If you are a professional educator, what do you profess?
July 10, 2018
In this blog, I reflect on what has happened to FE (Further Education) in England. My first thought is about a book inspired by a Grimm Brothers tale of escape by twelve princesses from nightly imprisonment. They escape to dance all night. Before daybreak they are forced back to their locked bedroom, ready for inspection by their father. This might sound familiar to those who work in FE in 2018.
The twelve authors of the Twelve Dancing Princesses (2015) told us what they profess. It is that Further Education can contribute to social justice. Their tone is liberating and fulfilling, even exciting. However, professionals with such values may have to be subversive today. This is partly because when colleges were disconnected from democracy they were made to see themselves differently. Many saw themselves as entrepreneurs but within an educational culture that is target driven. They branded their colleges by means of vision and mission statements but these statements do not always appear to ring true. Competition appears to have promoted a culture that is based on saying: ‘my college is better than your college’.
Another reason for subversion is that many decades have passed since we had a true commitment to decreasing the rate at which the gaps between rich and poor, and the privileged and unprivileged have been growing. Wilkinson and Pickett (2009) and Lansley (2012) have not only demonstrated this, but also shown the damaging consequences of inequality. What do we think that FE is for? What role does it play in our perception of social mobility? Moreover, what is their perception of social mobility? We are really talking about social immobility; about the reinforcement of social stratification; and, as ever, the growth of those gaps. In this kind of society the best that can be hoped from FE is that it picks up the shattered human fragments and injects some self-esteem into those let down by the school system.
Efforts are being made to influence the education sector in positive ways. There is a ‘reclaiming schools’ movement trying to do that. On whose behalf are they to be reclaimed and to what kind of democratic network do we connect them? Shall my local Carnegie library reopen? At present it wears a TO LET sign. Educational issues are social issues and if we are to even nervously, tentatively, take to the floor with those dancing princesses, we must not see FE as a thing apart. Neither must we see the other clearly demarcated aspects of the educational system as things apart.
I argue that we cannot liberate FE if its role is reactive to, on the one hand, an instrumentalist school system and, on the other hand, universities that appear to have become independent educational institutions. Neither can we liberate easily in a society that appears to be becoming more and more unequal. To use a phrase from Naomi Klein (2017), ‘No is not enough!’. We must ‘leap’. In her description of the protests at Standing Rock, Klein writes of the natural, human aspect of education. No one told the participants to form groups and learn from each other. They did it because they wanted to and it felt good to do so. Perhaps we can approach FE in this way in order to allow the educators to escape and dance?
Author: Cliff Jones
References
- Klein, N. 2017. No is not enough: defeating the new shock politics. London: Allen Lane.
- Lansley, S. 2012. The cost of inequality. London: Gibson Square Books.
- Wilkinson, R., and K. Pickett. 2009. The spirit level: why more equal societies almost always do better. London: Allen Lane.
