Notes on: Young,
M F D (2011) 'The return to subjects: a
sociological perspective on the UK Coalition
government's approach to the 14-19
curriculum'. The Curriculum Journal,
22 (2): 265-78.
Dave Harris
The proposals emphasise knowledge and schools
subjects, although there is no real consideration
of the 14-19 curriculum as a whole. The
emphasis on subjects is controversial, as is the
decision to rank schools on the basis of five
subjects in the English Bac [which never really
took off] - schools had really planned to focus on
maths, science and English since these figured in
the league tables. There was also criticism
that the approach was elitist and likely to
produce new inequalities.
However, there is a need for a debate on the
broader issue of the appropriate number of
subjects that schools should teach, and what
should count as a subject. This debate
challenges the earlier emphasis on learners.
There are also complex issues of governance
concerned, especially the connection between the
different departments in government -that relating
to Business, Innovation and Skills, and that one
relating to Education. Earlier discussions
about the nature of knowledge [in Young and Muller
2010] can be pursued. Some practical issues
about vocational education, a coherent 14-19
curriculum, and issues of social justice and
equality also arise.
Young and Muller proposed three possible futures
for schooling in terms of knowledge. The
idea that knowledge is transmitted through a
curriculum can be classified as Future 1,
where access to knowledge is the main issue, and
knowledge is roughly equivalent to the range of
subjects. It can be seen as 'a curriculum
for compliance' [citing Young 2011], and
encourages memorisation and rote. Hirsch is a
major exponent. It draws on 19th century
ideas that hard work and discipline will deliver
results. Knowledge is to be valued for its
own sake, and this implies the notion of schooling
as offering intellectual challenge, hence a
sophisticated version of it survives in elite
schools. The government also implies that
universities should take responsibility for A
levels [again a failed initiative I think].
However, the model is long been challenged has not
corresponding to expanded access or new relevant
knowledge for the economy.
The modernising claims informed Future 2,
where knowledge is a social construct driven by
different social and economic demands: expanding
access and new economic demands led to new ideas
about subjects and the breaking of boundaries
between them, between schooling and every day
knowledge, and between the academic and
vocational. It claimed to have uncovered
'epistemological realities' [a contradiction in
terms?] (267). The discussion only opened
the possibility of government interference on what
had been a secret garden. [Somehow this
connects with the assumption that] standards get
higher every year as indicated by increases in
examination passes. Knowledge is seen as
arbitrary and as merely expressing power - hence
the term '"knowledge of the powerful"'(Young
2009), and its primary emphasis was on who defined
knowledge. Subjects are therefore
suspect. The attack on external objectivity
implies that the curriculum should expressed
learners experiences and interests. The
curriculum becomes an instrument of politics, not
one of 'achieving educational goals'. One
example is 'the new Scottish Curriculum for
excellence'(268) with its emphasis on creating
successful learners, confident individuals,
responsible citizens, and effective
contributors. The teacher is a mere
facilitator. This is 'something of a
caricature', but it has importance as something
that the UK government wants to combat. At
the same time, it seems progressive and
democratic, so it tends to attract the left and
some researchers. It does not appeal to
elite educators who believe that knowledge is
powerful in itself, not because it is defined by
the powerful, that it offers understanding.
The failure to acknowledge this lies with labour
governments and its own educational agencies, and
'may explain why inequalities between different
types of school have increased in the last
decade'(269).
Young and Muller argue that there is another
option. This agrees that knowledge is social
'in both origins and objective'[I think this
should read 'both social in origin, and
objective']. Its objectivity is expressed in
school subjects and disciplines. It is not
just a revived tradition, however but produced by
'specialist communities of researchers', hence its
'"social" objectivity is not "given" but fallible
and always open to change'. However, these
changes are not arbitrary or political but 'take
place within the epistemic rules' of the different
communities [which are presumably themselves seem
to be neutral and not political - not at all what
Bhaskar says, let alone loads of others, including
Bourdieu in a different sense]. This is Future
3. The objectivity of subjects mean we
can treat the world as an object and this will
help students gain access to understanding it in
ways which 'takes them beyond their experience',
and this should be the 'primary goal of schools'.
It is necessary that the concepts associated with
different subjects are stipulated, and this will
help us see that the relation between these
concepts in a discipline makes them different from
the 'everyday concepts that pupils bring to
school'. Concepts must be linked to contents
that give them meaning and to skills in acquiring
them. This will provide a suitable balance
between concepts, content and skills - pedagogy
then helps students engage with concepts [sounds
like a mishmash based on threshold concepts].
Using this approach, we can see that the 14-19
curriculum is incoherent. It is more like
'an aspiration without a common substance and with
few guarantees'(270). It is like a rerun
TVEI [Technical and Vocational Educational
Initiative, funded by Euro cash, attracting all
sorts of enthusiastic knobs who went round
spouting on about the knowledge economy].
The new National Curriculum undermined it [by
letting the traditional conservatives have their
say about common or core traditional
values]. The 14-19 separate phase gained
popularity as an attempt to overcome the divisions
between academic and vocational, although the
original idea of the GCSE was to bridge the two,
being 'designed to include the whole of each
cohort', and weakened by the 'increasing emphasis
on A - C grades', and its subsequent link with
league tables.
Only a few students take the 14-19 route [once
called the 'diploma' route, now embodied in Studio
Schools]. A levels are still popular and
'perhaps 40%' of each cohort take them.
