Education in a Changing World (EduChnge)

Nov 23Dec 22
by Dr. Ross Boyd

Module 1 - Topic 1: Introduction

0:11 I'm Ross Boyd.

0:12 I'm a sociologist.
0:14 I have taught and written and researched across a whole
0:17 range of areas of sociological interest, including the
0:20 sociology of education.
0:23 What do sociologists do?
0:24 We study human society.
0:26 Or in more straightforward terms, we study, we try to
0:30 describe and explain the arrangements that human beings
0:34 make to organise their living together.
0:37 Put this way, you are all native sociologists.
0:42 You know a lot about the worlds in which you live, and
0:45 you know how to go on in them.
0:47 Many of the topics of sociological interest are
0:50 topics that you're familiar with as well--
0:54 schools, families, workplaces, love, death, the meanings that
1:00 we attach to masculinity and femininity, consumer culture.
1:05 What sociologists try to do is to render the familiar
1:10 unfamiliar.
1:11 We ask the kind of questions that don't normally occur to
1:15 people in the course of their normal daily lives.
1:19 We ask why are things the way they are?
1:23 How did they get to be that way?
1:27 Have they changed from the way they were in the past?
1:29 And are they still changing?
1:32 Do the arrangements that humans make work to the
1:35 benefit of all people?
1:38 Or are some advantaged by them, others disadvantaged?
1:43 And if so, how do we justify this to
1:46 others and to ourselves?
1:48 I'd like to invite you to come with me and explore education
1:53 as a social institution.
1:55 We will ask what does it mean to refer to education as a
1:59 social institution?
2:01 What is it that we're trying to
2:03 accomplish through education?
2:04 What are its aims?
2:06 Does everyone agree?
2:09 If education in a large part involves guiding young people
2:14 through the transition into adulthood, what does this idea
2:18 of a transition mean?
2:21 And has it always meant the same thing as it is today?
2:25 What subjects are students required to study in school?
2:29 And why?
2:31 Have school students always studied these subjects?
2:35 If not, why not?
2:38 And we will look ahead to the future.
2:41 We will look at some of the main forces that are shaping
2:45 the contemporary world and the world of the future.
2:49 And we will ask what are some of the implications of these
2:52 for education?
2:54 What do I hope you get from this talk?
2:57 Well, first of all, I hope you find it interesting.
3:00 I hope you find that there are moments that cause you to
3:03 pause and go hmm, I haven't thought about that.
3:08 I hope that some of my passion for sociology, for the
3:13 sociology of education, rubs off on you and encourages you
3:17 to go and explore these things for yourself.
3:21 To this end, I encourage you to participate in the
3:25 discussion forums.
3:27 They belong to you.
3:30 They give you the opportunity to share your thoughts and
3:32 feelings on the range of topics that we will be
3:35 exploring with others who are thinking about the same
3:38 things, though not necessarily in the same way that you are.
3:43 I'm interested in hearing what you have to say as well.
3:46 I also hope you find this course informative.
3:50 Education is rarely far from the centre of debates over the
3:54 type of society that we want to live in.
3:57 So hopefully you will come away from this course,
4:00 understanding a little bit more about these debates,
4:03 about the range of positions within them, the kinds of
4:07 values and beliefs that will form those positions, and that
4:10 you will be able to clarify your own position as well.
4:14 So that you may participate a little more confidently in
4:17 these debates yourself.
4:19 So come along with me.
4:21 Allow me to take this institution that you're all
4:25 familiar with, that you've all had a lot of experience with,
4:29 and place it in an unfamiliar and intriguing light.
Module 1 - Topic 2: Because we are Human!

Let's start with a working definition.

