in generalising the most advanced infant and junior methods right up into higher education, while gradually introducing formal conceptual systems only when children are ready for them? There exists (unofficially) what I call a 'graph of educational vitality'. It begins at a fairly high point in some modern infant and junior schools; it drops down slowly at first and then rather rapidly at the beginning of secondary education. It may rise in some sixth forms in some of our modern schools, and in some of our comprehensive schools, but in general it does not regain the infant level of freshness and vitality until somewhere about the honours level in some university departments. This must mean something. There is a greater similarity between the organisation of work at the best university level and at the best infant level than between any other levels.

A clearer conception of the different forms of knowledge - mathematics, science, history, humanities, arts and crafts, etc. - is essential background for the teacher.

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Professor Hirst will no doubt say a lot about this point. Such conceptual systems point the direction in which children should travel, but they are not prescriptions for teaching or learning until quite a late stage in development. And I do not agree that there should be no retreat from verbal knowledge. There must be a dethronement of the verbal as the one supreme means of communication, partly in order that verbal communication itself should be infinitely better than it is, but more fundamentally for a fuller realisation of our whole humanity. The basis of all curricula are the arts and sciences of man, expressed in bodily prowess, dancing, music, pictorial and other plastic arts as well in number, languages and the sciences. (9)

Now about examinations. Are we prepared to pay the price of breaking the deadly hold which our external systems of examining have on so much of what we do? It can be done - basically by making assessment internal and the servant of teachers - but that is a long story in itself and it is likely to be a long chapter in our educational history. We are faced by tremendous resistances here, springing fundamentally not from some supposed social necessity but basically from our own neurotic fears and obsessions. We will never have a true teaching profession till assessment of progress is put in its place as simply one essential element in teaching, a guide to the next steps for the learner, and until the profession trusts itself to do this and earns the trust of the community to do it. (10)

Finally, the concept of the school itself. We have to decide whether the school is primarily a place for instruction and intellectual development - as in fact it has been conceived in many countries - or whether the school is a place primarily for young persons to grow up in - a place where intellectual development takes its proper place within a wider perspective. In England there has always been a trend towards this latter conception.

If the former is what we want, then let us try to turn the school into a really efficient streamlined institution for mastering pre-arranged and selected adult skills and ideas, all the while keeping careful records and checks on achievement and rigorously grading our pupils accordingly. If we were wholeheartedly to pursue this objective the price we would pay would, I think be enormous - probably the loss of much of our essential humanity.

If the latter is what we want then the school must be devoted to giving children and young people the opportunities needed to master the essential arts of civilised life. (11)

What are the foundations of the arts of civilised life? I would say:

(i) Love, sympathy and respect for others.

(ii) Enjoyment of the world, of beauty, of shared experience, of the mystery of an unfathomable universe.

(iii) Co-operation.

(iv) Aspirations towards personal and community achievement in the whole range of civilised activities.

(v) Responsibility for one's own actions with which goes a real measure of independence of mind and heart.

The school must become a much more open community (in the sense in which many people have already spoken, linking up with homes, industry and social affairs). In its

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organisation our current concepts of class, lessons, time-table, subject, would have to be largely transformed. Homework on the present basis would certainly be banned. We might structure the school day into two main sessions - with an additional evening session for those who wanted to pursue their own special interests (group and individual) and which was open to the whole community.

I would give the morning to project work and discovery, discussion, creative activities - thereby putting many of our so-called extracurricular activities in the very heart of the curriculum. The afternoon would be reserved for tutorial work and individual pursuits on the basis of interests. Here gradually many but not necessarily all the children would seek to study and master the traditional techniques and ideas of the great disciplines - the forms of knowledge.

3. What price are we prepared to pay?

What would be the price to be paid? In some respects it would be very high. First of all, the abandonment of the primacy of large areas of dead and useless verbal and numerical knowledge. Secondly, the abandonment of premature specialisation in certain disciplines narrowly conceived. (I think our idea of specialisation is absolutely crazy in the light of what we know about human beings.) Thirdly, the abandonment of our present conception of standards which I believe are not genuine standards but phoney and spurious in large numbers of cases. Fourthly, the abandonment of adult omniscience and the idea that children have to be instructed with predigested information. Fifthly, the abandonment of the attitude that children have to be trained in morality and made to conform to pre-ordained rules of a small closed society dominated by adults. What about all those petty things, school uniforms, caps, smoking, letting the side down and all the rest of it?

Let me give you a real example. A certain class turned up a quarter of an hour late for school dinner. The refectory supervisor was rightly annoyed. They were first and second year children, their dinner was cold and some of them were crying. What had happened was that the master in charge, being displeased with their behaviour on the stairs, had taken them outside and kept them there deliberately for a quarter of an hour. The refectory supervisor got hold of the teacher and said that if this happened again she would report him to the head, to the Authority and to the H.M. Inspector; he had no business to disorganise her kitchen and render the work of her kitchen staff useless. You may think that is an exceptional case. Of course there is another side to the picture and I am not overlooking the happy relationships that exist in many schools, nor underestimating the devotion and true concern of many teachers. But have we the courage to admit that in its essentials this example reflects quite common attitudes of adults to children and young people?

In trying to spell out what stands in the way of radical change, am I putting an undue emphasis on the negative aspect, on what we will have to give up? I think not. I have already specified what seem to me the positive essentials of desirable change. These can only be achieved by a formidable re-education of our attitudes to the young and to our own values. I believe this to be essential for us, if in the long run - and it may not be such a very long run - man is to survive.

The crucial issue has been put for us in this form by Erik Erikson:

In our time man must decide whether he can afford to continue the exploitation of childhood as an arsenal of irrational fears, or whether the relationship of adult and child, like other inequalities, can be raised to a position of partnership in a more reasonable order of things. (12)

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References

(1) Clarke, Sir Fred.

(a) Education and Social Change. Sheldon Press, 1940.
(b) Freedom in the Educative Society. U.L.P., 1948.

(3) Peters, R. S. Authority, Responsibility and Education. Allen & Unwin, 1959, chapter 7.

(4) Curr, W. 'Education without teachers', in Leith, G.O.M. (ed.) A Handbook of Programmed Learning. Educational Review - Occasional Publications, No. 1.

(5) Morris, Ben. 'Research for education, 1. Nature and functions', Journal of Education, October 1955.

(6) Hannam, C. L. 'Team teaching and some of its implications for teacher training', New Era, Vol. 48, No.1, January 1967.

(7) Bruner, J. S. On Knowing. Harvard University Press, 1962.

(8) Staines, J. W. 'The self-picture as a factor in the class room', British Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol. 28, Part II, 1958, 97-111.

(9) Morris, Ben, 'Arts and sciences in education', 11th Foundation Lecture, Bretton Hall College of Education, Wakefield, 1961.

(10) Morris, Ben, 'Examinations as instruments of educational reform', Bulletin of the Institute of Physics and the Physical Society, Vol. 15, No. 8, 1964.

(11) Murphy, Gardner, Freeing Intelligence through Teaching. Harper, New York, 1961.

(12) Erikson, E. H. Childhood and Society. Norton, 1963, p. 47.

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(b) H. W. Simmons

I take my text from Gray's Elegy, verses 12 and 13:

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire,
Hands that the rod of Empire might have swayed
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.

But knowledge to their eyes her ample page
Rich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll.
Chill Penury repressed their noble rage
And froze the genial current of the soul.

(1) N. C. Barnard, History of English Education, p. 98.

(2) Sunday Times, 11 May 1966.

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During the last 12 years, with the development of comprehensive schools there has been a growing move against the separation of children into two or three different kinds of school at 11, and the consequent feeling of deprivation among the four fifths of the population not permitted to go to grammar school. Now for the first time in the history of man it is possible to educate the whole spectrum of society in one school. This makes possible for all children what Sir Ernest Barker, coming from the humblest of homes at the beginning of the century, said of Manchester Grammar School: 'But having my school, I had everything.' It is the aim of the comprehensive school through its libraries, art studio, laboratories, workshops and societies to open all manner of doors and windows so that every child reaches his highest potential and, 'in his school has everything'.

