The end of becoming English and the beginning of schooling

Becoming British

Imagined community :

-National identity is a form of identification .

-Horizontal relationships : are relations which contain a sense of belonging and nationalism ; relations which unite people from different ethnicities , races , and social classes under the name of community to cover the inequality on the vertical level .

-Vertical relationships : are the relations of inequality between the individuals in terms of social class , ethnicity , gender , and generation .

-The very act of reading a daily newspaper reinforces and reproduces a sense of communal belonging .

-Newspaper , novel , and media gives the needed imagination for the reader to be able to imagine him/herself as a part of the imagined community .

-Signification system : Raymond williams defined culture as a realized signifying system : means to define it as meanings that are hidden as ideas .They are  only realized in social practice .This definition consists of the shared social meanings of a particular community , and it is involved in all kinds of social activity .It is important to all social life , because it is not only related to arts and novels but it is an aspect of all human activities .

-cultural shock : is a feeling or a sense of confusion felt by someone encountering and alien culture which has  different national networks of meaning different from the natural or common sense of his/her national community .

-Hegemony :  is the process of power in which a dominant group rules by the agreement of the community .

-An agreement in which a social group presents its specific interests as the general interests of the nation .

-It works by transformating potential contrariness into simple difference ; therefore , hegemony is a lived system of meanings and values ,which ,when they are practiced , constitute a sense of reality for most people , but it is a culture which consist of the dominant and subordinate classes .

-Hegemony tends to overfeed the public with meanings that support the dominant group .

-Hegemony is successful when it includes vertical realtions into horizontal by turning conflicts into simple differences .

  Schooling :

-Compulsory schooling was until the age of 18 .

-Before 1960s : Only elite class had access to education , and that led to reproduction of social classes .

-Leftest said , “there are other social classes other than elites.”

-Conservatism wanted the elite culture to stay the dominant .

-The westerners think that the whiteness is the default .

 Progressivism :

-The movement of progressivism believes that more education will lead to economy growth .

-Some changes were needed in the curriculum and pedagogy , because the quantity expansion was not enough . There was also a need for relevance and equality for the multicultural classroom .

-Newsom’s theme shows the unwillingness of both old working-class cultures and the new popular cultures of youth to engage with the kind of education offered .

-They showed their unwillingness to engage in the kind of education that only prepares you to be a workforce to increase the economy growth .

-Professional influence over the educational process increased .Reform was filtered and embedded through school-teachers , local authorities , and teacher educator to reach the individual child .

-A common working class culture appeared and its stories and speech were heard , they were a community that was disconnected from the powerful institiutions .

-Between 1969-74 the golden age came to an end .(elite culture)

-A series of  working class protests against inequalities , asked for the right of recognition and participation .

-Questions of inequalities raised by movements forced their way into classrooms asking for the recognition of marginalized identities .

-These questions of inequalities raised inside the classrooms and outside the classrooms .

-1960s parents of colour (black and asian) protested against inequalities .

-1970s teachers developed anti-racist and anti-imperialist curriculum.

-1980s new era : cultural politics and classroom practices changed against racism .

-Imagining a common britishness (a divers one) .

                     

  Conservatism :

-Old conservatism :

-1949 Eliot claimed that educating everyone means lowering their standards , abandoning the subjects they used to transmit their culture , and destroy their edifices(achievements and beliefs) .

-Kingsley Amis ,two decades later , said , ‘more will mean worse.’

-After 1940s the old conservatism was challenged and displaced , because elite culture could not succeed in mass education and there were attacks on selectivity of students to programs .

-Eventhough conservatism was weakened by egalitarianism(equality) and cultural diversity .

-Neo-conservatism :

- they made a spectacular comeback through Thatcherism² .                 

-Thatcherism : is a system of political thought based on the policies of the former conservative prime minister of the United Kingdom Margaret Thatcher .

-They criticized the progressivism pedagogies and curriculum because education for all caused massification , and at that time education was struggling through a difficult process of transformation which allowed conservatism its second wind (chance) .

-New conservatism themes: traditionalist and xenophobic.
-That critique was widely spread by sympathetic media.

-1981/1993: conservatism destroyed the way in which the relationship between the culture and education had been configured post 1944.

-The program was one of construction and critique. They established a specific national curriculum, and they set up a system of regular examination to fund schools depending on their success in attracting students and bidding for government money(the payment is based on how many students they attract). The example of Massar in Morocco .

-This alternative was a failure because the importance was put on standard English and british empire and history(Standard English) . The aim was not to develop a program that fits to cultural and social change .

New Labor : ‘Tony Blair’

-New Labor offered a new vision to the economic change in relation to global policy.

- Resource constraints, high unemployment, and demographic downturn played a big role on the demand for education, and also on the perception of its role , and its contribution to social and economical development.

-Education expansion was no longer thought of to contribute to economic growth. It was seen as an investment in human capital .

-They criticized early school curricula (progressivism and conservatism).

-They criticized the long and still unfinished process of fixing school curricula.

-Government policies were servicing the requirements of a new stage of economic development at a low cost(less people and less cost of money) and maximum effectiveness.

-New Labor neglected the past education (Conservatism and egalitarianism) by instructing teachers that history of education began with the year ZERO, 1988 ,  when the conservative educational reform act passed(gone) , before that point education was a failure .

-The age of compulsory schooling became 16.

-Labor were indifferent to cultural differences and the only matter for them is achievements and being an effective member in the society.

-Drying up opportunities for school leavers.

-Student’s attitude changed towards schooling because they won’t have the opportunity to find a job they quit school.

-New traditions and rituals of schooling emerged .They focused on the annual release to students of their examination results. They pictured schooling around the experience of certification.

-Educational programmes developed by new labor was economized according to market economy.

 

  Cultural Landscap :

Modernization , tradition , and schooling .

-Modernization is a loose and flexible concept that condense an evaluation of the past as a zone of exhausted tradition.

-Societies of EU are knowledge societies, in which competitiveness and wealth depend on innovation and flexibility.

-Education and training systems must provide an ‘intangible capital’ that is central to learn economies, but they can’t because their institutions and pedagogies are outdated.

-To enrich economy, schools must produce flexible and innovative students, and without independent schools which promote innovation, they cannot produce innovative students. School needs to be transformed according to market conditions to work with new partners especially from private sector (to produce students that will work in private sectors) .

- Modernized system has two main features:

First, system of data collection: it is a technology that compares data which is collected by pupils’ scores in examinations and tests which represent their schools that can be compared to those of other schools.

   Creativity :

-New Labor brought a strong teaching force that has many goals (the main one is creativity)

–The implemented creativity since 2001 as an important element in the policy repertoire .

-In order to promote creativity , New labor linked creativity to so many fields in which a student can be creative .

-New labor through its education supported self-discipline and self-surveillance, which means the student no longer needs someone to control him/her .

-New labor did not develop any new curriculum or pedagogy to support creativity , but they provided the students with new tools like technology and communication to reach their targets .