Book review

Learning For Life

Learning for Life (The Foundations for Lifelong Learning),
Intl Specialized Book Service Inc; (June 1, 2004)

Author: David Hargreaves

Review by Donald Clark - Epic

Learning for Life is a puzzling title, as the book is really about compulsory education, which means schooling. The subtitle is more meaningful. I say this because the seminars that gave rise to the book were billed as seminars in ‘lifelong learning’. However, I really warmed to the theme as it is clear that we reap what we sow, and that schools and schooling, in their current guise, rather than lay foundations for lifelong learning, encourage a culture of lifelong avoidance of learning. This is a brave book, not afraid to look hard at teaching, schools and educational policy in search of answers. So what did it come up with?

Curriculum

Hargreaves is keen to defend the National Curriculum. It eliminates duplicated effort and allows pupils to move from one school to another. The caveats come in the form of two nice metaphors. First that the National Curriculum be more like a climbing frame than a ladder, and secondly that we can’t just add books to one end of the shelf without removing some from the other end. This is good stuff and he comes out of the starting blocks with some force.

Assessment

The usual dance between the need for summative assessment and its unwanted side effects is laid out, along with the now clamorous call for more formative assessment. This is coupled with the open admission that the assessment system, if assessed, would fail any test on relevance, efficiency and simplicity. Then it gets interesting. The useful concept of AfL (Assessment for Learning) is introduced. This is assessment targeted at planning at the next steps in learning. Teaching has dropped into ‘ticks for tasks’, where learners see school as a series of tasks to be rid off, and teachers see completion of these tasks as ‘marking’. It’s clear that something has to change here.

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Pedagogy

Yes – it’s that word again. This is one of the best chapters in the book as it is honest about the fact that current pedagogy is not underpinned by research and that teaching in schools has no agreed discourse or vocabulary for dealing with pedagogic issues. It’s all art and no science. The charge, however, is more serious, in that pedagogy seems stuck in the outmoded ‘schoolteacher’ model. Learners react to this model by plodding their way through work with the minimum of effort and unpleasantness, coming out with negative views on the learning process. Teaching contrasts badly with apprenticeships. Learners do not want to be teachers and do not see them as an aspirational peer group or desirable culture. Projects are preferred over the routine of bells, corridor walks and lessons. He contrasts the excellent project work in plays, music festivals and computer clubs, with the tedium of lessons, and notes with some irony that these are often shunted out into extra-curricular activities. His conclusion – if you want to look for improved pedagogy, don’t look inside the current school system.

ICT

ICT – three letters that only exist in schools. This says it all – the divide between schools and the real world on the use of technology is stark. The second digital divide, between children and teachers has long been a problem with most kids picking up so called ICT skills from consoles and computers at home. Teachers and schools are seen as the problem not the solution. They were caught largely unprepared for the technological changes in society and continue to be slow and ponderous on the issue ‘neither ready nor willing’. I was puzzled by the absence of the BECTA research and presence of sources from The Daily Telegraph. When The Daily Telegraph becomes our watchword for learning theory, then we do need to worry!

School design

An excellent dissection of just how unsuited schools are to playing a role in lifelong learning. Underused in evenings, weekends and holidays, the deeply conservative views of schools as institutions, inflexible designs, lack of sharing, no real community role, no link with health centres, no interdepartmental planning. The list goes on as does the apathy around change. Year grouping is now recognised to part of the problem. Many simply outgrow school. They want out. The challenge, therefore, is simply to take the schooling out of school. The idea of half-way houses is suggested; the home, leisure centre and workplaces. Again, school is part of the problem, not the solution. Part of the problem is the word ‘school’ itself. It is not a viable concept for many adolescents or adults.

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Innovation

A useful discussion of home education (the Education Act demands education, not schooling) is followed by ideas on part-time schooling and more flexible structures. The problem is the ad hoc way in which innovation is encouraged and disseminated. A thousands flowers may bloom and all but a few are destined to die as quickly as poppies. Sustainability is a real problem as there’s no real incentive for the system to rapidly absorb new ideas.

Teaching

This is a touchy one. However, the simple fact that the teaching profession is wrong in hanging on to the outdated idea that they, and they alone, are responsible for educating children, is tackled head-on. Education is contrasted with health, where Doctors get support from nurses, an army of health professionals and lots of support staff. The stark reality is that teachers spend less than one third of their time teaching. Workforce remodelling is necessary – now. Personalisation is impossible without this shift. There is now a learning assistant for one in every four teachers and if we include all the other support staff, it adds up to as many support staff as teachers. This group must be professionalised. Parents have also been largely ignored and must be included in the mix. Co-learning with adults other than teachers is to be encouraged with a blurring of the lines between schools and the rest of the world. Such obvious good sense.

Firm foundations

Here things get a little strange. The book gets a little woolly around concepts of ‘capital’ in schools – material, social, intellectual and organisational. This gets very abstract. Then ‘personalisation’ is hauled in as the concept of the moment. Despite the fact that ‘Neither ministers nor their officials are entirely sure what it means’, he goes on to identify it as ‘the most promising area’ to establish the foundations for lifelong learning.

If I have one criticism it is that ‘personalisation’ creeps in at odd moments, especially in the final chapter, yet the issue is never really made clear. It needed a chapter in itself. I suspect that this is because it really does lack definition and clarity at the political and operational level. It felt like a bit of an anti-climax to hear that this was the solution to the ills outlined with such force in the book.

It is clear that schools don’t really offer a good foundation for lifelong learning. they are too remote from real life and too slow to change. It is a culture of taming, telling and testing. The book is at its best when tackling these hard issues. The chapters on pedagogy, school design and teaching are excellent. He doesn’t tiptoe around the issues and genuinely lays out alternatives, rather than just sniping at current structures. An inspiring and solid piece of work.

Donald Clark, 2004

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