Now, not only is the whole community under one roof in the comprehensive school; it is there for a significant part of its thinking life. In my school over 80 per cent stay on for a fifth year. We are all of us now training people for the new automated world introduced through the vast technological advance we have experienced since the war. Because of the social and economic changes that this foreshadows, I hope we are all now trying to educate our children for the increased leisure and wealth which is being more evenly distributed.

We have hitherto had a system where the school accepted the standards set by the community and endorsed these by means of selection processes. Selection became a self-fulfilling exercise. Anyone who has read Brian Jackson's book 'Streaming in the Primary School' will know how vividly he illustrates this in a typical Home Counties primary school. Further, with the division between grammar and secondary modern schools, we have the Pavlovian situation where conditioned responses recreate existing society. But by the mid 1970s, according to the deputy editor of the Sunday Times, (1) 'British society will largely resemble American society of the mid 1950s in which 80 per cent of the people will be reasonably affluent, and only 20 per cent will be poor. Such a society will demand an educational system with very full distribution of opportunity for 80 per cent of its people'. Comprehensive schools are the logical answer to these needs, where there is a multiplicity of courses, where doors to different courses are kept open as long as possible, where a great proportion of the children have their own timetables and where children are not labelled. Today, instead of responding to what is already there in the adult world, schools should be creating through their teaching the kind of adult world we should like to live in. We should be trying to establish what the Pilkington Commission in Broadcasting called, 'an active relationship with the moral condition of society'. We should now be considering the state as a work of art in the best philosophical manner.

Perhaps these ideas are outside my terms of reference and belong to the theoriest, but I put them forward as a practitioner, a strong believer in the tremendous influence exerted by environment. There is much talk at present about our decadent society, with bingo halls and betting shops as symptoms of this disease. Yet we have only experienced our present affluence for 10 or 12 years, and the great majority of adults who find they have greater time and more money to spend in that time have had no training at all to equip them for the choices which will be available to them. To expect a suddenly affluent, under-educated society to support massively the arts and become avid followers of the Third Programme is like expecting a fourth former to write a novel or to grasp the theory of relativity. Every cultivated pursuit in our society is the product of training and study and now we must train to live, and this includes trying to educate our children to use wisely the increased leisure and wealth which is being more evenly distributed.

(1) Sunday Times, 11 May 1966.

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How is this to be attempted in the schools? I must give a word of warning here. 'Graduate teachers know how to teach what I will call the grammar school curriculum, and while their pupils will follow that if they must, there is every reason to suppose that comprehensive schools will land the community into a slough of despond if they take the grammar school curriculum as their yardstick for more than a minority of their students.' (I would put this minority at a third.) 'There must be other ways of stimulating the spiritual, moral, mental and physical growth of adolescents for whom the grammar school tradition or any of its derivatives are quite meaningless. And yet there is pressure to do this from parents, employers, from governing bodies, from the traditions of graduate teachers. We shall misuse the opportunities given us by the comprehensive schools if we allow them to be dominated by the hope that many more children will be able to clamber on to the grammar school band wagon than would normally be selected for it where a selection procedure is held'. (1) Some will of course. One of my most difficult tasks is to draw the line between those who thrive on what I have called a grammar school course, and those who want quite different treatment, and this varies from subject to subject. 'The possibilities within the comprehensive schools should prod us to think much more effectively about education itself - about what we are doing with boys and girls who from 1970 we shall keep compulsorily in school after they are old enough to get married. I would ask those engaged in the education and training of teachers if they could please think harder about how to provide the staff who will not teach what and how they were taught themselves'. (2) We are helping to do this in my school. We are at the moment pioneering a scheme where 12 members of the university department of education have visited the school on one afternoon a week and been the guests of boys and girls of below average ability. The programme started with members of the school taking their guests on a tour of the school (one U.D.E. member to two members of the school). The members of the university reciprocated the following week by taking the school children on a tour of their new Union buildings. Discussion followed on the education the school children were receiving, their plans for the future, whether they could obtain apprenticeships, and so on. The object of the exercise was two-fold (1) to acquaint the members of the university with this sort of children (as they had not met them before in their training) and to discover from what levels the children's education could continue, and (2) to draw out the children in conversation and so improve their spoken English, and to create confidence, the groups being small and intimate. We are to continue this next term with the university department of education's new intake and pursue it in greater depth.

'If comprehensive schools are to contribute both to equality in any deep sense and to the lively development of the community they must be pioneers in developing new and more creative forms of educational activity for all ranges of ability at the secondary stage'. (3) I will detail later how we use a film in one new development. Very important, I believe, is the provision of a dedicated librarian; ours is an English specialist and not primarily a trained librarian. It is her function to introduce pupils to all manner of literature. Her whole week is spent in the library. She teaches no formal English, but by exhibition and displays and personal contact with juniors, when as classes they have a weekly lesson with her, and with sixth formers, when they are undertaking private study in their own library, she brings to their notice a whole range of books. At any moment she can give me a list of books read by every pupil since entering the school. This is often fascinating and rewarding information. The influence of this woman on the

(1) Prof. Roger Wilson, 'Equality and dissent.' Paper read to the Bristol Fabians, January 1966, in honour of the memory of Robert St John Reade, p. 7.

(2) Ibid, p. 8.

(3) Ibid, p. 8.

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education of the quiet and timid is quite remarkable. She also acts as a power-house in the school by informing heads of departments of new publications. Another form of creative activity which has a room especially designed for the purpose is drama. It is this teacher's function to give confidence to all children in coping with different kinds of situations, not only by insisting on high quality of speech but presenting the children with real life situations and confronting them with practical problems. There is no attempt to turn them into actors. The total result may be, however, to produce more intellectual and appreciative audiences.

Another activity is the Field Club - a very popular society whose object is to encourage the exploration of the countryside. Guest houses and places in hotels in all parts of this country and in Europe are booked for intensive exploration of an area; this year the accommodation has been at Ballachulish at the western end of Glencoe for one group, at Soldern in the Austrian Tyrol for another at Bruges for a third. Other alternatives are The Theatre Club (in Bristol we are enormously lucky in the Old Vic and its two theatres, and the existence of the Old Vic Theatre School), the Music Society, including the orchestra, and the Film Society. Such activities are not the prerogative of the comprehensive school. They would be found in all good schools. The advantage the comprehensive school has for the community is that leaders among the children have not been creamed off to a separate school. By their presence in the comprehensive school they are able to give a lead and sparkle that is otherwise missing. The whole tempo of discussion is raised, especially in small groups; I will refer to this later.

Now, how further can the comprehensive school achieve its aim so that all children may say, with Ernest Barker, 'with my school I had everything'? A very important point, I believe, is not to label children at entry. If we label, we are making Plato's mistake of dividing people up into golden, silver and bronze without adequate information on which to base these decisions. Labelling 'A, B, C,' etc. prevents children from reaching their maximum because, having been labelled, the succeeding response to any educational situation is often less than what is possible - this is almost as pernicious as sending them to separate schools. What we have done is to organise our six classes at entry into five quite parallel and equal forms as far as general ability is concerned, removing only the least able to a remedial teacher.

Here are some comments from staff who teach groups of mixed abilities. 'There is a form ethos in all forms'. 'When children are classified A, B, C, D, there is a rapidly diminishing morale from A to D'. 'The sum total of work done in the forms is much greater than the sum total of work done in graded forms'. There is more sparkle in all forms, equal to that in 'A' forms where streaming is used. Here are some very recent figures showing the end of term examination positions, compared with positions which the children would have held if I had divided them on the basis of verbal ability quotients. (Children were taught in mixed ability groups in five subjects, English, history, geography, science and divinity.)

