The directed profession: teachers and the state in the third millennium

Abstract

Abstract This article argues that education in schools in the United Kingdom at the present time is an illuminating – if alarming – example of what can happen when the priorities of a government, impelled by global and economic imperatives, meshes with a professional culture which, through a reductionist and technical-rational approach to its In-service Education and Training (INSET), takes insufficient note of such changes and does little to prevent them from radically changing the purposes of an education system. It is argued that such coherence leads to genuine damage to educational purposes, and leads to a profession that is dispirited and demoralised. However, further than this, it has grave implications for the political health of a country, weakening as it does the possibility of a participative citizenry within a genuine political democracy. It is argued that this combination of directive government policy and acquiescent professional culture generates a monolithic approach to education, silences ...