0:12 Let us say that education is the social institution that
0:17 guides the communication of knowledge, skills, cultural
0:23 norms, and values in society.
0:27 What are we to make of this?
0:29 Well, the first thing I would note is that there is nothing
0:32 in that definition that restricts us to thinking about
0:35 education solely in terms of the big system that most of us
0:40 understand it to be.
0:42 That is, the big system of schools, professional
0:45 teachers, classrooms, and a huge
0:49 bureaucracy to back it up.
0:51 It is certainly the case that, throughout the subject, this
0:56 will be the model of education we will be addressing most.
1:00 However, we do need to be aware that traditionally,
1:04 children acquired the knowledge that they needed
1:09 through participating alongside adults in daily
1:12 activities or from sitting at the feet of elders, listening
1:16 to stories that contain traditional wisdom.
1:20 In the contemporary world, we are told that we have to be
1:24 lifelong learners so that education is a process that
1:28 takes place not just in the formal institutions of
1:31 schooling but throughout all the areas of our daily life.
1:38 Second, I referred to education as a social
1:41 institution.
1:43 What is this?
1:45 When sociologists referred to social institutions, they are
1:49 basically talking about established sets of norms.
1:53 That is, formal rules and informal rules that allow
1:58 social life to be more regular and predictable.
2:02 Think about the vast number of people you interact with, many
2:07 of whom are strangers, on a daily basis throughout the
2:11 course of the year.
2:14 Many of these people you rely on to assist you in carrying
2:18 out your course of action.
2:21 Others, you rely on to not actively obstruct you.
2:25 If we can assume that everyone is playing by the same rules,
2:30 well, then we can confidently plan what it is
2:33 we're going to do.
2:35 Consider the road system.
2:37 It enables us to travel further and faster than would
2:40 be the case if it didn't exist.
2:42 What does it consist of?
2:45 First, the physical infrastructure--
2:47 roads, roundabouts, and so forth.
2:49 Secondly, formal rules.
2:53 What side of the road should you drive on?
2:55 At what speed should you drive?
2:58 What do you do when you come to an intersection?
3:01 Then there are the hosts of informal rules--
3:05 use your indicators to communicate with people to let
3:08 them know what your intentions are, matters of courtesy,
3:13 allowing people to merge in traffic.
3:16 If we didn't have these rules, the roads would be far less
3:21 safer places to drive.
3:22 Indeed, you would be a fool to venture out on to them.
3:26 Third, education's tasks are cultural.
3:30 It's about guiding the communication of knowledge,
3:33 skills, and so forth.
3:35 It's not the only social institution that does this.
3:39 Religion has done it
3:39 traditionally, so does the family.
3:42 Nowadays, the media is very important in this regard.
3:46 But it is an institution that is specifically set aside for
3:51 this purpose.
3:53 Through this guidance, education tries to ensure that
3:58 by the time young people transition into adulthood,
4:02 they are equipped with all of the knowledge that they need
4:05 to go on it the world and also an understanding of how to
4:10 behave appropriately in their dealings with others.
4:14 Why set up an institution specifically for cultural
4:17 communication?
4:20 Because we are cultural animals.
4:23 Other animals certainly have culture, and they do teach
4:26 their young.
4:28 However, culture is far more important for human beings.
4:33 We can witness the importance of culture in the sheer
4:36 diversity among humans.
4:39 While we're all biologically similar-- we have the same
4:42 physical needs to feed, to shelter, to cloth ourselves--
4:48 we all have the need to express ourselves
4:51 and to find a company.
4:53 The way we go about fulfilling those needs is incredibly
4:57 divers, and that is put down to culture.
5:02 Why is culture so important to human beings?
5:05 A big question.
5:07 One of the answers that has been given to this question
5:10 comes from philosophical anthropology.
5:14 Here, it is argued that in our evolutionary past, human
5:17 beings stood upright.
5:20 This caused the hips to expand and to get thicker, narrowed
5:26 the birth canal so that human beings are born prematurely.
5:30 We're born, they say, with a poverty of instincts.
5:34 So where other animals primarily plug into the world
5:38 through their instincts, human beings, with their poverty of
5:44 instincts, have to compensate for this through culture.
5:48 We have to learn how to go on in the world.
5:50 We have to learn what is in the world.
5:54 And something more than this.
5:56 While it is the case that other animals are aware of
6:00 death, human beings seem to be far more acutely
6:05 conscious of this.
6:07 So we require our lives to be meaningful.
6:12 Culture provides these meanings.

Module 1 - Topic 3: What is Culture? How does it help us Understand Education?

0:09 We've established that culture is important.

