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Philanthropy in Education – what are the issues?
Is philanthropy necessarily a force for social good, or is there a darker side to giving?
In the context of education, does the upsurge in philanthropic private and voluntary sector activity represent an invaluable injection of innovation and resourcing; or an undemocratic vehicle for the influence of private corporations and wealthy individuals?
These were some of the questions raised by the launch of a fascinating piece of ESRC-funded research by Professor Stephen Ball and Carolina Junemann at the Institute of Education, that examined ‘new philanthropy’ in state education. Stephen and Carolina presented a series of ‘network maps’ which depicted the riot of charities, private companies, think tanks, educational bodies and key individuals involved in ‘new’ educational philanthropy, and the ways in which they are connected. What these vividly illustrated was the dominance of key corporations and individuals across these maps. The maps also represented a relatively small community, in which key names and organisations frequently recurred. The network maps also highlighted change from the past: in contrast to ‘older philanthropy’ (including charities such as The Jospeph Rowntree Foundation and so on), religious institutions were scarcely represented, suggesting a reduction in religious identity as a direct motivator for philanthropy (although the researchers noted involvement of some faith-based institutions and religious motivations for a few key individuals).
So what marks the ‘new philanthropy’? This delineation from the ‘old’ was not always clear. For example, finance capital was presented as new, whereas many of the ‘old’ philanthropic organisations also derived directly from business. But also, the researchers pointed to the personal and social activities involved with new philanthropy, and the ways in which business, social and political relationships are closely inter-twined. The most convincing rupture with ‘old philanthropy’ is the new organisations’ insistence on the relationship between giving and outcomes – a notion of returns to philanthropic investment. What has also shifted is the approach of Government: New Labour has specifically encouraged this philanthropic resourcing in education, and nurtured relationships with these organisations and key players. Is the state using philanthropy to fill a gap in funding and ideas?
So what should we make of this? That these new philanthropic organisations are often backed by multi-national corporations, and that their representatives often have immediate access to ministerial ears, does raise a range of questions relating to the delineation of public and private sectors, and democratic process. Unions and those on the left will be worried at the evident influence of powerful private sector agents and wealthy individuals on the direction of state education. Clearly, these corporations have much to gain in their philanthropy in terms of marketing (sponsorship, branding, reach to consumers), and influence on the nature of education and curriculum content. Yet no one can doubt the genuine commitment of many of the key players involved, and the innovative practice that some of these philanthropic interventions have generated.
What was notable in the researchers’ presentation was the relative absence of Higher Education Institutions, academic figures, and established education institutions (unions etc) from the network maps. This pictorial representation of the gaps provided startling illustration of the lack of influence of established academic and educational expertise in the new educational philanthropy. I see this as a useful and timely prompt to academics to think harder about how to ‘get their ideas out there’. Clearly their myriad of other duties (including preparing for the Research Excellence Framework, which ironically includes a measure of ‘impact’) impede innovation here. But as Stephen and Carolina’s work so effectively showed, it is think tanks, private and voluntary sector organisations that are owning this space in their stead.
Meanwhile, in relation to our own philanthropic work at the RSA, the discussion after the seminar reminded of the importance of maintaining understandings of reciprocity and mutuality in giving. This democratic understanding encourages us to think of both giver and receiver as benefitting, and the transfer of learning and capitals as not simply one-way.
Rose Among Thorns – What now for the primary curriculum?
With all the focus on the election there has been little media attention to the abandonment of the Rose reforms as part of the rushed progress of the Children, Schools and Families Bill in the haste to dissolve parliament. Yet, this potentially represents a catastrophe for primary schools, the vast majority of staff at which were relishing the return to a more flexible and less prescriptive curriculum; and many of whom had already invested time and energy to curriculum planning and development to incorporate the changes (which had been presented to schools as ‘in the bag’).
Time might be spent on the whys and wherefores, given that the wastage involved in production, distribution and digestion of a primary curriculum that is now not to be implemented is scandalous – especially in the current economic circumstances. However, questions as to why the Conservatives and Lib Dems blocked these popular measures, and why the Labour government did not anticipate the timing issues, pale in comparison to the questions for educationalists as to ‘what now?’ for the primary curriculum.
