ABSTRACT
Schools are increasingly expected to make up for the failures of other social institutions. For the first time in history, we expect schools to educate everyone, not only those whose parents were educated themselves. We expect them to do this despite keeping high proportions of children in poverty, and despite surrounding children, at ever younger ages, with a fervently anti-intellectual popular culture. We expect them to deal with the emotional consequences of fractured – and ever more complex – family arrangements. Our economy demands long working hours from adults, and even when both of a child’s parents live together, they frequently need to work those long hours in order to feel they are keeping up with their reference group – and in order to provide their children with the material goods they expect from watching television and observing their peers. Schools therefore deal with significant numbers of children who do not have a single adult whose life they share when they leave the school gates. Our economies are also complex and wealthy; we expect schools to train a labour force that is large and diversely tooled. At the same time schools must deal with the demands and interference of parents who feel, reasonably enough, a sense of entitlement to have a say over what happens to their children in the 15,000 hours or so they spend in school. Politicians, parents, employers, and even children, are constantly proclaiming on what schools should be doing.