0:12 But what is culture?
0:14 According to Raymond Williams, culture is one of the most
0:17 complicated terms in the English language.
0:20 And one of the reasons for this is that it
0:22 is continually changing.
0:25 It originally referred to agriculture, to the
0:28 cultivation of crops and animals.
0:32 This then shifted to the cultivation of the mind, the
0:38 development of a mind that was refined and discerning.
0:43 Soon after, culture started to be used to refer to the
0:46 products of such a mind--
0:48 fine art, literature, music.
0:53 In the 1800s, culture started to be used to refer to entire
0:58 ways of life.
1:00 Nowadays, we use it to refer to all of those daily
1:04 activities in which meaning is used, when meanings are made,
1:09 repaired, changed, reproduced.
1:13 So we talk about business cultures.
1:15 We talk about school cultures.
1:17 We talk about consumer cultures.
1:19 We talk about youth cultures.
1:21 If we say that culture involves the making and
1:24 communication of meaning, what does this entail?
1:28 Following Stuart Hall, we can say that it involves four
1:33 components.
1:35 First, we need a system of concepts about the stuff of
1:40 the world that exists in our heads--
1:44 the concepts of a child, of a table, of a plane.
1:50 Perhaps more abstract ideas--
1:52 love and justice.
1:55 We know these are in our heads, because we can think
1:59 about them even if the objects they refer to are not
2:04 present before us.
2:06 Second, these concepts need to be organised systematically.
2:15 We categorise the stuff of the world in terms of their
2:18 relationships to one another.
2:22 This categorisation may use a principle of
2:26 difference and likeness.
2:29 So for instance, birds and planes are alike,
2:35 because they both fly.
2:37 But they're different because one is animate.
2:40 The other is inanimate.
2:42 We may use a principle of sequence.
2:46 We know a child, because a child comes before
2:50 adolescence.
2:51 We know an adolescent, because the adolescent
2:54 comes before adulthood.
2:56 Try defining an adolescent without making reference to a
3:01 child or an adult.
3:04 In order for us to communicate, to express our
3:07 thoughts and our feelings to other people, their system of
3:12 concepts in their heads needs to roughly
3:15 correspond with our own.
3:19 However, this is not enough.
3:21 We're not telepaths.
3:23 We need some way of getting our concepts out of our heads
3:29 and into the world.
3:31 The third thing we need is a shared language.
3:35 Basically, this consists of a set of signs--
3:39 written words, spoken words, gestures, images, and so on--
3:49 that refer to the concepts about the world that we have
3:53 in our head.
3:56 If I utter the word child or if I write the letters
4:01 C-H-I-L-D, immediately, you should have the image of a
4:09 child appearing in your head.
4:11 It won't be the same image of the child that
4:13 I have in my head.
4:15 But we would both understand what we're talking about.
4:19 But that's not all there is to this process.
4:22 The signs that we use, the words and so forth, don't just
4:27 describe the things in the world.
4:30 They also take on additional meanings and
4:33 carry additional meanings.
4:34 They serve as symbols.
4:36 They stand for other ideas as well.
4:42 So for example, when I utter the word child, you may not
4:47 just have the image of a child appearing in your head.
4:51 But you might, also, start thinking about concepts, such
4:54 as vulnerability, innocence, mischief.
5:00 How do we acquire our understanding of meaning?
5:03 How do systems of meanings stabilise for a given culture?
5:09 And how do meanings change?
5:12 We acquire our understanding of meaning through interacting
5:18 with friends, with our parents, with teachers.
5:22 As we grow into the world, we learn to make the connection
5:26 between ideas and signs and what these signs symbolise.
5:34 Meanings stabilise through the interaction, the repeated
5:38 interaction, of people who largely share common
5:44 experiences and who come to use the same sets of concepts
5:50 and the same sets of signs as others around them.
5:55 This is where meanings can harden into beliefs and values
5:59 and world views.
6:01 Meaning changes when we encounter and engage with
6:05 people whose experiences are very different to our own or
6:11 when we use signs and symbols creatively.
6:16 Think, for example, of the national flag.
6:19 It is not just a coloured piece of cloth.
6:23 It stands for something--
6:25 the nation.
6:27 However, this may mean something very different to
6:31 different people.
6:36 To the child or the grandchild of someone who saw action in
6:41 the military in a theatre of war, it may represent a sense
6:46 of continuity with the past.
6:50 To a newly arrived migrant, it may be a symbol of hope and
6:55 new beginnings.
6:58 To the descendants of indigenous people who've been
7:02 colonised, it may mean something different again.
7:07 However, when these people encounter each other and
7:11 engage with each other and exchange meanings, the
7:16 meanings themselves become richer, more nuanced, and
7:20 something new emerges.
7:23 I will leave you with some questions from cultural
7:25 sociology to take forward into our explorations of education
7:30 as a social institution.
7:32 How might education work to stabilise certain meanings?
7:39 Whose meanings are being stabilised?
7:43 How might this work to the advantage or the disadvantage
7:48 of different groups of students?
7:51 And how is education implicated in processes of
7:54 social and cultural change?
7:57 Does it work to resist this?
8:00 Can it promote this?
8:02 Or can it facilitate adaptation to change?