If, last September, we had divided our new entry according to their verbal ability quotients into five groups of 34, + 20 who needed remedial care, we should have misplaced the following numbers of pupils:

In the first (or what might hitherto have been called our 'A' class), 11 out of 34 pupils would have been incorrectly placed, 10 would have merited only a place in 'B' and one in 'C'. In the second, 24 would have been incorrectly placed with nine deserving to be higher and 15 lower. In the third class, 26 would have been incorrectly placed, with 16 deserving to be higher and 10 lower. In the next class, 18 would have been incorrectly placed, and in the last class 11 correctly placed.

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Some of my staff have felt that they are not able to deal with the teaching of boys and girls in mixed ability classes and so I made it possible for them to opt out. The mathematics staff opted out of this situation after two months and now teach mathematics lessons in graded sets, and the French staff opted out after Christmas. They had a whole term of teaching mixed ability groups but they felt that some people in the room were wasting time and they could not cope with the situation.

I wonder if colleges and departments of education can come to our aid in helping students to cope with the teaching of units of mixed ability. Some junior school staffs have been doing this most successfully for some time.

A second point is that just as many pupils will not require GCE 'O', level courses, so they will not require a fragmented timetable. The pupils I have in mind thrive on examining worthwhile problems and making a co-operative enquiry. I do not believe that the grammar school type of terminal examinations have any place in making judgements about these children.

The principles behind Mode 3 of CSE might be useful with the continued assessment of coursework. I have been very disappointed over the country as a whole at the poor response to the possibilities of Mode 3 CSE. It rather shows, I am afraid, the unwillingness of many members of staff to re-think their curricula.

At Bedminster Down we have been encouraged on two fronts with the education of those only recently staying for a fifth year in secondary school: first by the introduction of carefully chosen new subjects seen to be relevant by the students, and second, by the synthesis of existing subjects into larger groupings. Subjects which have caught the interest of pupils are:

1. Commerce - a typical subject for bridging the classroom and the world outside. It deals with such things as the department store, the multiple store, why pyjamas at Marks & Spencer are so much cheaper than anywhere else, banking and insurance, why the man at the booking office of a railway station will take a postal order and not a cheque, why you must insure your car, why you should insure your house. All these things, leading on to the world into which they are going, arouse interest.

2. 'The house' - everything to do with the house, its situation, its repair, its organisation, its furnishing, its carpets; visiting houses of high repute. In Bristol we are fortunate in having a number of places to which we can take these very ordinary boys and girls - ordinary in the truest sense of the word - to see and assess houses, to develop the elements of taste in furnishing and decor.

I do not think we have been so successful in organising our subjects into spheres of interest as recommended in the Newsom Report. I think there is apprehension on the part of staff about cutting across subject barriers. I wonder if Education Departments can help here. Are there Colleges and Departments of Education which offer courses which cut across subject boundaries just as some of the new Universities do?

I wish to end with the description of the way in which the English staff used a film as an educational tool with fifth year students. In using a film, we are employing a contemporary medium of communication, which has attained the level of an art form but which is also an accepted pattern of leisure, accepted (unlike reading) by the masses. This is a source of education virtually untapped at present, and I believe it has enormous

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possibilities. The method that we adopt is a variation of 'team teaching'. The example I have chosen is the film 12 Angry Men by Henry Fonda. I should like to explain our modus operandi.

First, an English and art staff meeting, chaired by the head of English, discussed plans and the questions which were going to be considered. Secondly, the film was shown to the whole year of 180 pupils, taking the whole afternoon. Thirdly, during the subsequent English lesson, the classes were with their normal English teachers (one to 30 pupils) and the story of the film was discussed - the trial of an immigrant coloured boy who is accused of the murder of his father by stabbing. The 12 angry men are the jurors who gradually through the persuasion and energy of one man come to change their almost unanimous verdict of guilty to a unanimous one of not guilty.

The technique used by the director was then talked about. There were questions and discussion on economy and efficiency in the presentation of ideas; and on how imagery is powerfully and sharply realised, as with the first shots of the massive pillars of the courts of justice. The camera looks up from below, suggesting by their dominance the awful majesty of justice. Next are discussed the chattering excited people inside the foyer who have clearly just won a case, showing that justice, for all its pomp, concerns ordinary people. Then there is the shot of the hushed courtroom, where the judge is coming to the end of his summing-up - he looks bored, doodles with his pencil, drinks a glass of water, and without his English-type wig presents a picture of fallible man, modifying the eminence of the opening shot and questioning appearance and reality. Throughout the film the camera is used to probe and explore the nature of one of our institutions and to question its validity.

At first it seems an open and shut case - the judge's casual air, the juryman's concern with the heat and one man's comment that they were fortunate to have a murder because 'robberies are so boring': all this endorses an atmosphere of bored indifference. Phrases such as 'you know what they are like', 'they - coloured people - are born liars', 'we are mature men', 'we are grown up', echo through the film until we realise that we don't know what they are like and that most of us are not mature men but act in many instances like children, as do the jurymen themselves (flicking paper about, sulking, wanting to fight, getting involved in 'yes/no' arguments). Ultimately we see that through this exploration of prejudice the idea of capital punishment and the principle of the jury system are being questioned.

At this stage the whole of the English staff is deployed and the whole year split up into groups of mixed ability, sitting around, not in desks, but in a circle, talking. The questions that were originally prepared for discussion at this stage were: Is anyone really capable of judging his fellow man? What could replace the jury system? Ought we to continue with the untrained JPs? If jurors are so fickle, what of capital punishment? (The Timothy Evans case is mentioned). It is rather remarkable that a fortnight after this exercise the Lord Chief Justice should have been questioning the efficiency of the jury system.

Is the alternative - prison for long periods - satisfactory (a) for rehabilitation of the criminal and (b) for society? (The Scandinavian system of drunken drivers being sent straight away to work on the roads is mentioned.) What is the right sentence? Should it be decided individually on each case? If we believe in the influence of environment, are we not giving offenders an infinitely worse environment by placing them in prison with hardened types? What can we do with hardened types? Then followed a discussion of the sentences of the 'great train robbers'. Now with small numbers of 15 sitting as a group and not at desks, carefully led and containing pupils of all levels of ability,

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really worthwhile discussions result. It is at this small group level that the advantages of having children of the highest intelligence in a discussion group are apparent. With small groups there is not the opportunity for the shy and backward to become lost and to avoid making a contribution to the discussion. The bright boy can, if not watched, monopolise the discussion in a full class, with little effect on the shy and retiring, but in a smaller group there are more opportunities for his talents to raise the standard of thought and speech of all the rest. This is where standards in a comprehensive school are most effectively raised and where the greatest deprivation is suffered in creaming off all the bright boys and girls to a separate establishment.

This deprivation has not always been with us. In the title deeds of Windermere Grammar School established in 1613, we read that it is 'free to all local inhabitants', and at Moulton Grammar School, Lincolnshire, 'the school-master is asked not to refuse any of the town of Moulton'. These schools, although named grammar schools, would certainly not have excluded children - they were comprehensive schools!

I conclude by maintaining that the educational needs of all the children and of our society in the second half of this century will only be completely met by:

1 Not separating children into different schools at 11.

2 Not labelling children in the primary school and the early years of secondary school.

3 Having a flexible school in which some teaching goes on in forms, some in years, and some in very small groups. Many children indeed will have their own timetables. School architects will need to do some re-thinking.

4 Making arrangements for schools to be open longer, as was mentioned at a recent National Union of Teachers Conference. At present there is deprivation for those whose homes are not places for quiet study.

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9. The curriculum

Professor P. H. Hirst, M.A.
Department of Education, King's College, University of London

I want to look first at certain general problems of curriculum construction, and only then turn to the immediate problems with which this conference is concerned. I am doing this quite deliberately because it seems to me that at least some new ideas for the secondary curriculum are to be rejected not because of inadequacies in detail, but because of inadequacies in the basic approach. The complex problem of curriculum planning is, I think, often vastly over-simplified and if the enterprise is not to be misconceived then there are certain fundamental principles which must be explicitly recognised. I shall therefore first clear the decks by making some simple but important general points.

