ABSTRACT
Does the title cause offence? It need not and it should not. If we accept the twin truisms that education is a social process and that we live in an industrial society, why stop short of acknowledging that the two are so intimately linked as to be interdependent? From now on, surely, any raising of academic eyebrows at the verbal juxtaposition of education and industry must be reckoned outmoded or, worse, merely affected. The stock response, of course, is that a school is a school is a school, not a strip mill or a pickle factory. Broadly, the argument is that the process of learning which we call education has to do with bringing about ethical and intellectual changes in people, whereas industrial processes have to do with bringing about material changes in things – and that the differences between the two are therefore fundamental. While the philosophical standpoint of those who uphold it is too often reminiscent of Dr Johnson's refutation of Bishop Berkeley, this argument has to be respected, if only because of the inherent dangers in any theory and practice of human engineering. To the extent that it ignores the symbiotic relationship between men and machines in modern civilization, however, it may be thought that the argument protests too much.
