Within the public higher sector, the student participation is at a low ebb. Eric Robinson makes a plea for greater efforts.
The key to understanding national policy on the training of teachers is that it provides cheap higher education of teachers who can be cheaply employed. Teacher training is…
Abstract
The key to understanding national policy on the training of teachers is that it provides cheap higher education of teachers who can be cheaply employed. Teacher training is isolated from the rest of higher education in the colleges of education, and leads to a qualification that is unrecognized by industry and business. If the training of teachers were conducted in universities or polytechnics alongside education for other professions it would cost much more. If teachers in training obtained a qualification, such as a degree, that was recognized for other types of employment they would have a strong lever with which their salaries could be raised. The reason why young honours graduate teachers are paid 25 per cent more than their non‐graduate colleagues is not because they are better teachers but because they could command better salaries in industry or business.
Because we think of work and industry as a necessary evil we (the sentimental intellectuals) want to protect our children from it for as long as possible and we therefore…
Abstract
Because we think of work and industry as a necessary evil we (the sentimental intellectuals) want to protect our children from it for as long as possible and we therefore formulate our educational ideals in terms of raising the school‐leaving age as high as possible. I think we should shift our emphasis.
The engineering profession has been bitterly attacked by many technical college teachers (myself included) for the crude restrictive practices it maintains in engineering…
Abstract
The engineering profession has been bitterly attacked by many technical college teachers (myself included) for the crude restrictive practices it maintains in engineering education. Most of the criticisms of CEI's new policy on admission to corporate membership policy have not sufficiently recognized that the profession has a real problem: its educational standards are much too low for British engineers to be competitive in the international industrial scene. The Ministry of Technology has for several years given strong backing to the move to close the door to HNC entry to full professional status because it believes strongly that engineers trained in this way would cut a poor figure in the European Community which generally admits to the status of engineer only graduates of university courses considerably longer than the standard 3‐year course of British universities. And after meeting a continental engineer who not only has a mature understanding of modern mathematics and physics, but also a reasonable knowledge of economics and fluency in two or three languages, one is compelled to admit that they have a point. I taught HNC engineers for many years and have no illusions about the academic standards or professional adequacy of these courses but I am not convinced that many university courses are substantially better. Students spend far too much time practising routines and writing those endless dull laboratory reports that can bear little relationship to work in industry. The sheer tedium of engineering courses make; students into dull engineers and worst than that it keeps many bright people out of engineering. At a recent students' meeting I heard arts and social science student: protesting that engineering students did not participate in activities outside the classroom, that they tolerated any treat ment meted out to them and that then was little interest among engineers in cross‐disciplinary discussions. I was appalled that so many of the engineers seemed inclined to accept this evaluation of themselves and several times engineering students have explained to me that it is a fact of life that intelligent people avoid the study of engineering. The CEI is trying to improve the image of the engineer but, judging from the contemptuous references to ‘spanner men’ I have heard in several universities this year, they are not likely to achieve this merely by labelling as an outcast anyone who failed to get 2 A‐levels before he left school.
Post‐James With a predictable fanfare of trumpets, North‐East London Polytechnic has come up with some thought‐provoking proposals on how the Diploma in Higher Education mooted by…
Abstract
Post‐James With a predictable fanfare of trumpets, North‐East London Polytechnic has come up with some thought‐provoking proposals on how the Diploma in Higher Education mooted by Lord James could operate. They are the work of a group formed last spring, including Mr Eric Robinson, Deputy Director (Planning) at North‐East London, and the ubiquitous Mr Tyrrell Burgess, who wears a hat at the Polytechnic in its Centre for Institutional Studies.
The outstanding speech of the 53rd Annual Conference of the ATTI at Bournemouth during the Whitsun weekend was the Presidential Address of Mr Eric E. Robinson who is the youngest…
Abstract
The outstanding speech of the 53rd Annual Conference of the ATTI at Bournemouth during the Whitsun weekend was the Presidential Address of Mr Eric E. Robinson who is the youngest President ever of the Association.
The development of the colleges of advanced technology and the Diploma in Technology, between 1956 and 1964, coincided with the gestation of the ‘new’ universities of Sussex, East…
Abstract
The development of the colleges of advanced technology and the Diploma in Technology, between 1956 and 1964, coincided with the gestation of the ‘new’ universities of Sussex, East Anglia, Kent, Lancaster, Warwick and Essex. Of course, at the time, it was not generally assumed that the CATs would become universities and the differences of thinking in the CATs and in the new universities were substantial — generally the CATs were industrially based and technological whereas the new universities were dominated by the avante garde academics of the time and were heavily biased towards the social sciences. But it is worthwhile to notice the similarities between the CATs and the new universities because these institutions now constitute a terrible hang‐over of an idea of a university that was current in the late fifties and is now completely outdated.
The new Education Bill should include four new major items. It should ensure the provision of nursery education. It should redefine the powers and responsibilities in education of…
Abstract
The new Education Bill should include four new major items. It should ensure the provision of nursery education. It should redefine the powers and responsibilities in education of local, regional and national government. It should extend compulsory education (part‐time or full‐time) for all up to the age of 18. It should bring the universities in with the rest by legislating for them along with the institutions providing education for adults.
In my less charitable moments I think of the establishment of the new universities as a mere throwback in the development of British education. Sometimes it seems that they were…
Abstract
In my less charitable moments I think of the establishment of the new universities as a mere throwback in the development of British education. Sometimes it seems that they were created in desperation by people fanatically determined to recover a century of failure to recreate Oxbridge in Manchester, Cardiff and London.
There can be few better schools in the politics of education than the NUT executive for this is the only body, other than parliament and the DES, that concerns itself actively…
Abstract
There can be few better schools in the politics of education than the NUT executive for this is the only body, other than parliament and the DES, that concerns itself actively with every aspect of education in England and Wales. Every other teachers' association limits itself to part of the system or to one ideology, sex, or creed but the NUT seeks to represent all teachers and it does indeed have active members in every sector and every type of institution. A consequence of this is that executive members have a wide range of experience but the price they pay for this is that they are inundated with paper and subjected to a disturbing variety of pressures.