Search results

Just before Christmas of 1970 I received a letter from a French friend who had enabled me during the period 1950–1960 to visit, in Paris, many of the new Industrial Complementary Courses which were being built up as part of the French post‐war drive to restore and advance the nation's industrial life after the sad years of the Occupation. These Industrial Complementary Courses represented the lowest level of technical education and recruited, in a fairly wide field of preparation for skilled factory work, boys and girls who, by their teachers, were regarded as some of the least able pupils. They were not educationally subnormal, and they were not those of the absolutely bottom stratum, academically speaking, but they were boys and girls for whom, in the academic eyes of the average secondary school teacher, normal bookish secondary schooling was impossible. The three years of Industrial Complementary schooling were a post‐primary alternative to any of the other forms of education from the age of 12 to the school‐leaving age of 15 years. The youngsters concerned had already shown that in the bookish studies which had hitherto constituted the bulk of their schooling, they were either thoroughly incompetent or had reached the stage of utter boredom and lack of interest. So, for them, there were now these various dust‐bins provided, under the heading Manual and Industrial.

If things develop as they should, Canada and persons and things Canadian should become ever more important, in the decades ahead, to the people of the British Isles. There are several reasons for this. The first was expressed last August in the Calgary Herald in an article which stated firmly that, even though the United States dominates the economic life of Canada, the different international viewpoint of Canada ought, in the councils of the world, to be made ever more apparent. Canadians, as a whole, are very anxious to help the building up of a harmonious cooperating world and less fiercely doctrinaire than most Americans in their opposition to the allied ‘evils’ of socialism and communism and their delegates at international conferences have been very helpful in this respect.

France, world leader in innovation in the organisation of craft and technical apprenticeship, has taken another bold step forward in this field. This new model needs to be carefully and seriously studied in Britain as a possible means of overcoming the weaknesses which have now become apparent in the present system.

France has recently redeveloped its system of vocational education and training, introducing more courses and qualifications for young people, and conferring upon all workers the right to paid leave for training or retraining at any point during their working lives. It is sometimes suggested that the introduction of this system of ‘Education Permanente’ into Britain would bring great benefits; however the system has drawbacks as well as advantages. This article aims to describe the system and then to point out some of its advantages and disadvantages.

In Longmans' English Larousse a liberal education is defined as one ‘involving a general enlarging of the mind beyond the merely professional or technical’ — a very praiseworthy concept. How comes it then, that this word ‘liberal’ has for at least one and a half centuries made schooling boring or even nauseating for a large proportion of adolescents?

The article by Professor Peston, published by The Times Educational Supplement on April 16th is remarkable in a number of ways. Firstly, it deals so little with education, and so much with economics approached from a political and sociological point of view, that one wonders why it was printed in the weekly educational supplement of our leading newspaper. This baffling sense of wonderment is increased by reading and reflecting upon the last paragraph of the article in which the writer, having ‘discovered’ that the root of our troubles lies in the outlook and behaviour of employers, not merely private employers but some of the nationalised industries as well, proceeds to tell employers what they must do in order that our troubles shall be ended. ‘Firms should begin by reforming themselves and treating their employees a little more decently. In a nutshell the blue collar workers should start to be offered white collar conditions, and then management might begin to take a broader view of the interests of the community.’

The steadily increasing bite of the 1974 Budget into the lives of all but a small minority of British people ought to make most of them ask themselves the question — why the Devil are we in this deplorable economic condition, when Germany, defeated, widely devastated by furious bombing and finally dismembered, is at the top of the external balance league and France, ignominiously over‐run and occupied for years, is relatively free from financial anxieties and from production difficulties? Why indeed? Nothing exists without a cause, but those causes which get overlooked, or dismissed, are the ones that make least noise, act most slowly and that require some imagination for recognition as one of the roots of great crises. Such a cause is, naturally, what goes on in schools, because most parents are ignorant or nonchalant about this, and, of those who are not ignorant most are traditional in outlook: schooling means just books and paper and open‐air games. So only defeat and destruction or the affront and indignity of occupation, or some other such shattering experiences are sufficient to bring about the educational revolution that modern scientific and economic developments have been demanding for years.

‘The Council has decided that all apprentices should attend, without loss of pay, release courses in Vocational Schools and Colleges on the basis of at least one day a week (or its equivalent in block release) during the first three years of apprenticeship.’

‘Everybody now realises that henceforward social progress depends entirely upon economic progress. Without economic expansion there simply is no possible advance in the social field. Economic expansion cannot be brought about by the discovery of new natural riches: we cannot build up any illusions for ourselves because our land has been searched and sounded and pierced with bore holes from one end to the other and we shall not find the caves of Ali Baba however deep we go. The only caves of Ali Baba which we can now find lie in ourselves, in our minds, in our creativity, in our capacity to innovate and invent, ie in our technical progress. It is this technical advance that, henceforward, conditions all economic advance from which can come social progress. There is no possibility whatever of human progress within the frontiers of France without progress in the field of all things technical, and, consequently without progress in technical education.’

To the well‐known saying that ‘Psychology has caused us to forget what we used to know about human nature’ we need to add the words ‘and human abilities’. Standardised tests, generally answered on paper, have for years had too great an effect in deciding what human beings should be allowed to tackle. Inadequate allowance has been made for motivation, for will power and staying power, human characteristics which do not readily lend themselves to the machinations of office‐bound psychologists. Unemployment is one of those phenomena which provides activities for statisticians, but however large the number of unemployed, and however generous a Government Training Opportunities Scheme (TOPS), at the other end of the statistics are human beings with desires and aspirations — and abilities. This fact is as plain as a pikestaff and if it is considered with the other fact that simultaneously with large numbers of unemployed there are always large (but smaller) numbers of unfilled vacancies, one wonders why the scheme of skill assessment in operation at Bellshill (Government) Training Centre had not been put into practice all over the country many decades ago.