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§ Mr. Nigel Forman (Carshalton)In this short debate on social studies in schools, I start from the proposition that a number of the shortcomings of our society can be attributed to our schools and that many of the shortcomings of our schools can be attributed to the educational theories instilled at teacher training colleges and by educational pundits under the auspices of various advisory bodies to the Department of Education and Science such as the Schools Council.
It is, therefore, worth highlighting nonsense and gobbledegook when it occurs, even if it is put forward with the best of intentions, as I feel sure must have been the case with the report recently published by the Schools Council—"The New Approach to Social Studies". It is the work of a group of teachers in the London borough of Merton, which is just to the north of my constituency. They examined the ways in which children of different ages gained an understanding of the concepts and methods of work in social studies. The Schools Council, which provided financial assistance for the project, is circulating the report to in-service training agencies in the hope that the ideas contained in it will be of interest and benefit to teachers.
Having read the report carefully, my fear is that it may add to the baleful and misleading influences that have already done so much in our schools to lower intellectual standards, overload the curriculum and prejudice the subsequent career prospects of all too many children.
Most people would agree that the cardinal objectives of our public education system could be fulfilled if all children were able to leave school with adequate knowledge of the subjects that really matter—for example, the English language and mathematics and probably at least one foreign language and one of the natural sciences—adequate understanding of those same subjects and adequate intellectual self-confidence to enable them to take an intelligent interest in many other things later in life.
However, first things must come first, and children should be taught the basic subjects and skills before tackling more diffuse areas, such as social studies. I suggest that when they embark on the latter they should be taught the basic facts of the various subjects before being encouraged to proffer their opinions or being subjected to what the authors of the report would doubtless describe as the "value systems" of their teachers. It is against this background that I wish to make a few cautionary points about the report, since it exemplifies all too clearly some of the most fashionable, foolish and insidious ideas that are current in modern British education.
First, does the Department of Education and Science share the view expressed in the report that the purposes of social studies can be adequately described as
to develop children's interests in human affairs and their ability to think about them, to help children to understand the attitudes and values of other people and to develop their own value. system"?Does not my hon. Friend agree that it is unsatisfactory to define social studies as "disciplines" in the transatlantic jargon and then to observe:if the disciplines are ways of thinking rather than bodies of knowledge, they should be taught as problem solving procedures rather than as factual information and the conclusions of others'"?1427 What is proper introductory teaching of these or any other subjects if it is not the imparting of factual information and the conclusions of others? There must be room in all good education for analysis and argument, but that can take place sensibly only after children have mastered the basic received knowledge in any subject area. Otherwise, the likelihood and danger is that social studies will come to be recognised as soft options—waffly subjects taught in waffly ways by ill-equipped teachers to unfortunate children who have been led to believe that the expression of ill-founded opinions is an adequate substitute for the proper grasp of the subject in question.Secondly, does the Department share the view expressed in the report that it is necessary to lay the foundations of social studies in primary schools? Is it either timely or appropriate, for example, that children of primary school age should be expected to spend some of their scarce and valuable school time looking at child rearing patterns in the name of sociology or anthropology, grappling with the concept of "opportunity cost" in the name of economics or arguing about the culling of grey seals in the name of politics? Would it not be far better for children of primary school age to spend their school time learning to read, write and speak well in their own language, deal adequately with numbers and understand mathematics and, if there is time in the curriculum, being introduced to a foreign language or a natural science, or both?
Surely the authors of the report allowed themselves to be dangerously carried away by their own dotty ideas when they put such stress on the need for social studies in primary schools. I am not sure that it is even appropriate for such subjects to be taught in the early years of secondary education. They should rather be left until the age of 13 or so, during roughly the last three years of statutory education, when they could well be appropriate.
Thirdly, is the Department of Education and Science prepared to accept the financial implications of the report, which states clearly on page 25:
We have come to the conclusion that the area of resources holds the key not only to effective learning by children, but also to effective teaching by staff. If the Head or Coordinator of middle school social studies wishes to implement the learning ideas and teaching methods which have been suggested, it is essential that he makes a wide array of resources available"?Among the resources that the authors appear to have in mind are money for field work and visits, money to buy what they describe in their transatlantic jargon as "artefacts" and money to buy or hire films, slides, records, tapes of radio and television programmes, reprographic facilities and so on.I suggest that at a time when it is difficult or impossible for many local education authorities to afford sufficient paper and textbooks or to employ sufficient remedial teachers, it would be folly to encourage such expensive social studies with only a very marginal educational value. Once again, we must remember that in our education system, perhaps more than in any other area of our national life, we must put first things first.
