F) the age of Enlightenment, Western Europe

1. “Our world is a school where we are learning to get knowledge. The main aim of education is in the knowledge itself, but also in learning how to live and die in dignity. Pupils should speak more and teacher should listen more. Let the teacher ask his pupil not only to repeat what he has learned but also to give the essence and the very core of it. We take and keep thoughts and knowledge of other people, but it’s necessary to make them our own property.”

2.“Go to your place! There are already books wide open in front of your group-mates. Read your book carefully! Love writing and hate dancing! Write all day long and read at night! Don’t waste your day-time, otherwise it would be worse for your body. Ask advice from those who know more than you. I am told that you give up studying, enjoy your life, walk along the streets. I’ll tie your legs, if you keep walking along the streets and you’ll be punished with a belt made of hippopotamus skin”.

3. “Young men should be taught the basis of love, of war and of religion. The basis of love includes politeness, kindness, knowledge of good manners and speech, writing of poems, etc. The basis of war includes professional war skills. Reaching the age of 21 most attention was paid to religious education.”

4. “I remember our first classes, that tension, anxiety, it was really difficult for us to take the whole responsibility. We were used to being dependent on somebody, on the teacher. We were protesting against taking that responsibility. We wanted to “get” from the teacher. Some of us had real difficulty in getting rid of that kind of dependence. Some of us failed to do it. For me first three or four weeks were a hard time. But after that I started to feel free. I read what I wanted. I could speak and I could keep silence. I learned a lot about some other students. I was treated like an adult person. I felt no pressure from the teacher’s side. Everything depended on me.”

5. “New reforms of education would include the recognition of credentials and academic degrees, mobility development, development of European co-operation in the sphere of raising the quality of education.”

6.“Among the new pedagogical ideas of this approach you can find the method of parallel pedagogical influence, which presupposes not only interaction “teacher-pupil” but also “group-pupil”; the method of group evaluation of the pupil’s actions; transition from the teacher’s requirements to the requirements of the society and then to the requirements of the person himself.”

Ö Task 2.Scan the following extract of the article “Changing Education, changing Times”. Find the sociological grounding of the conclusions you made while doing the previous exercise.

CHANGING EDUCATION, CHANGING TIMES by christopher pole

Blair's 1997 statement about education serves to remind those of us involved in education that what happens in our classroom, lecture theatre, staff room, playground or in the head teacher's office does not happen in isolation from what is happening in the wider world beyond school or college. The way in which educa­tion is organised, shaped and delivered at any given time does not occur by accident. Edu­cation is not neutral, nor does it exist in a social, economic or political vacuum. In many ways, the things that happen within schools and other educational institutions can be seen both to shape and be shaped by wider social, political and economic forces. It could be argued that any party leader since the beginnings of the modern demo­cratic state could have made the same state­ment as Tony Blair in 1997. Moreover, until the end of democracy, party leaders could go on making it. The importance of education to modern democracies has become a truism. Giddens (1998) in his influential book, The Third Way, states: 'Who could gainsay that a well-educated population is desirable for any society?' However, although Giddens's ques­tion does not require an answer, we should not assume that there is the same level of agreement about the kind of education that constitutes a well-educated society or that there is much agreement about how educa­tion should be organised and delivered to the population.

So, education is political. The changes and developments that take place in the education system of any given society, at any particular time, reflect the political imperatives, priorities and ideas of those who govern. In most democracies political imperatives and ideas constantly change; so we can say with some confidence that education and educational systems will continue to change as those democracies change. We can look at how changes in education reflect the political cli­mate of their time and reflect on how these changes affect the experience of schooling.

J Task 3. (Work in 2 groups supporting two extreme points of view): In the article you will get acquainted with the issue of “selective education” and in its terms – with the tripartite system of education. Scan the following extract to locate the information concerning the core of the tripartite system and find some ideas that would back/criticize it. Do you personally support it? What function of education does it reflect?

Date: 2016-03-03; view: 1357