{"id":49,"date":"2009-07-02T18:45:02","date_gmt":"2009-07-02T17:45:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=49"},"modified":"2009-07-02T18:45:02","modified_gmt":"2009-07-02T17:45:02","slug":"the-primary-review-and-esd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2009\/07\/02\/the-primary-review-and-esd\/","title":{"rendered":"The Primary Review \u2013 and ESD"},"content":{"rendered":"

I'm very grateful to Ben Ballin, of Tide~<\/a>, for drawing to my attention a significant piece of text from the Cambridge Primary Review<\/a>: children, their world, their education. \u00a0As I noted in an earlier posting, there is some controversy as to whether focusing on climate change, ecological problems, poverty, etc, causes young people to be apprehensive \/ anxious \/ depressed \/ turned off \/ apathetic \/\u00a0suicidal \/ \u00a0etc, or whether it is a set of issues which, handled with care and skill, can stimulate what is best in humanity: ie, that, if we act together, something positive can be done (an example of meliorism<\/a>, in fact and action).<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, it is the \"handled with care and skill\" that seems to be the key point here. \u00a0The review says:<\/p>\n

\"...\u00a0children who were most\u00a0confident that climate change might not overwhelm them were those whose schools had decided to replace\u00a0unfocussed fear by factual information and practical strategies for energy reduction and sustainability. Similarly,\u00a0the teachers who were least worried by national initiatives were those who responded to them with robust\u00a0criticism rather than resentful compliance, and asserted their professional right to go their own way. There is a\u00a0lesson from such empowerment for government as well as schools. Of course, not even the most enterprising\u00a0school can reverse some of the social trends which worried many of our witnesses. That being so, these\u00a0Community Soundings have implications for social and economic policy more generally, and for public attitudes\u00a0and values, not merely for DCSF and\u00a0the schools.\"<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"The soundings programme as a whole was pervaded by a sense of deep pessimism about the future, to which\u00a0children themselves were not immune. Many expressed concern about climate change, global warming and\u00a0pollution, and optimists were balanced by those who felt that governments were not doing enough to respond\u00a0to the urgency and magnitude of the challenges. Some children also deplored the gulf between the world\u2019s rich\u00a0and poor. In the words of one child: \u2018America consumes, Africa wants\u2019. There was also unease about terrorism.\u00a0The children were no less anxious about those local issues which directly affected their sense of security \u2013\u00a0traffic, the lack of safe play areas, rubbish, graffiti, gangs of older children, knives, guns. Some were also\u00a0worried by the gloomy tenor of \u2018what you hear on the news\u2019 or by a generalised fear of strangers, burglars and\u00a0street violence. Inevitably, perhaps, these fears were most prominent in the inner-city communities.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Yet where schools had started engaging children with global and local realities as aspects of their education\u00a0they were noticeably more upbeat. In several schools children were involved in environmental and energy-saving projects and the sense that \u2018we can do something about it\u2019 seemed to make all the difference. This more\u00a0positive outlook was most evident in the school whose environmental activism was spearheaded by an \u2018Eco-action\u2019 group with representatives from each year.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The potentially uneasy relationship between school and what lies outside its gates was manifested nearly\u00a0everywhere by levels of security which would have been inconceivable at the time of the Plowden enquiry, forty\u00a0years ago. Yet once inside the building there was nothing gloomy about school life as we observed it. Whatever\u00a0is happening in the wider world, and whatever their anxieties about the future, these children spent their school\u00a0days in communities-within-communities which unfailingly sought to celebrate the positive.\u00a0Inevitably, children talked about new technologies. Their response ranged from the classic futurology of robot\u00a0teachers and hologram libraries to a more considered awareness that new technologies gave them access to\u00a0information unavailable to previous generations but that people should guard against excessive reliance on\u00a0computers: \u2018Use your brain, otherwise you will get lazy and obese\u2019, warned one. Elsewhere children emphasised\u00a0the advantage of the practical over the virtual. Children who worked out of doors (as in the Forest School which\u00a0featured prominently in the Devon leg of the south-west sounding) were enthusiastic about the opportunity to\u00a0\u2018actually go out and do things\u2019; others contrasted going on school trips with looking at a picture in a book or on\u00a0the web, \u2018because you\u2019re seeing things, feeling things, real things.\u2019\u00a0...\u00a0In light of the above, children\u2019s views of educational priorities highlighted the development of generic capacities\u00a0for managing life in a changing world: learning how to learn, preparing for life, developing relationships,\u00a0handling responsibility, citizenship, life skills, financial management and generally \u2018thinking about the future\u2019.\"<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Both quotes are taken from primary_review_community_soundings_report_final<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I'm very grateful to Ben Ballin, of Tide~, for drawing to my attention a significant piece of text from the Cambridge Primary Review: children, their world, their education. \u00a0As I noted in an earlier posting, there is some controversy as...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}