ABSTRACT
Over the last five years or so I have been conducting an extensive straw poll on people’s attitudes towards education. I have about 1,500 respondents now. I often give talks about learning to parents and educators, and at the beginning of each talk I offer my audience a definition of education, and then ask them a question. I define education as: ‘what the “elders” of a society lay on for the young in order to prepare them to live successful, fulfilling and responsible lives in the world which they are going, as adults, to inhabit’. Then I ask people to indicate, by a show of hands, whether they think that: (a) schools as they know them do a pretty good job of equipping most young people for the future; (b) they would, if currently mooted reforms were successfully implemented; or (c) we are a long way from offering young people a good education, in this broad, generic sense. My informants so far include early years teachers and advisers, primary heads and deputies, secondary heads and whole-school staff teams, PGCE students, parents, governors and members of the inspection and advisory services. The results are clear. Out of my 1,500-odd replies, I have so far had no votes for option (a), a total of thirteen for (b), and the rest for (c) (with very few abstentions). I sometimes ask a supplementary question of those who have voted for (c): do you have a reasonably clear idea of what needs to happen, or are you really not at all sure how we are to deliver such an education? Nearly all opt for the latter.