Finally, I ask my hon. Friend and his Department to consider carefully the future of the Schools Council, which is the sponsoring organisation for this lamentable report. By implication at least, the Schools Council in its 1428 foreword has commended all the main arguments advanced in the report. It therefore appears to condone statements such as that on page 31, which reads:
Teachers are realising increasingly that teaching factual information is not in itself productive and that what really matters is children's understanding of the concerns, concepts and procedures of the geographer, the sociologists and the other specialists",or the statement on page 43, which reads:It could be argued that the general educational value of the social studies is greater than that of languages and sciences.It even appears to condone the statement on page 38, apparently from Professor Jerome Bruner of Harvard university, which reads:Any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development.How deplorable it is that a responsible advisory body, such as the Schools Council, should appear to condone and approve such rubbish. Indeed, it is only in the cautionary references to the difficulties of teaching social studies effectively to mixed ability groups that the authors of the report and their sponsors in the Schools Council seem to have said anything really worthwhile.In short, at a time when education budgets are under great pressure and when it is in the national interest that we move away from the once trendy but actually rather dotty educational theories imported from the United States in the 1960s, my hon. Friend and his Department could do a valuable service to teachers and children by abolishing the Schools Council.
I realise that this would save no more than about £3 million a year in total. Nevertheless, that represents about one-twentieth of the total sum spent on school textbooks and might therefore be of at least marginal value in that area of provision.
I am aware also of the review by Nancy Trenaman of the functions, constitution and methods of work of the Schools Council, which it is hoped to conclude some time in the autumn. No doubt my hon. Friend will not wish to pre-empt the recommendations of that review, but I suggest that after a decent interval the Schools Council could be buried. If my hon. Friend could achieve that in the new year, he would ensure that people in education were thereby relieved of at least one source of ideas as fashionable, foolish and insidious as those contained in the report to which I have drawn the attention of the House today.
§ The Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Dr. Rhodes Boyson)I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton (Mr. Forman) for initiating this debate, although as one comes to the end of Session one sometimes wonders to which debate one is replying.
I am particularly interested in this matter. My hon. Friend and I have always agreed about education matters—for example, about educational vouchers and, indeed, many other matters. In so far as people may be described in terms of the party to which they belong, historically we have not always belonged to the same part of the party. Nevertheless, I greatly respect my hon. Friend. We worked together on the subject time and again when in Opposition. I may say that in the not-too-distant past I was among the editors of the black papers, some of the views expressed there being not all that different from those put forward by my hon. Friend today. I know, too, 1429 of my hon. Friend's distinguished academic career at New college, Oxford, at Bruges, Harvard and Sussex. He therefore speaks today not merely from his instinctive Conservatism but from a distinguished academic background.
I believe that schools must cover four basic areas if they are to turn out children to fit into our present society. The first is basic literacy and numeracy, to which my hon. Friend referred. One reads from Solomon in the Bible that if one attains wisdom everything else will be added. Unless children are literate and numerate, everthing else is nonsense on the way. It is the ultimate deprivation.
We live in an age that is concerned about deprivation, and many of us join deprivation lobbies. There are two important deprivations in this area. The first is the inability to read, write and number. The second is continued ill health. Both are very serious. Basic literacy and numeracy must be taught, and there must be a body of knowledge. I return to what my hon. Friend has said. It is all very well to teach methods of approach so long as there are marker buoys or benchmarks on which to make judgments.
Thirdly, there is the question of skills to earn a living. Like much of the Western world, we have high unemployent at present. None of us on either side of the House likes that. In the long run, however, children must be taught skills which will enable them to earn a living when they leave school, upon which their pride in maintaining or being part of a family and everything else must eventually depend.
I hope that my hon. Friend will agree that there is also a fourth deprivation. Sir Robert Birley, when he was head of Eton, used to refer to this as "awe"—to be brought into contact with great thoughts, great poetry, great religion, great music and great art, not necessarily to absorb it but to know that it exists to uplift men at some time.
