'The other' Michael Young, the one who's still alive, author of Knowledge and Control (1971) and still a full professor at UCL, has changed his mind about knowledge in the curriculum. He's with the right's ED Hirsch now on that stuff, because why not, although he "doesn't go all the way with Gove", he says in Peter Wilby's Guardian interview today. Well he wouldn't, because Gove's on his third cabinet appointment after Education; he's been an ex-Education Secretary for longer than he was an Education Secretary.
But, anyway, "powerful knowledge" is the thing now, along with understandably being concerned about there being enough middle-class kids in your own kid's class at school. And that employers don't like vocational qualifications, in spite of calling for them all the time. And so on. No sign of the thinking which underpinned his earlier more radical thoughts; but that's all a bit old-fashioned these days and you have to move with the times, right?
Oh yes, and unlike a lot of serving professors, Young has this interview in the Guardian. Perhaps readers are invited to infer that's because none of the many other "non-emeritus" and indeed emeritus professors of education around at present have much to say for themselves. Or at least none Wilby bumps into while strolling in the environs of Russell Square.
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