ABSTRACT
Progressivism’s public image has pupils ‘choosing’ how and when to work at classroom tasks. Unless qualified, this bare admission condemns child-centred teachers as culpable of professional negligence. Partly on such grounds, Kenneth Clarke sponsored the ‘three wise men’ report, ridiculing the ‘bizarre notion that young children should choose what they do’ (1991, para. 29). Academics (e.g. Clarke, 1988) question the belief that school pupils who have yet to develop rationality can be expected rationally to decide about their own learning. Of course, though giving pupils responsibilities for which they are not ready can only be regrettable, the dangers of expecting them to take charge of situations they have neither the authority nor the understanding to deal with has to be relative to two factors-the actual decisions to be taken, and the developed capabilities of the pupils concerned. To ‘liberate’ learners might mean no more than to teach those skills and attitudes which independently minded pupils require to act in personally and socially responsible ways. Such an approach would suggest not the abrogation of responsibilities by teachers (which both Clarkes seem to fear) but an enhanced role, whereby pupils are taught a form of decision making appropriate for curricular and classroom contexts.