Module 1 - Topic 4: What are the ‘Aims of Education’, and why talk about them?

0:10 If education is such an important social institution,

0:14 well, then it is good for us to ask what we are trying to
0:18 do with it.
0:19 Another way of putting this question is to ask, what are
0:23 the aims of education?
0:27 An aim is basically a broad or general statement about what
0:32 we're trying to achieve, what are our purposes.
0:37 So when we talk about the aims of education, what we're
0:41 talking about is, what is it that we're trying to
0:44 accomplish when we're educating young people?
0:48 Why is it good for us to talk about this?
0:51 Well, for one thing, education represents one of the most
0:56 significant interventions in a person's life that they will
1:01 ever experience.
1:03 When we're educating people, we're trying to change people.
1:07 And it is only responsible for us to ask what it is that
1:11 we're trying to achieve through these changes.
1:15 Education is also about intervening in the collective
1:19 life of society itself.
1:22 Throughout the west, over the last 100 to 150 years, there
1:27 have been ongoing debates about what
1:31 education ought to be doing.
1:33 Here, education is presented as both the cause of
1:38 significant social problems and as a
1:41 possible cure for them.
1:46 Within these debates, we find multiple aims of
1:51 education put forward.
1:53 Each one of them drawing upon beliefs and values about what
1:58 the good society and the good person looks like.
2:04 Following Nel Noddings, we can then ask, if education is such
2:12 a significant individual and collective intervention, then
2:17 isn't it the responsible thing to do to talk about what it is
2:24 that we are trying to achieve when we're educating people?
2:28 And whether the ideas of the good society and the good
2:32 person that we're putting forward are truly good?
2:37 As a sociologist, these debates provide valuable
2:42 information about the way that societies understand
2:46 themselves.
2:47 For the remaining topics of this module, I will identify
2:52 and outline some of the major aims that have been put
2:56 forward by participants in debates over education for the
3:00 last 100 and 150 years.

Review course

Module 1 - Topic 5: Moral Guidance, Social Order and Advancing the Nation

0:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]

