ABSTRACT
This chapter considers some of the issues involved in dealing with certain topics in the classroom, particularly those associated with the organisation of effective pupil learning. These issues are relevant to careers education and health education as well as to social education. The three elements careers education, health education and social education are not, of course, completely differentiated entities. They simply represent one way of conceptualising the 'seamless robe' of Preparation for Life (PFL). In the project schools the social education aspects of PFL, and the PFL programmes generally, tended to reflect a knowledge rather than a skills base. In the field of social education the assessment of relevant skills would pose very considerable problems. An analysis of social education in skill terms can have the salutary effect of giving a sharper focus to what is often a somewhat vague and diffuse area. Social education inevitably draws to some extent on the language and theories of the social sciences.
