Agreement with Napoleon's suggestion that Britain was a nation of shopkeepers has not, in itself, brought about an increased consciousness in our educational system that a knowledge of the process of wealth‐creation is a pre‐requisite for the young school‐leaver. In recent years, however, it has at last become respectable to be associated with vocational education. Statements by the Department of Education & Science, the activities of the Manpower Services Commission, and curriculum innovations such as TVEI and CPVE have highlighted the potential of vocational vehicles in the work of secondary schools in particular. Tragically many curriculum changes have come about as a result of the plague of unemployment which has beset the nation; and educational thinkers and developers have been forced into a corner, there to ponder on the activities of either the young unemployed or the potentially unemployed. Sadly, the development of Education for Enterprise in Durham University Business School over the last two years was born of an unemployment disaster.
The appearance of the Yellow Book on Education which formed the basis of the Prime Minister's speech at Ruskin College in October 1976 has revitalised the debate on the nature of the Secondary School curriculum. If the resulting dialogue between the various elements within the educational system is controlled and sensible, then much of value for our children might result. If, however, the outcome is a polarisation of ideas at the two ends of the theoretical spectrum between common core and free development in the curriculum, then the children in our schools will yet again become pawns in the educational chess game. Worse still, we will be further away than ever from the provision of a secondary education which allows them to take a meaningful and useful place in industrial society.
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