liberal studies

There's a more recent sacred cow in the herd. Ausubel might be pleased about it. It's called 'liberal studies'. Some people thought that education was supposed to deepen moral consciences, sharpen aesthetic sensitivities, and cultivate the intellect and the faculty of reason, anyway. But Mr Kinsella says that it's a new thing, and that there's a great need for it. So a third of our secondary schools do 'family life' programmes. 70 to 80 schools do 'citizenship programmes'. 5.000 pupils met their local marriage guidance councils last year. Ausubel would ask, I imagine, how there can be 'liberal studies' when the curriculum is still examination-dominated. The Education Department makes liberal noises, it talks of 'examinations which take the sparkle out of education'. But alterations to School Certificate, that pinnacle of the mass dropout system, are admitted to be short-term, the 'tidying up of a few anomalies'. Ausubel might question the possibility of an understanding of music and the fine arts, when there's a shortage of specialist teachers, and when, as I wrote in a previous article, qualified students are turned away from the art schools. There's no break in the vicious circle. Some Grogzone pupils must continue to go through their five years' schooling without setting foot in the art room. How can there be true education where school life centres around the impersonal morning exercise in lip-service and mass hypocrisy called 'assembly'? Or when 'liberal studies' becomes a synonym for 'lectures from visiting speakers at the end of term'. Boys like sport, but girls prefer dancing? Is sufficient provision made for the girls' needs? Finally, the Education Department is reviewing the Terms and Holidays Regulations, for 'Most schools would prefer to break up earlier as they desire all possible time to prepare pupils for examinations but find incentive dies when these are over.' Can liberal studies work inside the examination strait-jacket? If the answer is yes, then can the liberal studies preached outweigh the restrictive conformism practised elsewhere in the school?

Colour secondary schools grey, as long as their pupils are abject conformists, dragged up to be units of production for 'absorption in to the labour market', and not to be real people. Colour them dull grey, while we expect teachers to be virtuous time-servers Colour the school dull grey, while the school is a 'preparation' for life, and not life itself Colour it dull grey, while pupils lose their vitality and enthusiasm in the restrictions of the classroom and a tarted-up uniform.

How would I change the colour? I'm not at all sure that I could. 1 shall explore the possibilities in my next article. With an extra five copies of it to go to the Educational Training and Research Committee the National Development Council Ho-Hum.