RE: Schools and Deming

[Aidan Ward <aidan_ward@antelopes.com>]

DENizens,

This thread keeps resurfacing and I am glad that it does. Thanks to 
the people that keep the vision alive.

Some time ago I asked somewhat intemperately for anyone to say what 
education was for. I am not quite happy with the notion of learning 
because it seems to beg the question learning what and because it 
doesn't have a edge that clarifies a situation.

In discussing this with a colleague recently we decided that a 
statement of purpose that captured the purpose of the education 
system that we have in the UK at present would be "to implement a 
sentimental notion of caring for children and their development and 
especially to deny that there are any important questions for those 
children for which there are not already sufficient answers".

From there I moved to a notion of purpose in education that I am 
happier with and which shows why the current system cannot work. An 
education system must:

Put forward the present cultural understanding of a society to give 
people the best possible opportunity to take forward what is good and 
to re-imagine and change what is not good. The meanings that a new 
generation gives to what the previous generation thought and did 
cannot be constrained and should only be influenced to increase this 
opportunity.

At the viva I had after finishing my degree the external examiner 
asked me what was wrong with the course, and to my everlasting shame 
I was struck dumb by the question. The notion of examination and 
testing necessarily takes us away from our ownership of our own 
education. My experience since is that it is vanishingly rare for a 
student of any age to have an educational purpose rooted in their 
questions about their life.

Aidan Ward