LIBERAL EDUCATION AND THE NATIONAL CURRICULUM
By David Conway
Civitas. 127 pages. £9.00
ISBN 978-1-906837-11-2
This work of educational history and philosophy seeks to address the current debate as to whether or not disadvantaged children are like hamsters on a treadmill and are merely being taught to jump through academic hoops rather than being given a rounded liberal education.
It deals with questions to which teachers instinctively know the answers while politicians and academics debate incessantly. Is the National Curriculum too prescriptive? Is it unsuited to the needs of today’s pupils? Should schools be given more freedom to interpret it in a more imaginative way? Should we not be educating pupils for life rather than for exam success?
David Conway traces both liberal education and the National Curriculum from Matthew Arnold to the present day and concludes that state schools would benefit from being freed from excessive testing and over-prescriptive programmes of study in order to provide a more liberal education, i.e. ‘by introducing children to the work of the world’s greatest artists, writers and thinkers they would be helped to self-knowledge (through the humanities) and knowledge of the world (through science)’.
This book is a good read for all those with an interest in education and its development. It benefits from a summary of each chapter at the beginning of the book!
