Newspaper Article

Comment

Wragg, Ted

2001

Overview

During the debates on the 1944 Education Bill, wise minister of that time, R A Butler, was being harangued on all sides to tell schools what to do. A Mr Wakefield MP wanted compulsory rifle practice. Winston Churchill asked him to make children more patriotic. \"Tell them Wolfe won Quebec,\" he pleaded. Sensibly, Butler resisted them all, even the prime minister. Over 20 years ago, I wrote an article entitled \"State-approved knowledge: 10 steps down the slippery slope\". It described how an interventionist government could, step by step, impose its will on education. It was meant to be a stark warning, a doom-laden depiction of inconceivable horrors, moving from the benign laissez-faire system endorsed by Butler to a state- driven nightmare. At the time, we only had step one, broad general objectives, the innocuous \"foster all-round development\", \"nurture the whole person\" pap of public documents, as threatening as a wren's feather. The next nine steps marched through the laying down of subject matter, specific objectives, time allocations, forms of testing, league tables, the prescription of teaching materials, strategies, remediation, and eventually, the dismissal of teachers who refused to follow the government's prescriptions.

• Publisher: Independent Digital News & Media
• Subject: Butler, R A