ABSTRACT
Friedrich Froebel, a German student of Pestalozzi, emphasised the education of younger children. The emphasis was on practical, creative ability and play, with education continuing from pre-school to adulthood, centred on the nurturing and development of the child's own talents. The debate education for education's sake or education for employment continues. It affects government policy too: in 2010, the government decided to stop funding university arts and humanities programmes, leaving them dependent on income from tuition fees and emphasizing the importance of the STEM subjects. Education has an emancipatory, liberating, value. It is for liberation, empowerment, social justice, for passing on the best of human achievement. A school may lose points and places in the league tables, which of course do not apply to the private sector. The history of education in England reveals a number of models of the curriculum, based on very different assumptions about what is educationally worthwhile.