Rational curriculum planning and its demands

Realistic planning of any curriculum involves the direct and careful consideration of three closely inter-related categories of elements. First there are the educational objectives (A) which are being aimed at. These are the developments we wish to see in our pupils: qualities of mind, attitudes, values, skills, dispositions, as well as the acquisition of a great deal of knowledge. Secondly, there is the content or the matter (B) employed in the curriculum as a means to these objectives. By this I mean the plays of Shakespeare to be studied, the historical period that is selected and its particular aspects, the range of problems of a practical kind connected with the house or home, etc. Thirdly, there are the activities and methods (C) that are employed to achieve the objectives. These nowadays include not merely the traditional methods of chalk and talk, but the more informal methods of model-making, visiting, library and group work, and those methods made possible by technological advance, use of television, teaching machines, etc.

As I understand it, rational curriculum planning consists of developing and tailoring a course under B and C to achieve A; the planning of content and methods to achieve the objectives. It is as simple and straightforward as that.

In terms of the three elements that I have distinguished, the conventional grammar school curriculum, I suggest, is marked in the first place by the limited range of its objectives. These consist of the mastery of certain areas of very well established knowledge, the acquisition of certain widely held beliefs, the learning of a number of skills, and the development of a very limited range of qualities of mind. The matter or content that is used to achieve these objectives is largely, if not entirely, a body of propositions to be learnt, together with material for the practice of related skills, organised into a structure of distinct 'subjects'. The methods or activities employed are largely confined to the formal procedures of 'chalk and talk'.

In contrast, the more 'progressive' secondary curriculum is characterised, as far as objectives are concerned, by an altogether vaster range of human developments which

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are judged to be important, and by a general playing down of the mastery of prescribed areas of knowledge. As to matter or content, this is very much less rigidly pre-determined than in the previous case and is conceived more in terms of topics or practical projects that are of interest to children than in terms of distinct subjects. The activities and methods used are largely informal. There is much more concern with direct experience and with problem situations, with the adaptation of the programme to the individual child's needs and interests, and with collaboration in groups.

These two approaches to the curriculum I have sketched very generally and very crudely. There is much that could be said on extreme forms of them and on the many more moderate compromises that have been developed. With all this we are all perfectly familiar. I propose to say just sufficient by way of comment on these positions to highlight three crucial demands of rational curriculum planning. On all three of these it seems to me both traditional and progressive approaches fail.

The first demand is that the educational objectives be clear and precise. Only then can realistic practical programmes for achieving them be formed. I am very much in agreement with what has already been said about recognising the value-judgments involved in curriculum planning. Certainly the job is 'value-loaded' through and through. But we must get clear precisely what it is we think is of value, characterising it with the greatest possible precision. We may wish to pass on our notions of justice, but we shall have to work out in great detail what these notions are before we have any clear educational objectives. In particular we need to know how general terms like this apply in specific situations. If it is not clear what the objectives of the enterprise are, then from a rational point of view the whole pursuit is being vitiated from the start. A very great deal of curriculum experiment has been vitiated on just these grounds. The second demand is that we do not confuse questions about objectives with questions about content and questions about methods. It would be absurd to suggest that these elements are not inter-related in very complex ways, but there are quite distinguishable questions to be asked here; they must be kept distinct and dealt with appropriately. The third demand of rational planning is that we begin first with questions of objectives and only then move on to questions about content and methods.

The weaknesses of 'traditional' and 'progressive' curricula

Bearing these points in mind, what of 'traditional' and 'progressive' approaches to the curriculum? I have already commented that the traditional approach has very limited objectives, largely those associated with academic learning. What is equally important however, is that these objectives are almost never explicitly formulated. They are accepted and passed on as part of a tradition. It seems to me time to dig up these implicit objectives and examine them at very close quarters. I think it is highly debatable whether the range of the objectives generally pursued is appropriate today. It is doubtful whether the knowledge passed on in academic courses, even when we want such courses, is what we really think best for our pupils. And it is still more debatable whether the qualities of mind pursued are those which we ought to be developing in a period of rapid social and economic change.

In the progressive case, it seems to me that the objectives are certainly not too limited. The problem is rather that of determining any strict range of objectives at all. The ends to be achieved are often left completely open and as a result the methods employed, however enlightened, result in little of real educational value. Lack of specificity of objectives can only result in a great deal of wasted effort.

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On the second point, the distinction between questions of objectives, of content and of method, it seems to me that in the traditional curriculum there is a perpetual tendency for the distinction between objectives and content to be eroded. Some of the objectives of the curriculum can be expressed in a sequence of propositions stating the areas of knowledge to be mastered. Such a string of propositions is, however, frequently taken to be a statement of the content to be used in the curriculum. As a result, a limited statement of objectives becomes regarded as a total statement of them and is then directly employed as the content to be mastered. In this way there is a tendency for education to be reduced to the memorisation of propositions and the mastery of very limited skills, achievements which conventional examinations can very easily test. The result is the serious impoverishment of education all along the line, in terms of objectives and content and finally in methods.

The determination of the content of the curriculum is surely quite distinct from the determination of the objectives. If we are concerned with the development of scientific understanding, we are not simply after the memorisation of propositions. A great deal of observation and experiment may be necessary before one ever gets to the precise formulation of general laws. A full statement of the content used in teaching will therefore include much more than a statement of the propositions the pupils will master in the end. We must keep separate the statement of the objectives and that of the content used as a means to these ends.

A further confusion of questions about objectives and questions about content and methods arises over the issue of the 'subject' structure of the curriculum. I regard it as a basic philosophical truth about the nature of knowledge that, whether we like it or not, all knowledge is differentiated into a limited number of logically distinct forms or disciplines. If this is a philosophical truth, then it cannot be ignored. It means that the objectives of knowledge and understanding we are concerned with have an implicit organisation, there are distinctions and inter-relations between these objectives which must necessarily be recognised. The distinct conceptual structures within knowledge are part of what has to be mastered in acquiring knowledge. But it does not follow that, because these structures are to be found in the objectives that we are after, they must explicitly map out the content of the curriculum. The content must be planned and structured to achieve objectives that have their own inter-relations. To proceed from saying that there is a given structure in the knowledge we wish to be mastered to saying that this must be the structure of the curriculum, is to be guilty of a simple logical fallacy. Means must not be confused with ends, and the characteristics of the means must not be taken for the characteristics of the ends. I see no reason why the curriculum should not be fully 'topic-organised' provided it is understood that the development of understanding involves the mastery of conceptual structures which are not reflected in the topic-organisation.

Finally, I think there is a similar confusion, but between objectives and methods, where the progressive curriculum is concerned. We wish, as an objective, to enable pupils to solve at least some of the many practical problems they are going to face in life. The ability to solve these problems is an objective. It does not follow from this that the curriculum should be directly geared in its methods to problem-solving. To assume this is to confuse an objective with a method. We wish to plan the curriculum in content and methods so that pupils will as a result be able to solve practical and theoretical problems. We must therefore set about discovering what pupils need to know in terms of matters of sheer fact, what different methods must be used to solve different types of questions, whether the expertise for one kind is important in another, and so on. All this needs to be disentangled before we can tell how best to educate pupils to cope with

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their problems. There is no guarantee whatever that the best way is to organise the whole curriculum round problem-solving. Of course there will be elements of problem-solving in the curriculum, but one must not over-emphasise one objective at the expense of others and rush into thinking that educational methods can be determined as simply as this logical confusion implies.