Those four factors have always seemed to me to represent the basic conditions on which schools should exist.
I should also add to my hon. Friend's comments about what can be done in the school day by a comment which is rarely made these days. Something that has remained constant in education while all else has changed or partly changed is the length of the school day. I know from my own experience that holidays are longer than they were in 1939. At that time, grammar schools had about six weeks' holiday while the elementary and primary schools had about four weeks. In our egalitarian age, they all have six weeks. Despite the raising of the school leaving age, therefore, 80 per cent. of children now spend less time in school than they did in 1939.
I was often approached by enthusiastic members of staff suggesting new subjects for the curriculum. We all like enthusiastic staff, just as you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, no doubt like enthusiastic Members of Parliament so long as they do not talk for too long. I always used to say that it was a good idea and that we should have a staff meeting, at which the member of staff concerned could begin by explaining what he would take out of the curriculum. They never pursued the matter, because they knew that they would never get it past the rest of the staff.
Personally, I have always been dubious about combined subjects. At their best, they can be beautifully taught. It is like mixed-ability teaching. Mixed-ability teaching by dedicated teachers who are prepared to work for 16 or 20 hours a day and who are wedded to it as though they had entered a nunnery or a monastery certainly works, 1430 but with average teachers it does not. It is the same with many combined subjects. I remember once saying that such projects were like cutting books up and sticking them back together in the wrong order and then regarding it as a great leap forward. It is all very well if people know what they are doing. During my time at Highbury Grove we tried to have a combination of so-called social studies in the first year. We did not go for anthropology, sociology or economics, but the course combined religious education with history, geography and a little science. It broke down after a year because the teachers needed so many meetings to agree on what they were doing that they had no time to teach in the classroom.
As a "reactionary", it has always struck me that it is a good thing to be in the classroom in time with something on the blackboard before anybody comes in and some knowledge of what one will be teaching and marking as time goes on. From time to time I hear people, not necessarily just on Conservative Benches, talking about subversion in schools. I am not suggesting that there is subversion in schools. If one takes away the structure of firm paths and clear definitions, one opens up an area where people can use the classroom to bring forward their views.
I was struck when my hon. Friend said that in many cases such teaching is for the advantage of the teacher but not for the advantage of the pupil. Each year the curriculum is new to the pupil. If a teacher has been teaching pupils to read for 40 years, it becomes a little boring in the fortieth year, especially for a 61-year-old who is about to retire. It might be more interesting to do something else. I feel sometimes that the so-called new ideas for education are for the satisfaction of bored teachers and not for the children who enthusiastically want to learn. Religious education has suffered similarly. It has been amalgamated with studies on general moral values and has become a walk round the museum of religion in Moscow instead of the teaching of a particular faith.
I shall defend the Schools Council in bringing forward its report, and I am sure that my hon. Friend will respect me for doing so. It is said on page 9 of the report:
The main emphasis used to be on transmitting factual information.We still need factual information. It helps to be able to tell the time so that we can catch the train rather than knowing where the train came from or being able to draw one on a board. It also helps to be able to add up rolls of wallpaper when buying it in this do-it-yourself age. Otherwise there may be an argument with the wife when there are seven rolls left at the end and the family cannot afford to go on holiday afterwards.By all means, ideas and some philosophy should be taught with certain subjects; many teachers have done that. I am not defending or attacking the independent schools. The old public school headmasters, whatever they taught, be it Latin, maths or history, in the sixth form used the teaching of such subjects as a vehicle not only for imparting factual information but for developing the mind. Surely the good teacher does not need all sorts of gimmicks. He can use factual information in his approch and in the way that he questions the children so that their minds can be developed.
There has been a press release on the subject, which must be important as presumably what it says is what people want us to do. It says that the teaching of politics can begin as early as the age of seven. If I said that in a 1431 public house in Brent, North this evening—I would not necessarily be in a public house, as I am a Methodist, Mr. Speaker—I would be laughed to scorn. The people there would say that they wanted their children to be literate and numerate. Any person would say that, wherever he stood in the political spectrum.