0:09 Throughout the early 1800s, debates over education in
0:14 Western Europe were dominated by the idea that the aim of
0:19 education should be moral guidance, the securing of
0:23 social order, and advancing the idea of the nation.
0:28 Why was this so?
0:31 Well, throughout the 1700s and continuing into the 1800s,
0:36 Western Europe experienced massive upheavals.
0:41 One of the main developments in this time was the
0:44 Industrial Revolution.
0:45 You had huge numbers of people who had previously worked on
0:48 the land, were suddenly thrown into the factory system where
0:54 they worked as factory hands.
0:56 We had political revolutions not just in Europe, but also
0:59 in North America, which overthrow established forms of
1:06 political authority centred on the monarchy.
1:11 And we had what we refer to as the urban revolution, the rise
1:15 of large cities centred upon the new manufacturing
1:21 industries and the factory system.
1:24 So we get a situation where large numbers of people--
1:30 who had previously lived in small rural communities, who
1:34 shared the same beliefs and values with their neighbours
1:38 and interacted with them on a daily basis--
1:41 was shifted into these huge, urban settings, filled with
1:46 strangers who did not necessary share those same
1:49 beliefs and values.
1:51 In these new, large cities, the extremes of wealth and
1:54 poverty were clearly evident.
1:56 If you were wealthy, the cities were
1:58 wonderful places to live.
2:00 They were the centres of the thriving cultural life.
2:04 There was the energy associated with the early
2:07 consumer culture.
2:09 If you were poor, however, things
2:11 were very, very different.
2:13 The cities had grown so quickly that there wasn't
2:16 adequate housing for everyone, so many people lived in
2:19 overcrowded conditions.
2:21 Sanitation was poor.
2:23 Disease was rife.
2:26 People worked long and hard for very little money.
2:31 So there was this widespread mood of social unrest.
2:36 For the social elite, who had vivid memories of the French
2:41 Revolution, this was a very disturbing proposition.
2:47 So they looked to education as a means of
2:51 restoring social order.
2:53 Now, this was around the same period that the discipline of
2:57 sociology was coming into being.
3:00 Sociology originally directed itself towards the question
3:04 of, how is social life possible?
3:07 How can this new, social world that had come into being as a
3:13 result of the Industrial Revolution, the urban
3:16 revelations--
3:17 how could it hang together in the absence of traditional
3:20 bonds and authority?
3:23 It is no coincidence, then, that we find one of the
3:26 strongest statements--
3:28 that the aim of education ought to be about social
3:32 integration--
3:34 comes from Emile Durkheim, one of the founding fathers of
3:37 sociology, who also spent most of his life teaching teachers.
3:43 For Durkheim, education could function to secure social
3:48 integration in three ways.
3:51 First, he argues teachers ought to
3:54 strictly enforce rules.
3:56 This didn't just encourage rule following behaviour, but
4:01 it also instilled in students a sense that rules were
4:07 necessary for orderly social life.
4:11 Second, Durkheim suggested that education should promote
4:19 the idea of the nation as a vehicle for providing a sense
4:26 of collective belonging and identity.
4:29 That had previously been found through communal forms of
4:36 affiliation in rural settings.
4:38 Finally, Durkheim argued that education should provide
4:43 students with the skills so that they could find work in
4:47 the new industrial system.
4:49 This was not necessarily to aid the economic advancement
4:54 of the nation.
4:55 But more to give people a sense that they had a stake in
4:59 society, and that their efforts were valued.
5:03 While he was writing over 100 years ago, Durkheim's views
5:07 still have a contemporary resonance.
5:09 The idea that students need discipline, that they should
5:13 be taught to identify with--
5:15 and to take pride in-- the nation, and that they should
5:19 be provided with the skills that will suit them well for
5:24 the world of work are still common contemporary concerns.

Module 1 - Topic 6: Clever Country, Competitive Nation

Many of you will have heard the saying, "We need to be

0:14 working smarter, not harder." This is very much what
0:19 policymakers, educationalists, economists, and business
0:24 people are arguing when they say that the aim of education
0:30 should be to provide a clever workforce.
0:34 One that is knowledgeable, inventive, creative, and
0:39 capable of ongoing learning.
0:41 This, they argue, is both good for individual workers--
0:45 they get provided with satisfying, well-paid jobs--
0:49 and it is good for the economy.
0:52 It enables the nation to be competitive in a global
0:55 economy where knowledge is a highly sought after resource
0:59 by business.
1:01 This is based in the view that the global economy is a race
1:06 or a competition in which nations endeavour to provide
1:11 the most highly-skilled and well-educated workforce that
1:15 can then serve as a magnet for business investment which can
1:21 then also drive further economic growth.
1:25 Informing this view is the idea that the economies of the
1:29 advanced, industrial nations have gone through a series of
1:32 transitions.
1:34 First, from the primary sector--
1:36 basically, agriculture and mining--
1:40 to the secondary sector--
1:43 manufacturing--
1:45 to what is referred to as the tertiary sector.
1:48 The tertiary sector is a sort of catch-all category.
1:53 It includes knowledge work.
1:55 But alongside knowledge work, we also have health, tourism,
2:01 financial services, the leisure industries, and so on
2:05 and so forth.
2:07 OK.
2:08 Doesn't all work require knowledge?
2:11 Do not tradespeople acquire knowledge through the process
2:14 of apprenticeship?
2:16 Doctors and lawyers and other professionals have always
2:21 traded upon their academic credentials.
2:25 London cabbies refer to the test that they have to sit to
2:29 show that they understand how to get around
2:32 London as The Knowledge.
2:37 What is new about the new knowledge work?
2:41 The new knowledge work involves working with
2:45 abstract, conceptual knowledge, the type useful for
2:49 problem solving and innovating in the new biotechnology and
2:54 microelectronics industry.
2:56 It involves manipulating and handling encoded information,
3:01 for example, for the purposes of data analysis that will
3:05 enable businesses to position themselves better to take
3:09 advantage of opportunities that are due to present or to
3:13 avoid shocks and nasty surprises.
3:16 It also includes forms of knowledge entrepreneurship,
3:22 the development of multimedia platforms that enable
3:26 businesses to do all sorts of new things.
3:31 Forms of project engineering, which require you to bring in
3:35 expertise from a variety of sources.
3:38 And also business consultancy, showing businesses how they
3:42 might organise and structure their operations far more
3:46 efficiently.
3:47 Proponents of this view argue that because the knowledge
3:51 economy, and hence knowledge work, is such an important
3:54 driver of the contemporary economy that education should
3:58 be geared to support this.
4:00 It should provide the kinds of scientific, mathematical, and
4:04 computer training necessary for many of these new
4:07 industries.
4:08 But you'd also provide instruction in the arts and
4:11 humanities where skills of creativity and problem solving
4:17 can be enhanced.