Just as some particular objectives must not be allowed to determine teaching methods directly, so also elements of teaching methods must not be glorified into objectives. One example of this must suffice. It is manifestly the case that adequate teaching in many areas must involve pupils in a great deal of first-hand and practical experience. From this it does not follow that all experience is, as such, a significant educational objective. There are many types of experience that are anything but valuable and have no place in education. And further, practical experience is only one element needed in teaching. Of itself it may frequently prove valueless as an educational method. Unqualified emphasis on experience as an educational objective is grossly misleading, as indeed is such emphasis on its significance as a method.

If we are to prevent confusions and inadequacies of the kind I have instanced, then the only way is, I think, to stick to the principle I suggested as my third point. We must first formulate our objectives clearly, in realistic and operational terms, and then, and only then, move on to the questions of content and method. We must resist the temptation to rush in with new ideas about content and methods with only the haziest notions of what we're trying to achieve, piously hoping that something worthwhile will result in the end. We would be much better off harnessing our energies into finding more successful means for reaching those objectives we are clear about, whilst we thrash out new objectives in more controversial areas. Let us be revolutionary about means when we know what we're after, and when we don't know what we're after let us refrain from what might be mis-educative practice till we have got our intentions straight.

New curriculum objectives

Let me turn now to the more specific implications for curriculum planning that seem to arise from recent social and economic changes. From my reading of the situation, it seems to me that there are five respects in which our curriculum objectives need most serious reconsideration. First, we need to plan to achieve certain particular attitudes and qualities of mind which we have not previously emphasised half enough. I am thinking here of an attitude of critical questioning, a more exploratory approach to solving the practical problems of everyday life, an open attitude to social change, a desire to take personal decisions on rational grounds, and so on. Secondly, it seems to me that we have got to hand on explicitly a body of social and moral values. We shall need to get clearer what we value and why. Fortunately we are agreed on many moral matters in our society even if not on all. Education in this area is not made impossible because people disagree on certain major issues. The teaching of moral principles is now being left to the school more and more and it seems to me to be a task that cannot be ignored. And not only must the principles be taught; how to apply them in practice is just as important. Thirdly, we must hand on an understanding of the institutions of our society and of social and personal relationships. This means a whole new area of objectives, as far as the traditional grammar school curriculum is concerned at any rate. Fourthly, we must recognise a need for the mastery of a whole battery of social and practical skills that are important in contemporary society. Fifthly, there have been developments in long accepted areas of knowledge - in the sciences, the arts, economics and so on - which need to be brought into the school curriculum if it is to keep up with the growth of human understanding.

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These are five main ways in which it seems to me our objectives have got to shift. My specification of them has been very general; at a conference of this kind this is all that is appropriate. What we shall have to do some time is to stop the general talk, and get down to the arduous business of spelling out in great detail what these qualities of mind values, etc. are. Those we are passing on already, we have got to examine afresh. We have to decide what areas of social and personal knowledge, what skills and what new developments in traditional areas we are to pursue in the curriculum. All this is an exceptionally specialised business. I do not think it can be done except by people extremely knowledgeable in the relevant areas, working together with practising teachers, psychologists, sociologists, etc.

The order in which I have mentioned these changes in our objectives reflects to some extent the importance they might have in transforming the structure of the curriculum. But to begin to see the implications of these changes for curriculum planning, we must look further at what the attainment of these objectives might involve.

First, the development of certain qualities of mind. When it is said, for instance, that we need to develop a critical attitude, or a preparedness to accept social change, what do we really want? Certainly we do not want pupils to develop a hypercritical scepticism or to be thoroughly nonconformist in everything. Nor do we want them to accept indiscriminately any social change that threatens. In that case we must recognise the fact that we are not after simple general qualities of mind. We wish to develop very subtle and complex attitudes that will most discriminatingly be taken up in appropriate circumstances only. Non-conformity is not necessarily a virtue and scepticism is frequently quite unjustifiable. The development of the qualities we do want is therefore no easy matter. They must be pursued in association with the knowledge, skill and rational judgment appropriate in different areas. Critical questioning and nonconformity of the right kind logically presuppose relevant knowledge, skill and judgment. It is therefore logically impossible to develop the qualities without mastery of these necessary elements or outside the context in which these are seen to operate. What is more, granted these necessary conditions, the development of the qualities of mind is an exceedingly subtle matter which is little understood. To imagine that there is any easy route is to be naive in the extreme. To imagine that they can be developed in general with pupils who are manifestly failing to acquire the basic knowledge, skill and judgment they require is to court educational disaster.

To be clear about this business, then, we need to examine far more carefully than we have done the qualities of mind we want and what they presuppose. In general, it seems to me that these qualities are dependent on highly specific factors, in spite of the general labels that are used. Educationists nowadays love to talk about creativity, for example, or the ability to solve problems. But what exactly have creativity and problem-solving in mathematics got to do with these qualities in literary composition? The content is so radically different in the two cases that it is far from obvious that it makes sense to talk of the qualities in a general way. And even if it does make sense, where is the solid evidence that there is in fact the implied 'transfer of training'?

From what I have said, it seems to me to follow that the pursuit of the required new qualities of mind does not demand a quite radically new pattern of curriculum. If these qualities are specific to a large degree, and are achievable only in so far as a great deal of relevant knowledge is acquired, then there is nothing about their character that demands a new type of approach. In so far as we need to change the qualities of mind we pursue, however, this will inevitably bring quite new emphases within our curriculum organisations. But we must take care not to be swept away by an interest in new qualities of mind. for like the older ones, they demand a recognition of very fundament distinctions within human knowledge.

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Turning to the second respect in which we must change our curricula, surely education in the making of moral judgments must now be brought explicitly into the picture. This is going to demand the formulation of the principles we wish to teach. Here I am entirely in agreement with Professor Peters about the distinction we must make between those relative values on which we are not agreed, and those values of a more absolute or permanent character on which we are agreed. Until we are clearer as to the level at which we have agreement, we have no satisfactory basis for moral education. We therefore need to formulate these principles, to sort out the concepts involved and the logic of moral reasoning. And we need to get on with this too, for many people are engaged in moral education, whether they like it or not, and most of them have little idea about what they are trying to do. We must also look again at the factual knowledge about society and personal relationships without which it is impossible for pupils to learn to make responsible moral judgments. On this background of necessary information we are quite unclear. And we shall have to formulate programmes of work which can provide not only basic moral understanding but also some basic moral training. It is surely quite obvious that satisfactory education in this area is not a merely intellectual matter. A school community necessarily provides a moral training and we need to reexamine and quite deliberately re-plan what goes on, with positive aims in mind. How much of this will result in the emergence of a new school 'subject' called moral education, how much of this education can occur within existing subject or topic arrangements and how much we can explicitly build into the school organisation, I do not know. I doubt if anyone has more than the vaguest idea. Many of us are hoping that the Farmington Trust research project will get us much nearer some of the answers, but of course there is much that can be done on a smaller scale and indeed ought to be done without delay.

On the third and fourth areas of change for the curriculum, we need to decide what elements of the social sciences we must introduce. We have as yet very little experience of teaching children about the nature and structure of society so that they find these matters interesting and important. As to how they can best learn important social skills we are even more in the dark. Here we shall surely have to think of pupils mixing far more widely in society outside the school as an essential part of their education. By its very nature a great deal of social learning must be done on the spot within the appropriate institutions. Teaching about social roles is a particularly important matter that has already been considered in this conference to some extent. I am not knowledgeable about the sociological aspects of this and the significance of roles in the development of self-concepts. I am not sure, however, that I agree with Professor Musgrove's suggestion that we must be torn between developing an attachment to a vocational role and the pursuit of liberal education. It does seem to me that new roles might arise for students other than the vocational one which are more in harmony with what we wish to achieve in education. What of the role of student itself, for instance? At any rate, it is surely vital for pupils' development that they understand a much wider range of roles than has been the case so far and are initiated into them much more adequately.