The press release also states:
The social studies—history, geography, sociology, anthropology, economics and politics—should never be an optional extra but an 'exceptionally important' part of the core curriculum up to 16 years.How long do people expect the school day to go on if all those things are to be embedded in the curriculum as well? Will we have a two-shift school system in order to get through all the subjects? By all means, when one is teaching history some anthropology comes in, and when one is teaching geography some economics comes in. Sociology is part of history, in that we see how people fit into society, and it may also be included in religious education. However, I believe that such extensions should be a natural outcrop.History is referred to on page 10 of the Schools Council document. I refer to history as I have written history and as I am a historian. The document states:
It should be a 'patch' in which we can dig deeply, rather than a longer period over which we skate superficially. In that way we avoid the 'line of development' approach.The Schools Council has been useful in concentrating the minds of my hon. Friend and me by putting forward subjects for discussion. Little did it know that such matters would be discussed today in Parliament.People should know that there was a Roman Empire, that many different people came to this country, that there was an Industrial Revolution and the agrarian revolution and that there have been 10 centuries of monarchy in this country. There has to be a plan of teaching, otherwise people are lost. At times there are instant comments by people who are naively arrogant, who know only little patches of history and nothing of the thread running through it. What I have read in the document is excellent—for example, what is said about Pompeii, the Elizabethan age and the blitz. All such things should be taught, but I believe that they should be extras. Any good school will give mainstream teaching in the normal time and outside that time there will be projects for the children in the summer holidays. I am sure that the children in my hon. Friend's constituency, who are probably on holiday already, are working on their projects. Any good teacher makes sure that such projects are done, and has always done so. At the same time as the line approach is taught, the depth approach is brought in, and projects are included on the way.
My hon. Friend referred to the Schools Council, which is involved in this matter. I have always been dubious about the schools humanities project. As a schoolmaster, I always considered that it would do more harm than good. I have not changed my mind. In most schools, apart from those with bright sixth forms, that would do more harm than good.
The report referred to integration, which I commend. In Merton, there is a school for 7 to 9-year-olds, a school 1432 for 9 to 13-year-olds and a school for 13 to 16-year-olds. We could give our opinions on whether plants grow better when dug up and transplanted to another bed. I do not think that they do, but that is one of my normal reactions. However, if there is such a situation, it is probably good to have integration. The teachers got together and worked something out. The fact that the teachers from the first school, the second school and the third school met is good. I commend to teachers throughout the country that where people are moving from primary to secondary schools, or from first school or second school or to third school, the teachers should come together so that there is no repetition but an integrated curriculum throughout.
This remarkable document was the product of an integration scheme and it would be interesting if other areas took it up. The project did not originate from the Schools Council but was a local initiative of a group of teachers in Merton who were concerned about the continuity in the three-tier system. The Schools Council felt that the project would be of interest to other authorities. It provided the funds for the project and circulated it for the information of teachers and authorities. The Schools Council was set up for that job. One cannot grumble if an institution which one sets up does what it was intended to do. One could say, as my hon. Friend said, that it should not exist at all, but it was set up to work on the school curriculum and on examinations. Its functions are to promote education by carrying out research and development and publishing reports, documents and other material. One could not grumble about the Schools Council bringing out something which was totally in its remit.
In 1977, as my hon. Friend knows, there was a reformation—I do not intend to use that word as a religious term—of the Schools Council because some Conservative Members in Opposition pressed for a reformation. Since that time, there has been a considerable change in the work done. In this case, the Schools Council felt that it would be of interest for the authorities if it provided the funds for the project and circulated it for the information of teaching authorities. If the report means that in other areas where children move schools in the age groups 7 to 9, 9 to 13 and 13 to 16 from one authority to another and come together for English, mathematics and basic subjects, including social studies, there should be some continuity if they are to study them, it will have performed a useful function, as will today's debate, in showing what the Schools Council does.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton said, Mrs. Nancy Trenaman, the principal of St. Anne's college, Oxford, is reviewing the council's funding, its constitution and its method of working. It would be wrong of me to comment on that. The report will be out in the autumn. The Schools Council was established because it was thought that there should be a central body to act as a clearing house for various ideas. In the Schools Council or some other organisation we need a central clearing body. By bringing out the report the Schools Council is causing great debate. We should pay tribute to the Schools Council, although we have every right to disagree with some things covered by the report, as my hon. Friend has done. I have some sympathy with him.