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Plowden (1967) Notes on the text Volume 1 (page numbers in brackets) Preliminary pages (i-xxii)
Part 1 Introduction
Part 2 The growth of the child
Part 3 The home, school and neighbourhood
Part 4 The structure of primary education
Part 5 The children in the schools: curriculum and internal organisation
Part 6 The adults in the schools
Part 7 Independent schools
Part 8 Primary school buildings and equipment; status; and research
Part 9 Conclusions and recommendations
Notes (486-495)
Research and Surveys about Plowden |
The Plowden Report (1967)
A Report of the Central Advisory Council for Education (England) London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office 1967
[page 183 (unnumbered)]
Internal organisation
[page 185] 493. All schools reflect the views of society, or of some section of society, about the way children should be brought up, whether or not these views are consciously held or defined. The old English elementary school derived, in part at least, from the National Society for the Education of the Poorer Classes in the principles of the Established Church founded in 1811, the aim of which was to provide for what were then thought to be the educational needs of the working class. The effects of the hierarchical view of society which this title implied persisted long after the view itself became unacceptable and out of date. American schools have had, as an avowed purpose, the Americanisation of children from diverse cultures, races and climates. Russian education is strictly geared to particular political and social beliefs. Our society is in a state of transition and there is controversy about the relative rights of society and the individual. What agreement can be reached in the midst of this uncertainty about the objectives of English education, and in particular of English primary schools, in the last third of the twentieth century? 494. One obvious purpose is to fit children for the society into which they will grow up. To do this successfully it is necessary to predict what that society will be like. It will certainly be one marked by rapid and far reaching economic and social change. It is likely to be richer than now, with even more choice of goods, with tastes dominated by majorities and with more leisure for all; more people will be called upon to change their occupation. 495. About such a society we can be both hopeful and fearful. We can hope it will care for all its members, for the old as well as the young, for the handicapped as well as the gifted, for the deviant as well as the conformer, and that it will create an environment which is stimulating, honest and tolerant. We can fear that it will be much engrossed with the pursuit of material wealth, too hostile to minorities, too dominated by mass opinion and too uncertain of its values. 496. For such a society, children, and the adults they will become, will need above all to be adaptable and capable of adjusting to their changing environment. They will need as always to be able to live with their fellows, appreciating and respecting their differences, understanding and sympathising with their feelings. They will need the power of discrimination and, when necessary, to be able to withstand mass pressures. They will need to be well-balanced, with neither emotions nor intellect giving ground to each other. They will need throughout their adult life to be capable of being taught, and of learning, the new skills called for by the changing economic scene. They will need to understand that in a democratic society each individual has obligations to the community, as well as rights within it, 497. When we asked our witnesses for their views on the aims of primary education we found a wide general measure of agreement, though many of the replies seemed to have as much relevance to other phases of education [page 186] as to primary. The heads of both junior and infant schools laid emphasis upon the all round development of the individual and upon the acquisition of the basic skills necessary in contemporary society. Many added a third aim, that of the religious and moral development of the child and some a fourth, that of children's physical development and acquisition of motor skills. Phrases such as 'whole personality', 'happy atmosphere', 'full and satisfying life', 'full development of powers', 'satisfaction of curiosity', 'confidence', 'perseverance' and 'alertness' occurred again and again. This list shows that general statements of aims, even by those engaged in teaching, tend to be little more than expressions of benevolent aspiration which may provide a rough guide to the general climate of a school, but which may have a rather tenuous relationship to the educational practices that actually go on there. It was interesting that some of the head teachers who were considered by HM Inspectors to be most successful in practice were least able to formulate their aims clearly and convincingly. 498. Even the second aim, that of acquiring the basic skills, proved less tangible than would appear at first sight or than public opinion would consider it. Most witnesses were thinking in terms of the three Rs, but there are other skills besides those of reading, writing and arithmetic which are necessary for those who are to live happily and usefully both as children and as adults. Communication by the spoken word is at least as important as writing and for the majority perhaps more important. In Chapters 16 and 17 we consider the curriculum in detail and try to show how the aims of the school, the needs of the children and the means at the disposal of the teachers fit together and react upon each other. Here we are concerned with aims in general. 499. A special difficulty is raised by the third aim mentioned by our witnesses, that of the religious and moral development of the child. We discuss Religious Education in Chapter 17 and the standards of behaviour of the child are referred to in other parts of the Report. 500. An aim, which was hardly mentioned by head teachers and yet one which, if challenged, they would almost certainly have admitted, is the cooperation of school and home and, with it, that of making good to children, as far as possible, the deficiencies of their backgrounds. That this aim found so little expression is significant. The implications of the relationships between school and home have still to be worked out; some teachers are anxious about the extent to which the school is taking the responsibility for the child's welfare and thus undermining the responsibility, as some would put it, of parents. The stronger partnership that there should be between teacher and parents has been discussed in Chapter 4. 