Finally, we have to rethink the objectives we set ourselves in established areas of the curriculum. Are we in fact emphasising the right elements in both arts and sciences, the right concepts, principles, skills, applications, etc? Or ought we to determine anew those objectives that are appropriate for youngsters who will be staying on at school till 16? Is what we teach in fact up to date, in line with modern scholarship and concerned with modern applications? I cannot but believe that, if we got down to the detailed analysis; we should want to change a great deal.

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A new structure for the curriculum?

But assuming we re-formulate our objectives, what changes in the structure of the curriculum will be demanded? The pursuit of these objectives, some of them quite new, some of them newly emphasised, will not, as far as I can see, demand any total revision of curriculum structure. I am aware that I am going against a lot of opinion here, but this in fact seems to me to be the case. I see nothing new in kind involved in the pursuit of these new ends and I see no necessity to think that the whole pattern of the curriculum must now be dug up and re-structured in a new way. I have not found in any of the suggestions for new curricula that I have come across any coherent principles that are in any sense new. As I understand it there are two distinct factors that determine curriculum structure. There is first the very nature of the objectives being pursued. This determines what it is logically possible to do if you are coherently and intelligibly to pursue the objectives. We must know what restrictions there are on the curriculum because of the structure of the objectives themselves. Secondly, there is the whole question of the empirical evidence as to how best children acquire the knowledge, qualities of mind, etc. that we are after. What is the empirical evidence about learning, motivation, teaching methods and the like?

If we look at the nature of even some of the objectives we set ourselves, there are very significant implications for curriculum structure. As I see it, the central objectives of education are developments of mind and these we must set out first. Other objectives, certain physical and social skills for instance, are being pursued as well, but not in isolation from developments of mind. We are not training animals or programming machines; we are concerned with the development of people, rational beings, all of whose activities are peculiarly related to their possession of minds. And central to all developments of mind that we want is the development of understanding, for without this we cannot achieve in any significant way all the more subtle qualities of mind. But in pursuing knowledge and understanding as the central objectives we must realise that here, at the very heart of education, there is an in-built logical structure to all that we are pursuing. As I mentioned earlier, it seems to me an inescapable fact that knowledge is composed of a number of distinct autonomous forms, for instance the sciences, history, moral understanding, and that each of these domains is what it is because of a distinctive network of related concepts that it employs. This means that the growth of understanding is necessarily dependent on the grasp of a pattern of concepts and cannot be a random matter. In the last analysis, I fail to see how there can be any development of mind without the development of conceptual schemes. Even at the earliest stages of learning, where concepts are related to immediate sense experience and simple practical enterprises, complex conceptual structures are beginning to develop. At the very heart of our objectives, then, are these structures of concepts which we must hand on. In educational planning we ignore them at our peril. And, let me repeat, this is not merely a question of the demands of intellectual development, as if other developments of mind can go on independently. I am suggesting that all developments of mind are strictly dependent on conceptual developments and cannot be dissociated from them.

In saying that at rock bottom education is dependent on the acquisition of a number of autonomous forms of knowledge. I am not saying that the relevant conceptual schemes are not inter-connected. They are indeed most closely inter-related. We must, in fact, hang on to two things. There are distinct schemes; the concepts of mathematics, say, are not of the same logical kind as those of morals or even of science. Yet the sciences use mathematical concepts, moral judgements can depend on scientific evidence, and so on. We must, therefore, also hang on to the complex connections between the different domains. But to swing to this extreme too much, arguing for the

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integration of knowledge as a whole, is, I think, quite unrealistic. How knowledge which is necessarily built in concepts having quite distinct and unique functions can be integrated, I do not know. Maybe the sciences can be integrated eventually, but these are all of a logically similar kind. To extend this notion to all knowledge is, I suggest, meaningless. Unfortunately this radically vague notion has been put to hard work in educational discussion and has befuddled far too much curriculum planning.

'Subject' and 'topic' curricula

In our traditional organisation of school subjects, we do of course recognise that knowledge is rooted in the development of distinct conceptual schemes. But we do also, even in this traditional organisation, have subjects which cut right across such conceptual distinctions. Units of this kind, based on a topic or project of interest that can be approached in many different ways, are now being widely developed in curriculum construction. Within a given topic or project there are likely to appear elements which have their true logical homes in many different conceptual schemes. If a topic or project is to be educationally valuable therefore, I am convinced that it must become, at different times, the study of mathematical questions, then of scientific questions, then of historical questions, and so on. It may well emphasise the inter-relations between these questions. But if it is to contribute significantly to the development of understanding, it must necessarily be divisible into elements concerned with the development of different conceptual schemes and their applications. If one takes a practical project of some kind, then it is true that there is a unity that may be achieved ultimately in deciding what is to be done on the basis of many different kinds of evidence. Knowledge from the social sciences, from the physical sciences, from history, etc., can contribute to the making of practical judgments. But once more, if the practical project is really positively worthwhile, it must involve serious and disciplined study of the scientific, historical and other elements involved, each according to the strict canons of knowledge in this area.

It seems to me to follow that we must reject certain consequences of the progressive movement in education. The first of these is an unfortunate anti-intellectualism. No matter what the ability of the child may be, the heart of all his development as a rational being is, I am saying, intellectual. Maybe we shall need very special methods to achieve this development in some cases. Maybe we have still to find the best methods for the majority of people. But let us never lose sight of the intellectual aim on which so much else, nearly everything else, depends. Secondly, it seems to me that we must get away completely from the idea that linguistic and abstract forms of thought are not for some people. If one is to develop any degree of understanding in any area of knowledge, then it is logically necessary to master the use of the appropriate symbolism. Mastery of that symbolism is not an extra to understanding but the very medium in which these forms of understanding can be acquired. I am, of course, here including the symbolism of music and the fine arts. The use of symbolism is basic to the development of mind; each area of understanding necessarily demanding a grasp of the appropriate symbols. This means that we must get away from what can be called a retreat into the arts and practical activities, as being more suitable for the less intellectually able. There is a central place in education for the arts, and that goes for all pupils. But the significance of the arts is limited, and any retreat from the demands of other forms of development in language is to set barriers to the developments open to many children. Thirdly, because conceptual development at the secondary stage of education occurs almost entirely through the use of language in appropriate circumstances, we must reject the belief that largely unstructured problem situations have a major educational role - as if pupils could learn all but some necessary skills in this way. This belief would

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seem to be a hangover from the idea that the development of mind is largely a natural flowering, given the right environment. Now that we recognise that the development of mind is centrally dependent on socially acquired conceptual schemes, critical attitudes, principles etc., we must accept the active role of the teacher once more and work out the detailed implications of this.

I have been concerned with some of the demands on curriculum planning that follow from the nature of the objectives themselves, for these ends exercise a severe control on the means that can be employed. When we turn to the empirical evidence on which to base curriculum planning, it seems to me that we lack many of the very necessary generalisations on which to work. Many people have a great deal of particular experience and personal knowledge of how best to organise content and methods so as to reach various educational objectives. But where are the valid generalisations that can be derived from this experience? Where is the systematically collected evidence upon which we can set about the rational construction of courses? At the moment we simply have not got this knowledge. It is to be hoped that, as a result of the efforts of the Schools Council in particular, there is now going to be a great pooling of knowledge and that solid advance will be made on many of these fronts where we desperately need reliable evidence. Comparative studies concerned with different content and methods used to achieve specific objectives is what we want. It is widely assumed, for instance, in the Newsom Report, that pupils learn best if the focus of attention is 'practical' and 'real'. But this is far too vast a generalisation to be anything but misleading. Learn what exactly? And what is a practical or a real situation? It is revealing to examine the Newsom Report for the answers to these questions. In this area, as in so many others, we simply need to know the facts in detailed cases. Meanwhile, there is a certain amount of psychological evidence coming from the United States which seems to put the emphasis on the factors governing learning which I have been emphasising from a philosophical point of view - on the importance of the development and application of conceptual schemes. There is a fair amount of work now in progress designed to assess the significance of such schemes in promoting more adequate and more rapid understanding, greater ability to recall, etc.