Both the Cambridge and Rose reviews presented the urgency – expressed for years by practitioners – for a broader, more holistic curriculum, incorporating more flexible approaches to teaching and learning, that facilitated pupil and practitioner creativity and cross-disciplinary connections. While the two reports differed slightly in their recommendations concerning curriculum subject areas, they shared a pared-down model, with Rose reducing the current thirteen subjects to six areas of learning, and a devolution of responsibility to schools for shaping delivery.
The shelving of these official plans is disappointing and frustrating. Rose’s recommendations may or may not re-emerge intact, depending on outcomes of the General Election. Nevertheless, momentum has begun towards the embrace of a more flexible and devolved curriculum, in policy but more importantly ‘on the ground’ in schools and local communities, which will now be hard to stem. In spite of the policy fate of the Rose review, our task must be to resist deflection; to embrace the moment and determinedly pursue our agendas towards a more appropriate primary curriculum. As Andrew Pollard notes in his discussion of the Cambridge Primary Review in the current issue of the British Educational Research Journal, the model of “state directed education and its systematic infrastructure of prescription, training, targets, assessment, competition and funding” is increasingly showing cracks. And many schools are already engaging innovative practice and interventions that disrupt the narrow boundaries of the National Curriculum, and re-inspire teachers to be creative in their practice. Among these I would like to include the RSA’s Opening Minds approaches to curriculum, as well as our Area Based Curriculum interventions. ‘Whole Education’, a multi-organisation programme currently ‘incubated’ at the RSA, is working to promote these kinds of approaches with support from an impressive range of educational, business and charitable organisations.
With documents like the hugely well-evidenced Cambridge Primary Review to support us, our task as committed professionals must be to continue to push the boundaries of the existing curriculum and to creatively apply the more holistic and connected disciplinary approaches so clearly required. With such momentum building, it will be difficult for politicians to stem the tide.
What do the great and good think everyone should know? Desmond Tutu, Shami Chakrabarti and Lord Bingham give their view
See also What should everyone know?
What should everyone know?
What should be included in the National Curriculum? What this question really asks is ‘what should everyone know?’.
And this question is not as simple as it seems. This is why the RSA is holding a debate on this topic on 22 March at 6pm, inviting some individuals from outside the education debate to discuss the question.
I’ve had a go at unpacking some of the questions thrown up by the question of what should go in the National Curriculum in the form of some sub questions:
- What knowledge is so important that EVERYONE in our society should know it?
- What should everyone know HOW to do?
- What should every young person know in order to have an equal chance of making their way in the world?
- What is so crucial to participation in our culture and society that every child needs to have access to it?
- What is so crucial to the maintenance and transmission of our cultural and intellectual inheritance that every member of society needs to be taught it so it doesn’t get lost even if it has little of no utility to the individual?
- Is there such a thing as useless knowledge?
- What is so crucial to our economy that the largest possible number of children should be given the foundations so enough choose to pursue it?
- What should be taught in schools because society can’t or won’t teach it to all children equally?
- What is so important to shaping and changing our society for the future that all children should be introduced to it now? When is this indoctrination, and when is is values driven education?
- How does our view of what everyone should know reflect our view of what society we want? Or does it?
- What should everyone, perhaps, NOT know? How far does the enlightenment ideal of full, complete and free access to knowledge still hold, and is there any ‘truth’ that we would want to ensure – in retrospect – that no one knew? (How to make an atomic bomb, for example?)
Check out Shami Chakrabati’s response on our website – or look at the full video.
What do you think everyone should know? Answers below please.
Collectively thinking about the curriculum
As promised, Friday’s seminar on the implications of social brain theory for how we think about the national curriculum resulted in a fascinating discussion.
Social brain theory is based on a relatively new synthesis of social psychology, evolutionary theory and neuroscientific fundings that add up to a view of the mind/brain/individual as more socially embedded and less individualistic than dominant economic models of behaviour allow for. See the RSA’s social brain pages for more information.
Full details of the contributions and the day are available online, but here I wanted to make one or two observations that struck me as particularly important.
The first is how quickly people grasp the implications of the social nature of the brain for the kinds of skills or attributes we should be inculcating in children. There was a general consensus that room should be made for children to work together, to develop high level collaboration skills, to learn how to solve problems in groups and to behave altruistically.
One participant called it the challenge of how to provide structures in which children are encouraged to be open and giving, rather than ‘going in on themselves like a sea anenome’ which is what happens as soon as incentives are introduced for people to behave selfishly.