However the A level curriculum 'remains
desperately narrow', as seen in the 'appalling
record in learning foreign languages' (271).
What's left is 'confusion', about whether to stay
at school, go to college, take an academic or a
work based route, and the whole thing is awash
with different curricular and qualifications, new
diplomas, the old credit framework, divided
funding between those offering the courses, and
still the 'persistent and deep academic/vocational
divide'. Acquiring particular qualifications
seems to be the main issue, partly because the
government can use them to rank schools [and
because the ludicrous Brown Report equated
qualifications with skills]. This means the
awarding bodies shape the curriculum.
How can this be made more coherent?
Advocates of Future 1 see the existing divisions
between academic and vocational, for example, as
'some kind of given' instead of an
anachronism. Even vocational education
represents these assumptions. Michael Gove's
recent lecture can be taken as an indication
[always unwise, because he was a notorious kite
flyer, and did not last as Secretary of State for
Education anyway]. This lecture said that we
must not undervalue practical skills and
knowledge, that at the moment a vocational course
was more or less taken as being designed for
someone who had been rejected by an academic one,
and that explains employers' preference for
academic qualifications. We must increase
our efforts in technical education to
compete. However, Gove is wrong to blame
failing education for the decline of
manufacturing, as comparative studies show [the
Asian tigers do not stress technical and
vocational education, and government investment is
the key].
Strangely, Gove also recommended the traditions of
English literature and craft skills, both tinged
with nostalgia for the 19th century. In
particular, there are now no crafts or trades, and
no evidence that learning a craft will lead to
further study or employment. Underneath it
all is a belief in two kinds of minds, the
practical and the academic. 14 year olds
should choose, even if they 'lack the knowledge of
what they lead to' (273). We should be
thinking instead of the likely new industries and
services that will develop, and it is
'inconceivable' and these will be craft
jobs. Instead, industries will be based on
knowledge [oh dear], 'application and
imagination', 'thinking in and beyond disciplines
and subjects'. We need to think about developing
an 'export oriented economy in the future', and
base our future vocational curriculum on it.
We should not rely on finance and services.
We need a more coherent approach. The
Government is looking backwards, to a given
world. They did not like the Tomlinson
report, and nor did the Labour government 'for
short term political reasons'. We should
return to its proposal for 'a unified system of
qualifications that included A levels and GCSEs,
school and college based vocational courses, and
work based programmes'(274) [this would still not
deal with differences in prestige, as a very early
study of the difference between grammar schools
and secondary modern schools showed - government
could bleat on all it liked about equality of
esteem, but parents did not believe it].
However, Tomlinson still adopted a Future 2 view,
seeing knowledge as shaped to suit political
purposes, so it was a political solution to an
educational problem.
In Future 3, we must stress access to powerful
knowledge. We must allow for specialisation
at the age 14, and recognise that equal
opportunities for progression will require
[what? Intervention? Careful
monitoring?]. Pathways should be coherent in
two ways for Muller -'"conceptual"', defined by
discipline based knowledge, and '"contextual"',
access to skills associated with particular
occupations. A proper curriculum should be
based on both types in balance, and qualifications
should reflect the curriculum instead of driving
it [and, no doubt, all sorts of other shoulds].
Gove's proposals will create new inequalities,
critics have argued. Gove himself says he is
advocating equality, in the sense of proposing a
common curriculum for everybody [Young seems to
agree], but his priorities in subject based
curricula have been associated with inequalities
in the past. However, any curriculum can
produce inequality, 'in a society such as ours
which is based on systematic social
inequalities'(275). However, a subject based
curriculum based on concepts can both reproduce
inequalities' and also act as 'potentially a
carrier of universal knowledge', knowledge that
does not depend on its social origins or how it is
produced. [In what circumstances might these
delights occur, though?]. The emphasis on
concepts not facts that is important [although it
is admitted that some of the facts 'will be
concepts', 276 -- a general problem here in not
defining what a concept is]. Concepts have
the potential for treating all pupils equally,
'notwithstanding their specific historical
origins', and it is clear that some working class
pupils do succeed in such a curriculum [citing an
historian, Judt].
Subject based curricula might have originated to
suit the interests of the middle classes in the
past, but this does not 'preclude their
universalising educational potential'[the example
is Boyle's Law, which also originated in the 18th
century middle classes]. So subjects are not
just determined by their social origin, but have
'a degree of objectivity as the most reliable ways
we have developed of transmitting " powerful
knowledge"'(276) [this is just constant
reassertion of the same point]. Subjects can
fossilise and become a matter of acquiring facts,
however. More important, opportunities to
acquire this powerful knowledge are not equally
distributed across schools, and better qualified
teachers 'who are more likely to promote such
acquisition', will tend to want to work with
higher achieving pupils [so until we fix this
problem, beating on about the subject based
curriculum is a waste of time?].
So we have to address the shortage of specialist
subject teachers and their uneven distribution,
but this is not done in the current proposals for
the 14-19 curriculum which is divisive and
incoherent. Current government policy of
returning to subjects 'will in all probability
lead to new inequalities'(277), but a subject
based curriculum will lead to 'a fairer system for
all'. We must not continue to deny pupils
access. And those who are denied 'have most
to lose from a curriculum that emphasises
experience and relevance and plays down the
importance of subjects; no child stays at school
to learn what they already know'.
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