In the light of these comments, what should we do about the organisation of the curriculum? There are basically two distinct types of structure we can use, subject structure and topic structure. It is quite clear, I think, that on logical grounds alone the subject structure is to be preferred, concentrating as it does on the systematic development and application of distinct conceptual schemes. 'Teach the elements of one structure at a time' would seem to be a fundamental principle arising from the nature of the objectives we're after. And there is now a growing amount of psychological evidence to support this point of view. However, you may consider that there is a great deal of practical and empirical evidence at your finger-tips that goes right against this conclusion. Maybe there is. Certainly I have argued that one must separate questions about the structure of what we are ultimately after from questions about the structure of the means. I am certainly not in a position to make a final judgment on this matter and I do not know who is. What does seem dangerous, however, is having a topic organisation when teachers are not clear what concepts and understanding, what values and attitudes, are being aimed at and how the development of these is related to a progressive grasp of distinct conceptual structures. At least in the subject curriculum, teachers, by and large, know where they are going, however limited the end may be, and they have some sound ideas on how to get there. Maybe what we need is to keep a subject structure and to revolutionise our methods from top to bottom. I am afraid that at the moment the objectives of far too many topic and project methods are far from clear. When they are clear, and the approach is fully designed to achieving appropriate

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ends, it manifestly has immense value. If this method could be adequately developed and controlled, then it might well really come into its own and make a tremendous difference to the education of all, not only the less able. This approach is, however, logically artificial, extremely difficult to use to satisfactory educational effect and liable to a great deal of abuse.

The best curriculum may well be a combination of both these organisations. My preference, and it is little more than that, is for a curriculum which is fundamentally subject based, but which pursues links between different disciplines with real seriousness, projects being organised to this end by the collaboration of staff who know what they are after from the standpoint of the contributing disciplines. An approach of which I am very suspicious is that which is entirely topic based except for periods devoted to 'skills'. The so called 'skills' of mathematics, English, etc. are to my understanding essential parts of certain fundamental disciplines. They cannot, beyond a minimal level, be acquired adequately outside the context of the appropriate disciplines. To develop computational skills without developing a clear grasp of when and how these skills are appropriately applied is quite miseducative. Similarly with the skills of communication.

Suggestions for rational curriculum development

In conclusion I would like to list some of the moves I think we have to make if we are to get anywhere in rational planning. Once more, general conclusions are all I can draw, for a conference like this cannot provide detailed answers to curriculum problems.

First, we have to clarify what we wish to teach in the matter of moral education. Secondly, we must clarify what we want to teach in the social sciences and what social skills we want alongside this understanding. In both of these areas we must distinguish between the relatively permanent and the more superficial and transient.

Thirdly, we must re-examine our traditional objectives in teaching the arts, mathematics, the sciences, etc. Are we being up to date and relevant?

Fourthly, we must recognise that in all areas a variety of emphases can be given to any subject. The teaching of physics does not have to be along the lines demanded by 'O' and 'A' levels. Different courses can emphasise quite different concepts, principles, applications, etc. We must in every case decide first what we want and plan the courses to achieve this. In particular we must plan to develop a.more responsible concern for questioning, investigation, rational judgment, practical application, etc.

Fifthly, we must pay attention to the development of the pupils' self-concept and this involves catering for a wide range of worthwhile pursuits, and possible career choices, though in the conduct of education itself the significance of the latter should, I think, be played down.

Sixthly, we must discover the precise conceptual structures involved in both the traditional areas and the newer areas of understanding. There is no way of getting round the demands of detailed study here, if the courses we are to plan are to be rationally coherent and consistent.

Finally, in so far as we are clear about objectives, a great deal of experiment must go on in the schools to discover how these objectives can be embodied in a content and method that teachers can use successfully. This, I take it, is largely an empirical matter on which practising teachers must contribute practically everything.

We are, I think, about to begin a new era of rational planning of the curriculum, something of which there has been very little in the past. There is manifestly a great

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deal of meticulous research work and experiment to be done, and the sooner we get on with it the better. If we can only muster our resources to the task we can achieve much and, with the aid of the Schools Council, there is no reason why we should not do just that. I for one have great hopes for our new curricula.

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APPENDIX

List of members attending the Conference

Mr E. L. Britton, M.A. Chairman General Secretary, Association of Teachers in Technical Institutions; Chairman, Schools Council sub-committee on preparations for the raising of the school leaving age

Dr C. Armour British Broadcasting Corporation (Schools Broadcasting)

Mr K. A. Baird Association of Teachers in Colleges and Departments of Education; Principal, Nottingham College of Education

Miss W. Blackburn Headmistress, Claremont Secondary School for Girls, Manchester, 14

Group Captain A. D. Button Deputy Director, RAF Educational Services

Mr G. E. Carter Confederation of British Industry; Stewart & Lloyds Ltd, Bilston Iron and Steel Works

Mr G. K. Caston Department of Education and Science

Mr A. E. Coleman Monkwick County Secondary School, Colchester; Principal, Senior Evening Institute, Colchester

Mr N. F. Cowen Chief Information Officer, Department of Education and Science

Mr C. Davies Headmaster, Coronation County Secondary School, Pembroke Dock; Superintendent, Pembroke Dock Evening Institute

Mr L. J. Drew Association of Chief Education Officers; Director of Education, Swansea

Mr C. W. Elliott National Union of Teachers; Rowlett County Primary School, Corby, Northants

Mr A. A. Evans General Secretary, Association of Teachers in Colleges and Departments of Education

Mr N. H. Evans Association of Head Masters; Headmaster, Senacre Secondary School, Maidstone

Mr A. N. Fairbairn Youth Service Development Council; Deputy Director of Education, Leicestershire

Miss B. L. Finch National Union of Teachers; Eastwood High School for Girls, Rayleigh Road, Southend-on-Sea

Mr J. A. Fuller Formerly Principal of Institutions in Nyasaland; Tutor, University of Reading Institute of Education

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Mr C. J. Gill Formerly HMI (Chief Inspector of Schools); Gulbenkian Lecturer in Education, University of Keele

Mr N. Gillett Chairman, National Federation of Parent-Teacher Associations; Tutor to the 'Newsom Course', University of Bristol Institute of Education

Miss J. V. R. Gregory Schools Council

Mr J. D. Halloran Director Designate, Mass Communications Research Centre, University of Leicester

Mrs Davida Higgin Vice-Chairman, Confederation for the Advancement of State Education

Dr G. Highmore Headmaster, Sawston Village College, Cambridgeshire

Mr S. W. Hobson* Chief Education Officer, Kingston upon Hull

Mrs M. R. Horne Headmistress, Fairlop Secondary Girls' School, Ilford

Mr R. A. Jackson Trades Union Congress; Director of Studies, TUC Training College

Mrs Charity James Principal Lecturer in Education, Goldsmiths' College, University of London

Dr Marion Jenkinson Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Toronto, Canada

Mr C. B. Johnson National Union of Teachers; Kingswell County Junior School, Nottingham

Miss L. B. I. M. Lawrence* Kingstone Secondary School, Hereford

Mr W. J. Littlefair Schools Council

Mr I. R. Lloyd, HMI Education Office for Wales

Mr S. Lowes Headmaster, St. Mary Redcliffe and Temple School, Bristol

Miss M. J. Marshall, HMI Staff Inspector for Secondary Education

Mrs I. M. McNeill Headmistress, Swakeleys Secondary School, Ickenham, Middlesex

The Rev. Mother Mary Michael Association of Headmistresses; Headmistress, Convent of the Holy Child Jesus, Birmingham, 15

Mr T. G. Monks Senior Research Officer, National Foundation for Educational Research

Professor W. R. Niblett Conference of Institute Directors; Dean, University of London Institute of Education

Miss F. M. Oliver Association of Teachers in Colleges and Departments of Education; Glamorgan College of Education