Module 1 - Topic 7: A Consumer Good?

0:09 Another highly influential view that has taken hold over
0:12 the last 20 or so years in debates over education holds
0:17 that the aims of education are best decided by individuals,
0:24 by parents and students who know best what they want, how
0:29 much they want of it, and how much they're
0:31 willing to pay for it.
0:34 On some views, those individuals who don't have
0:38 adequate means should be provided with vouchers so that
0:42 they can take these along to schools and purchase the kind
0:45 of education that they want.
0:48 In this view, education is seen as a consumer good,
0:52 something that is bought and sold in the marketplace just
0:57 as cars, food, and clothing are.
1:01 This represents a radical departure from established
1:05 views of education as a public good, something that is good
1:10 for society as a whole, and that is good for members of
1:14 society, that it is a condition for their living a
1:17 good life and which ought to be provided by the state
1:22 either free or at a subsidised rate to all citizens as a part
1:30 of their citizenship entitlements.
1:34 The influence of this view is evident in the ways that
1:38 education is often talked about as a product and parents
1:42 and students as consumers; in the ways that schools are
1:47 encouraged to see themselves as small businesses, marketing
1:51 their services on websites and open days, touting their
1:56 students performances in standardised tests and
2:00 examinations; and the ways that schools are encouraged to
2:05 charge fees that reflect both the cost and the demand for
2:09 their services.
2:11 While this view has been contested by many, many
2:14 people, we do need to understand the
2:18 appeal it does hold.
2:20 Firstly, it appeals to the cultural value of freedom, a
2:25 very modern value.
2:28 We experience ourselves as free individuals because, in
2:32 many ways, we are able to make our own choices.
2:35 We don't have anyone else making them for us.
2:39 It appeals to the idea that consumers have power, that
2:43 there's a certain element of quality control involved in
2:49 the idea that if people are paying money for something and
2:52 they don't get what they're paying for, that they would
2:55 take their [? custom ?] elsewhere.
2:59 It appeals to the idea that government should be running
3:02 tight budgets.
3:05 If people are paying for their own education, well then
3:08 governments are paying less.
3:10 They are then able to lower taxes,
3:12 which is good for business.
3:13 It increases theirs profits, which means they employ more
3:16 people, and citizens and taxpayers generally have more
3:21 money to spend on things like sending their children to
3:25 better schools.
3:26 Finally, it is also said to encourage personal
3:30 responsibility.
3:31 If people have to pay for the education they are getting,
3:37 then the chances they will think more seriously about the
3:41 choices that they are making.