One implication of this is in how we construct schools as institutions that inculcate certain types of behaviour. If our unconscious brains and habit forming repetition are, as social brain advocates would argue, more important than we thought, then the kinds of behaviours and attitudes that are being developed through the structures, hierarchies, rules and routines of the school are perhaps as or more important than what is explicitly taught in the classroom. One participant referred to the ‘implicit curriculum’ of behaviour shaping that is often found in primary schools. Another participant asked how often children in secondary schools had the opportunity to watch their teachers collaborating on lesson plans, or anything else.
The second implication of how the education system reinforces assumptions about individualism and competition as the dominant model of human behaviour is the obvious thorn of assessment. As the Innovation Unit’s Alec Patton blogged on Friday, cooperation between students when it comes to assessment is currently constituted as a cardinal sin rather than a learning outcome to be rewarded, and so the messages being sent to the unconscious brains of children will mitigate against collaboration at the all important assessment stage. If we want to encourage collective skills towards problem solving then we must think hard about how those collective skills might be measured for individual children working together. It’s not easy.
However, there was a palpable determination in the room that we need to think more clearly and more robustly about how schools and learning are constructed in light of the emerging social brain thinking and the hope is that the conversation is only just beginning.
The social curriculum – how who we are affects what we learn
Social brain theory, which looks at insights from a range of disciplines that deal with human brain, mind and behaviour sciences, posits that our rationality is more emotionally driven, that we are more socially responsive, and that our decisions are made more unconsciously than simplistic models of rational, individualistic beings making rational decisions allow.
What are the impacts of these insights for how we think about the curriculum? Do we create and ‘own’ knowledge in our individual minds, or in the interactions between them? Are our achievements, excellence and success individually owned, or collectively?
Tomorrow, at a seminar being held at the RSA, we hope to bring together social brain experts with curriculum experts and those with insights to bring from epistomology, the study of digital collaboration, and research into dialogue in the classroom.
Watch this space for what we might collectively find.
Redefining excellence
This morning I went to a debate, held by the Young Foundation and Relate at the RSA, on whether schools should teach social, emotional and other skills alongside academic subjects, and I wondered how far the debate might be pushed in the direction of valuing such skills as much as if not more than academic ones.
The consensus on the panel was generally that schools should – indeed must – take account of children’s wider context and emotional life, not only so that they can learn at school, but so that they can deploy what they learn in order to get through life, gain employment and generally lead fulfilled existences.
There was some contention about the danger of squeezing out knowledge in this equation and much rebuttal to the tune of skills and knowledge not being separable – that one requires the other in any sane system. The tension seems to revolve not around a difference in what people want – rounded, happy, capable, knowledgeable, culturally aware young people – but in the analysis of why we are not there yet. Is it because we have a system still obsessed with unconnected content and knowledge for its own sake, or is it because we have an educational establishment obsessed with well being and self esteem?
Either way, much of the tenor of the conversation related to social and emotional skills as remedial features of schooling – they are something that schools need to teach because many students don’t get these things at home and so they cannot succeed academically. Those from affluent backgrounds probably don’t need such provision and are already free to excel at the things that schools do anyway such as academic knowledge, cognitive skills, sports and the arts.
But should we be being more ambitious than this? Social and emotional skills might be important to underpin and make worthwhile academic excellence, but where is the emphasis on developing excellence in the social and emotional skills as an end in themselves? Surely a sane, balanced society wants to develop and reward those who can understand, empathise, work with and influence other people?
The ageing population and looming crisis in social care means that we will soon be needing large numbers of people who are capable of caring first and foremost – from all backgrounds, and of all academic abilities.
Given this, just for fun, imagine for a second an education system that selects for further study based on a child’s social and emotional skills – on their ability to work with or on behalf of others, regardless of their academic ability. A system in which academic ability might be brought to bear as a supporting factor in job applications, to provide employers with additional information about a person but that excellence in social and emotional skills are what people are looking for. A system in which the children of professional parents would need to prove their ability to relate to people in order to access qualification for entry into the caring professions, and young carers who develop a deep ability for self sacrifice and patience are rewarded for this (rather than for attainment in subjects) with access to a diverse range of educational opportunities, including academic.
