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 .