Mr R. Openshaw Association of Chief Education Officers; Chief Education Officer, London Borough of Newham

Mr W. S. Osborne Association of Assistant Masters; The Grammar Technical School, Caerphilly. Glamorgan

Mr J. G. Owen Joint Secretary, Schools Council

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Miss D. M. Parncutt* Headmistress, Abbey High School, Kenilworth

Mr D. G. Parry Headmaster/Warden, Cwmcarn Community College, Cross Keys, Monmouthshire

Mr D. E. Powell National Union of Teachers, Treorchy Junior School, Rhondda, Glamorgan

Mr J. Raynor Head of Department of Sociology, Brighton College of Education

Miss M. A. Richmond Association of Assistant Mistresses; Horsham High School for Girls, Sussex

Mr E. E. Robinson Association of Teachers in Technical Institutions; Enfield College of Technology, Middlesex

Mr A. T. Shaw Principal Youth Employment Officer, Nottinghamshire

Mr E. C. Stevenson Headmaster, Bartholomew School, Eynsham, Oxford

Miss M. A. Stewart* Past President, National Union of Teachers; Headmistress, Shiremoor County Secondary School, Northumberland

The Reverend D. Stone Chairman, Thomaby on Tees Association for the Advancement of State Education

Dr B. M. Sugarman Research Fellow in Sociology, Farmington Trust Research Unit, Oxford

Professor P. H. Taylor Professor of Curriculum and Method, University of Birmingham

Mr D. R. O. Thomas Confederation of British Industry; Education Consultant (formerly Chief Education Officer), The United Steel Companies Ltd., Sheffield

Mr J. Trickett Headmaster, Old More Secondary School, Manchester

Professor J. P. Tuck Conference of Institute Directors, Professor of Education, University of Newcastle upon Tyne

Miss H. E. Vidal Association of Head Mistresses; Headmistress, Kesteven and Sleaford High School for Girls, Lincolnshire

Mr A. C. E. Weston Chairman, National Association of Schoolmasters Education Committee; Headmaster, Whitecross County Secondary Boys School, Hereford

Mr Gareth Williams Headmaster, St. David's County Secondary School, Wrexham

Mr Geraint Williams Headmaster, Castell Alyn Secondary School, Hope, Flintshire

Mr T. Williams Head of Department of Liberal Studies, Portsmouth College of Technology

Mr J. W. Withrington, HMI Staff Inspector for Secondary Education

Miss S. D. Wood* Secretary, Association of Assistant Mistresses; Joint Secretary, Joint Four Secondary Associations

*Member of the Schools Council sub-committee on preparations for the raising of the school leaving age.

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Conference Staff

Mr C. Priestley
Mr W. G. Broom
Mr T. J. Monks

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SCHOOL COUNCIL PUBLICATIONS

No. 1 The Certificate of Secondary Education: Some suggestions for teachers and examiners. 1963. 50p (57½p)

No. 2 CSE Experimental Examinations: Mathematics. 1964. 17½p (21p)

No. 3 The Certificate of Secondary Education: An introduction to some techniques of examining. 1964. 30p (35½p)

No. 4 The Certificate of Secondary Education: An introduction to objective-type examinations. 1964. 11 (14½p)

(Note: All the above were issued for the Secondary School Examinations Council, whose work has been taken over by the Schools Council.)

No. 5 The Certificate of Secondary Education: School-based examinations. Examining, Assessing and Moderating by teachers. 1965. 10p (13½p)

No. 6 CSE Experimental Examinations: Technical Drawing. 1965. 12½p (16p) No. 7 CSE Experimental Examinations: Mathematics 2. 1965. 22!p (28p) No. 8 CSE Experimental Examinations: Science. 1965. 15p (18½p)

No. 9 CSE Experimental Examinations: Home Economics. 1966. 17½p (23p)

No. 10 CSE Experimental Examinations: Music (+ record). 1966. 32½p (41p)

No. 11 CSE Trial Examinations: Oral English. 1966. 12½p (16p)

No. 12 Multiple marking of English compositions. 1966. 15p (20½p)

No. 13 CSE Trial Examinations: Handicraft. 1966. 12½p (16p)

No. 14 CSE Trial Examinations: Geography. 1966. 20p (25½p)

No. 15 Teachers' experience of school-based examining (English and Physics). 1967. 20p (24½p)

No. 16 CSE Trial Examinations: Written English. 1967. 15p (19½p)

No. 17 CSE Trial Examinations: Religious Knowledge. 1967. 12½p (16p)

No. 18 The Certificate of Secondary Education: The place of the Personal Topic-History. 1968. 15p (18½p)

No. 1 Mathematics in primary schools. 1965. 4th edn. 1972. 75p (86½p)

No. 2 A school approach to technology. 1967. 32½p (40p)

No. 1 Science for the young school leaver. 1965. Distributed free by the Schools Council. Out of print.

No. 2 Raising the school leaving age: A co-operative programme of research and development. 1965. 17½p (21p)

No. 3 English: A programme for research and development in English teaching. 1965. 17½p (21p)

No. 4 Science in the sixth form. 1966. 22½p (28p)

No. 5 Sixth form curriculum and examinations. 1966. Out of print. (Superseded by Working Paper 16.)

No. 6 The 1965 CSE Monitoring Experiment. 1966. Part I. 17½p (21p) Part II. 27½p (33p)

No. 7 Closer links between teachers and industry and commerce. 1966. 15p (17½p)

No. 8 French in the primary school. 1966. 42½p (48p)

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No. 9 Standards in CSE and GCE: English and Mathematics. 1967. 22½p (26p)

No. 10 Curriculum development: Teachers' groups and centres. 1967. 20p (22½p)

No. 11 Society and the young school leaver. 1967. 37½p (43p)

No. 12 The educational implications of social and economic change (Nottingham Conference 1966). 1967. 37½p (43p)

No. 13 English for the children of immigrants. 1967. 17½p (20p)

No. 14 Mathematics for the majority. 1967. 25p (29½p)

No. 15 Counselling in schools. 1967. 35p (40½p)

No. 16 Some further proposals for sixth form work. 1967. 17½p (2Op)

No. 17 Community service and the curriculum. 1968. 20p (23½p)

No. 18 Technology and the schools. 1968. Out of print.

No. 19 Development of modern language teaching in secondary schools. 1969. 22½p (26p)

No. 20 Sixth form examining methods. 1968. 17½p (21p)

No. 21 The 1966 CSE monitoring experiment. 1969. 42½p (48p)

No. 22 The middle years of schooling from 8 to 13. 1969. 40p (46p)

No. 23 Teaching classics today: A progress report. 1969. 17½p (20p)

Welsh: A programme of research and development/Y Gymraeg: Wynebu'r Dyfodol. 1967. 42½p (45p)

Another year - to endure or enjoy?: Some problems and suggestions related to the raising of the school leaving age; 1967. 27½p (30p)

Educational research in Wales. 1968. 25p (30½)

Examining at 16+: The Report of the Joint GCE/CSE Committee of the Schools Council. 1966. 12½p (I5p)

The new curriculum. (A selection from Schools Council publications 1964-7.) 1967. 22½p (27p)

Humanities for the young school leaver: An approach through classics. 1967. 20p (23½p)

Humanities for the young school leaver: An approach through English. 1968. 12½p (15p)

Schools Council: The first three years: 1964-67. 1968. 17½p (22p)

Enquiry 1: Young school leavers. (Government Social Survey.) 1968. 75p (85½p)

Change for a pound: A teaching guide for the introduction of decimal currency and the adoption of metric measures. 1968. 2nd edn. 1970. 20p (22½p)

Curriculum innovation in practice: a report of the third international curriculum conference, Oxford. 1968. 25p (30½p)

Prices in brackets include postage

The above publications, with the exception of Working Paper No. 1, can be purchased from the Government Bookshops at the addresses listed on the outside back cover (post orders to P.O. Box 569, London, SE1 9NH), or through booksellers.