ABSTRACT
Two sets of demands pattern every child’s education-the knowledge and skills which a society asks of its citizens and those more personal aspirations and qualities which regulate individual impetus and drive. By approving both sets, we might justly decide that the flight from primary school child-centredness over past decades has gone too far towards prescription and has not achieved the equitable system which reconciling public demand with personal aspiration suggests. It is never easy to achieve a fair balance between competing factions. And just as some teachers might want to try out a ‘new’ child-centredness in schools, believing that by doing so they are conceding reasonable ground to public expectations about standards and skills, others might reckon that a centrally structured, closely monitored policy stays the best bet. With the older Victorian types of traditional education long behind us, a benevolent didacticism avoids the perils of too much coercive drudgery, tedious recitations and rote learning which filled the lives of young schoolchildren a century ago.
