Writing Worth Reading
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Writing Worth Reading
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Michael Young is considered one of the grandfathers of progressive education in the UK and he talks a lot about the anti-intellectual dumbed-down direction that education is moving in. In Bringing Knowledge Back In he makes a number of arguments for why education must be knowledge-based and confronts all the different attempts to devalue it.
In your book Wasted, you argue that there are problems with education today: what are they?
I think there are a number of problems with contemporary education. One of the main ones is the way we have undermined authority of subject-based knowledge. Increasingly, teachers are seen as mentors and facilitators, rather than as people who have authority based upon an understanding of their subject. Another problem is that we tend to think of education very pragmatically, as being something which has to be relevant. We think that in order to motivate children teachers need gimmicks of various kinds, such as ICT, PowerPoint or interactive whiteboards. We have become disenchanted with knowledge and intellect-based education.
Your first book, Bringing Knowledge Back In, argues something similar. Tell us about it.
Michael Young is considered one of the grandfathers of progressive education in the UK and he talks a lot about the anti-intellectual dumbed-down direction that education is moving in. In Bringing Knowledge Back In he makes a number of arguments for why education must be knowledge-based and confronts all the different attempts to devalue it. For example, he looks at the idea that children need knowledge which is relevant to their lives; a view which is the dominant prejudice in British educational theory. The idea is that unless lessons are relevant children will be switched off and bored. However, as Michael Young points out, any form of real education based upon intellectual ideas will by definition be irrelevant to their daily lives. The purpose of education is precisely to engage young peoples in issues which do not arise out of their immediate experience.
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Frank Furedi is Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent. He is a prolific writer on Western culture with a particular interest in the precautionary attitude Western societies have towards risk in the areas of terrorism, children and climate change, among others. He writes for spiked-online.com and contributes to public debate in all forms of media. His latest book, Wasted: Why Education Isn’t Educating, looks at the problems which arise when education is politicised. He believes in the importance of ‘knowledge-based education’ and setting education on the right track.