The apparent absurdity of such a model shows how deeply we are wedded to valuing a very narrow – albeit important and valuable – form of human capability in our formal education system. And perhaps this is the right thing for schools to be focussing on. But I can’t help thinking that we need to be honest about the limited view of a person that any qualifications gained in such a system gives us.
Apprenticeships and vocational courses – valued, to a degree…
Aiming to get 50% of the population into university, short of diminishing the advantage of the wealthy, may in fact have aggravated the problem.
Of course, everyone who wants to study at university should have an equal opportunity to do so regardless of the amount of money their parents earn. However, now that there is such pressure for students to go to university, not only have tuition fees risen (and look set to perhaps do so again soon), but a degree seems to be losing its value.
Students are leaving university with increasing levels of debt (largely due to the increasing numbers of students now attending university that perhaps wouldn’t have otherwise chosen to) and are then finding that, where a degree used to be a sufficient qualification to get a job, now it is necessary to fork out even more for a masters degree, or to depend on family to provide financial support through an unpaid internship. So, short of opening up job opportunities for all students regardless of socioeconomic background, anecdotal evidence and personal experience would seem to suggest that the problem has just been pushed further down the line – it is now if you can afford to study for further qualifications or to work for free, that you appear to be at an advantage when it comes to getting a job.
Of course the job difficulties for graduates are partly due to the current economic climate, yet it seems the real root of this problem is the assumption made by government, and amplified accordingly in many schools and industries, that without going to university and getting a degree you have failed in some way. If other routes into employment were genuinely valued by government and society at large (rather than being rather patronisingly referred to as ‘admirable’ by those who advocate that the only proper education is one that prepares for academic study at university) we could afford to send those who desired to pursue further academic study to university without leaving them with crippling debts, and others could pursue alternative qualifications or gain appropriate experience safe in the knowledge that this will be equally valuable and rewarded with employment or recognition in the same way that university degrees currently are.
I am not suggesting that university places ought to be reserved for only the rich, but that there is more genuine choice for all. That the student from a disadvantaged background has the chance to study at a top university, and that the student from a wealthy family of Oxbridge graduates can choose to attend an excellent vocational course in engineering. If the freedom of choice does not work both ways, then it is surely not providing equality of opportunity at all. Nor is it genuinely valuing vocational options – if middle class families are not aspiring to their children being able to access high quality non university learning then the claim that vocational options are valued as highly as academic options remains hollow.
I think therefore I learn
Teaching philosophy in primary schools is viewed by some as one thing too many or an unnecessary luxury, yet it seems to me that the disciplines such as rational and critical thought, learned through the practice of philosophy, can provide an important foundation on which a child can build throughout his or her school career. These are skills that will enable a child to more easily access the rest of the curriculum – to take full advantage of the learning opportunities provided in other subjects.
I don’t suggest that every 5-year-old be fully versed in Anaxagoras and Empedocles, rather that we develop curiosity and critical thought in children, and the ability to approach a problem creatively, without the fear of being wrong. Philosophical thought presents the perfect platform for this. Addressing questions such as, ‘Can we step in the same river twice?’ or ‘Am I dreaming?’ gives children the opportunity to exercise these skills. (Philosophy 4 Children and The Philosophy Shop are two good examples of teaching philosophy in primary schools.)
I believe that practising philosophy develops, most significantly:
- Meta-cognition
- Rational thought
- Critical thought
- Curiosity
- The confidence to be wrong
- A respect for other opinions or arguments, coupled with the ability to make informed judgements about their validity or usefulness.
- The ability to look at things from many different perspectives – to ‘think outside the box’, to use a popular cliché.
These things are not just intrinsically valuable, but also provide students with the tools to access and make the most of learning opportunities throughout school, and indeed throughout life.
The same seems to be true of the RSA’s Opening Minds programme. Competencies such as managing information are not only valuable life skills, but will actually enable students to reap the full benefit of their future school career. This is often an area overlooked – those who object to skills or competency based curricula, in favour of valuing subjects and learning for learning’s sake, tend to assume that all students are equally able to pick up a book of Shakespeare, say, and immediately appreciate its value. They assume that teaching skills is only for skills sake – can teaching skills not aid the teaching and learning of knowledge too?
Teaching philosophy, or indeed competencies, can provide students with a ‘hook’ or route into the enjoyment of learning, and the tools that allow them to get the most out of learning – they help to make learning not simply a means to an end, but an end in itself.
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