Module 1 - Topic 8: Levelling the Playing Field: Merit and Social Justice

0:09 Throughout the 20th and the 21st centuries, a number of

0:14 social reformers have argued that the principal aim of
0:18 education ought to be about redressing social
0:21 inequalities.
0:23 These are inequalities that are based upon the way that
0:26 society is organised, the way it distributes its benefits
0:32 unequally, and that arise out of dominant cultural
0:36 understandings about what certain groups
0:38 of people are like.
0:39 We are talking here about inequalities of class, race,
0:45 and gender.
0:47 While these are based in culture and in social
0:51 structure, they were often be justified as we will see in a
0:56 later module through reference to nature.
1:03 The idea was that if you fixed inequalities in education, you
1:08 would fix inequalities in society.
1:12 These views drew heavily upon the modern value of equality,
1:18 the view that one's social standing should not be set at
1:22 birth, as it had been in the feudal age.
1:27 In the feudal age, if your father was a peasant, well,
1:31 then, you would be a present for the
1:33 remainder of your life.
1:34 That was your lot.
1:35 But rather, that all people were born equal.
1:40 Accordingly, everyone, every child, should be given equal
1:46 educational opportunity.
1:48 One version of this view was known as the
1:53 meritocratic approach.
1:55 This was highly influential in the early part of the 20th
1:58 century right the way through to the 1950s.
2:02 The basic idea here was that if you gave every child
2:08 between the ages of 6 and 14 the same education, well,
2:14 then, disadvantages based on race, class, and gender would
2:21 be put out of business.
2:22 They would no longer impede the child's progress.
2:26 If some children subsequently did better than others, well,
2:29 then, this was due to their native endowment of talent and
2:32 their propensity of hard work.
2:35 And they deserved, they merited the success
2:38 that came their way.
2:39 By the 1950s, it was becoming clear that the same groups of
2:44 disadvantaged students were still performing more poorly
2:49 than their more advantaged counterparts.
2:53 Advocates of the meritocratic approach then started to turn
2:56 their attention to the cultural backgrounds of these
3:00 disadvantaged students themselves.
3:02 And they argued that there was something in this culture that
3:06 was holding these students back, that they didn't have
3:09 the right values.
3:10 They lacked the right type of motivation.
3:14 Accordingly, programmes were put in place.
3:18 Operation Head Start in the United States
3:20 is a notable one.
3:22 In order to inoculate students against the negative effects
3:27 of their home cultures, these were largely unsuccessful--
3:32 In large part, because they devalued the life experiences
3:37 of the children.
3:38 They found nothing familiar in their schooling.
3:43 And it adopted a pejorative view towards the cultures of
3:50 their parents.
3:51 The failure of these programmes gave a spur to
3:56 alternative social justice approaches.
4:00 In a way, what these approaches attempted to do was
4:04 to turn things around, placing the emphasis on the failings
4:10 of school culture, rather than the home culture of
4:15 disadvantaged students.
4:18 Schooling, they argued, needed to be made more relevant to
4:23 the life experiences and cultural backgrounds of
4:26 disadvantaged students.
4:29 Moreover, cultural biases built into the education
4:33 system itself--
4:35 the way that the curriculum and the way that teaching
4:38 practises reflected the beliefs and the values, the
4:43 expectations, and the aspirations of white middle
4:48 class students.
4:51 The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu noted that when
4:56 people grow up in roughly similar cultural environments,
5:01 they acquire similar ways of thinking, similar tastes, a
5:06 similar way of dressing, a manner of speaking, even
5:09 walking to each other.
5:12 And they feel more comfortable in the company of each other.
5:17 Bourdieu also wrote extensively about education.
5:22 And he argued that the overwhelming number of
5:27 teachers, in his case, in the French education system were
5:33 white and middle class.
5:36 And this enabled them to both feel comfortable with and
5:39 communicate more effectively with white
5:41 middle class students.
5:44 Throughout the 1960s, '70s and into the '80s, there emerged a
5:50 whole range of studies, looking at the ways that
5:55 teachers interacted with different groups of students--
5:59 the amount of attention they gave, how often they gave them
6:03 an opportunity to speak, the way that they often would
6:07 judge students, unwittingly, on the basis of their dress,
6:12 their manner of speech, and so forth.
6:16 What the social justice advocates argue is that it is
6:20 not enough to give everyone the same education and expect
6:26 that that will help redress inequalities in
6:31 society as a whole.
6:33 What you need to do is to direct more resources towards
6:38 disadvantaged students, and in particular, to ensure that the
6:44 curriculum reflects and accommodates their life
6:49 experiences and cultural backgrounds.

