#written under a Conservative government that was slowly undoing what small progress had been made in the field of universal education

[mariocki]

"From a very early age the child becomes part of a pattern he never fully understands and is powerless to change. It is a pattern that is made up of rituals - of form periods, morning assemblies, lessons that follow each other in quick succession for no apparent reason, bells rung by other people that govern his changes of activity, milk, school dinners, homework. His life is part of a scheme that has been devised by people he does not know, and into which he is expected to fit without question.

And it is here that we come to the real content of our educational structure. At school, the child is taught by experience that it is normal for other people to organize his life. He will be told in Civics or History that he lives in a democracy, which means that people govern themselves. But he will know as an experienced fact that he must expect to be governed by other people who know better than he does."

- Albert Hunt, The Tyranny of Subjects, in Education for Democracy (2nd ed., 1972)

#teaching tag #education for democracy #albert hunt #quotes #the tyranny of subjects #1972 #education #teaching #this is proving a valuable read; it's necessarily dated‚ and some of the ideas that must have seemed revolutionary in the late 60s and #early 70s are now taken for granted in most popular approaches to pedagogical ideals. elsewhere tho there are radical suggestions for #completely new approaches to comprehensive teaching which still carry merit and would still bear further investigation (and remain just as #unlikely to see implementation under the current uk culture of education). many of the articles and papers collected in this book were #written under a Conservative government that was slowly undoing what small progress had been made in the field of universal education #by the previous labour gov. in the 59 years since publication‚ that baton has gone forwards and backwards several times‚ with seemingly #ever slower and smaller progress made at the expense of ever greater compromise and deconstruction. two steps forwards‚ one step back; same #as it ever was. same as it may well ever be