ABSTRACT
I was quick to dismiss the concept of the twenty-four hour school when it was first suggested in an informal conference discussion of educational researchers. A hundred and one good reasons presented themselves in rapid succession-too far from the obvious, too much beyond my comfort zone. Yet the subject generated such heat among normally rational researchers that it became a challenge worth pursuing. The case for was irretrievably lost by its proponents when the analogy of the supermarket was introduced. Its inherent ‘market’ assumptions were an ideological step too far. Nor did the example of hospitals do anything to advance the argument. Schools are not supermarkets and they aren’t casualty or emergency centres. They are places for learning and learning is underpinned by a set of conventional premises. It requires teachers. It is structured and sequential. Its content and methodology are age-related. It requires an optimum size of age cohort at every level. Education is for children and children sleep at night. As do their teachers. And since children have parents, schooling must take account of parents’ working hours and holidays and be tailored to the rhythms of the commercial and industrial world. Or so it was claimed.