Module 1 - Topic 9: A Satisfying Life and a Healthy Democracy

0:09 The North American pragmatist philosopher John Dewey,

0:13 arguably the most influential educational thinker of the
0:17 20th century, put forward the idea that the aim of education
0:24 should be to provide students with the skills to lead the
0:30 most fulfilling life possible.
0:33 It was not about obedience and discipline.
0:36 It was not even about providing the skills for
0:40 taking one's place in the workforce, although Dewey did
0:46 consider gainful employment as an important objective,
0:50 largely because it made people feel valued and worthwhile.
0:55 For Dewey, what educators should do is first of all,
0:59 identify each child's unique potentials, both in their
1:04 physical, their intellectual, and in the aesthetics spheres.
1:13 They should also encourage the habit of learning itself, to
1:18 encourage students to see life's problems as challenges
1:22 to be solved, often in collaboration with others.
1:28 This would encourage them to see that human beings needed
1:33 each other.
1:34 Dewey also argued that students should be encouraged
1:40 to think seriously about the world that they shared with
1:43 others, to see their own private troubles as never just
1:48 that, but rather as public concerns that they shared with
1:54 other people.
1:55 This, he suggested, would be good for both the student
1:59 themselves and for democracy, because democracy required
2:03 citizens that were prepared and capable of engaging in
2:08 debates over matter of public concern.
2:12 In the 1920s, Dewey in conjunction with Ella Flagg
2:16 Young, established the Chicago Laboratory School at Chicago
2:20 University.
2:23 This was designed to put some of his teaching principles
2:25 into practise.
2:28 Here, teachers were encouraged to build bridges between the
2:35 curriculum and the life experiences and interests of
2:42 their students.
2:45 Dewey had no problem with the curriculum of his time.
2:50 He felt that this embodied a vast history of human beings
2:56 solving problems.
2:58 What he did have a problem with was the way it was
3:01 taught, that it tended to taught abstractly, that it was
3:07 placed into history books and therefore removed from the
3:12 living context in which it had vitality and usefulness.
3:18 Accordingly, Dewey argued that the curriculum needed to be
3:22 made more relevant to the interests and the life
3:26 experiences of the students themselves.
3:30 If they saw that the knowledge that they were acquiring was
3:36 useful, well, then they would value it far more as having a
3:42 bearing on the practical activities that they were
3:45 engaged in every day.
3:47 So for example, students would be taught about geography
3:51 through the practise of growing a garden, where they
3:54 would be encouraged to consider the soil and the
3:57 impact this had on the plants, as well as the weather.
4:01 Accordingly, they were picking up knowledge
4:04 of the local geography.

Module 1 - Topic 10: Socio-cultural Transformation?

0:09 The final position that we're going to look at in this

0:13 module is one most commonly associated with the Brazilian
0:16 educationalist Paolo Freire.
0:19 Freire has been very influential across Latin
0:23 America, Asia and Africa.
0:26 But he has also exerted a significant influence in the
0:29 West as well.
0:31 For Freire, the fundamental aim of education ought to be
0:35 the advancement of human freedom.
0:37 Freire's understanding of freedom, however, was very
0:40 different to that of those who are advocating that we treat
0:45 education as a consumer good.
0:47 For him, this would mean that we only grant freedom to those
0:50 who have sufficient money in their bank accounts.
0:53 Rather, he was talking about freedom in terms of
0:57 emancipation, freedom from oppression, freedom from
1:02 poverty, freedom from persecution, and freedom from
1:06 discrimination.
1:08 He also urged that students be allowed to be free from models
1:13 of teaching that discourage them from thinking critically
1:18 about their worlds.
1:20 These models he referred to as the banking model--
1:25 the idea being that students were viewed as empty
1:29 containers into which teachers deposited
1:33 the necessary knowledge.
1:35 This, he argued, assumed that we already know all that there
1:39 needs to be known about the world, the world is fixed, and
1:43 that is all there is that students need to learn.
1:46 He argued that this encouraged students and subsequently
1:51 adults to adopt an attitude of passivity and fatalism towards
1:55 the situations they were in, to see themselves as powerless
2:00 to influence and change them.
2:03 As an alternative, Freire argued that education should
2:08 encourage students to see that they can indeed change the
2:14 world in which they live.
2:17 He urged teachers to encourage students to ask hard questions
2:23 about the world--
2:24 questions like why is it, if we're generating so much
2:28 wealth, there are so many poor people around?
2:32 Why is it that some groups of people are more
2:35 disproportionately represented in the gaol population or in
2:40 the unemployment queues, and other groups of people are
2:43 disproportionately represented in the corridors of power?
2:49 By asking these hard questions, Freire argued that
2:54 students would see that the social realities that they
2:59 inhabited did not have to be the way they are.
3:05 And they would ask is this the reality that they really
3:10 wanted to have.