501. It is difficult to reach agreement on the aims of primary education if anything but the broadest terms are used but formulations of that kind are little more than platitudes. We invited the help of a number of distinguished educationists and professors of educational philosophy and enjoyed a lengthy and interesting discussion with them. They all confirmed the view that general statements of aims were of limited value, and that a pragmatic approach to the purposes of education was more likely to be fruitful. We now turn to the implications of this conclusion. 502. An individual as distinct from a general statement of aims may be more worth making. It clears the writer's mind and compels him to examine what [page 187] he is doing and why. This is a useful professional exercise for all teachers. Head teachers have for long written statements of this kind to help their staffs. They are useful insofar as they promote real thought and are not confined to a mere set of directions. They should encourage class teachers to look critically at their day to day work, relating it to guiding principles and not simply to short term objectives. One of our witnesses gives such a list: 'physical health, intellectual development, emotional and moral health, aesthetic awareness, a valid perspective, practical skills, social skills, personal fulfilment', and so on, with each main heading divided into appropriate subheadings. But he goes on to say: 'such an itemised statement of purposes has doubtful value, except as an academic exercise or as a check list'. Check lists, however, have their uses and the items on the lists should be double checked against current practices. What practices in my school develop these qualities? Which of these qualities are developed by this particular practice? Rather commonplace little exercises such as these encourage the staff of the school to keep thinking about what they are doing. Because statements of aims of this kind are written for a small and intimate circle there is less risk of disagreement about the underlying assumptions than with documents intended for a wider public. 503. Another approach might be to draw up a list of danger signs, which would indicate that something has gone wrong in a school: fragmented knowledge, no changes in past decade, creative work very limited, much time spent on teaching, few questions from children, too many exercises, too many rules, frequent punishments, and concentration on tests. Such a list, of course, involves value judgements at the outset, but it is an invitation to thought and argument and not simply to compliance. Then it could be asked what aims are implicit in, for example, play activity, painting, free writing, 'movement', games, the new mathematics, learning by heart, grammar and so on. To subject all educational practices to this kind of questioning might be healthy. Habit is an immensely strong influence in schools and it is one that should be weakened though it is never likely to be removed. These words are particularly addressed to practising teachers and especially to head teachers, rather than to educational theorists, who seldom fear innovation but whose ideas may founder because of their ignorance of what schools (and sometimes teachers) are really like. 504. If these methods were applied to all primary schools it would be apparent that the trend of their practices and outlook corresponds to a recognisable philosophy of education, and to a view of society, which may be summarised as follows. 505. A school is not merely a teaching shop, it must transmit values and attitudes. It is a community in which children learn to live first and foremost as children and not as future adults. In family life children learn to live with people of all ages. The school sets out deliberately to devise the right environment for children, to allow them to be themselves and to develop in the way and at the pace appropriate to them. It tries to equalise opportunities and to compensate for handicaps. It lays special stress on individual discovery, on first hand experience and on opportunities for creative work. It insists that knowledge does not fall into neatly separate compartments and that work and play are not opposite but complementary. A child brought up in such an [page 188] atmosphere at all stages of his education has some hope of becoming a balanced and mature adult and of being able to live in, to contribute to, and to look critically at the society of which he forms a part. Not all primary schools correspond to this picture, but it does represent a general and quickening trend. 506. Some people, while conceding that children are happier under the modern regime and perhaps more versatile, question whether they are being fitted to grapple with the world which they will enter when they leave school. This view is worth examining because it is quite widely held but we think it rests on a misconception. It isolates the long term objective, that of living in and serving society, and regards education as being at all stages recognisably and specifically a preparation for this. It fails to understand that the best preparation for being a happy and useful man or woman is to live fully as a child. Finally, it assumes, quite wrongly, that the older virtues, as they are usually called, of neatness, accuracy, care and perseverance, and the sheer knowledge which is an essential of being educated, will decline. These are genuine virtues and an education which does not foster them is faulty. 507. Society is right to expect that importance will be attached to these virtues in all schools. Children need them and need knowledge if they are to gain satisfaction from their education. What we repudiate is the view that they were automatically fostered by the old kind of elementary education. Patently they were not, for enormous numbers of the products of that education do not possess them. Still more we repudiate the fear that the modern primary approach leads to their neglect. On the contrary it can, and, when properly understood, does lay a much firmer foundation for their development and it is more in the interests of the children. But those interests are complex. Children need to be themselves, to live with other children and with grown ups, to learn from their environment, to enjoy the present, to get ready for the future, to create and to love, to learn to face adversity, to behave responsibly: in a word, to be human beings. Decisions about the influences and situations that ought to be contrived to these ends must be left to individual schools, teachers and parents. What must be ensured is that the decisions taken in schools spring from the best available knowledge and are not simply dictated by habit or convention. 
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