Education and the World of Business

Despite many protests from disgruntled, apprehensive parents and concerned social commentators the changes that were introduced in Britain’s education system in the 60s and 70s were, for the most part, I think, a success. Though, the spirit of the Enlightenment has always pulled the British education system in a forward-thinking direction, which is why I shudder when ‘the business world’ makes determined efforts to seize control of education, or majorly takes a lead in its direction. Is there any real surprise that former Prime Minister Blair’s biggest political mistake, which brought about allegations of criminality and criminal prosecutions with possibly Blair himself in the witness stand, involved education and business?

An idea that was pursued by schools during my education was the idea of ‘equality’, especially between genders, though the social and political turmoil of the 1960s spurned an acrimonious gender war, which women were more prepared for. There have always been two separate camps arguing for single and mixed sex classes, with the latter gaining ground of late. All the schools I have attended have been mixed schools, though at my junior school social ideas of chivalry were instilled and inculcated. Such things as opening the door for the fairer sex or accepting that the fairer sex was weaker were never challenged, and indeed encouraged, though at times boys and girls were asked to share their activities. One possible exception to the norm at junior school was that in the final year, Miss Barnard taught her class of boys and girls dancing, in which all had to participate. The styles of dancing varied from Scottish, Russian and English and ended with a dancing competition against other schools.

However, the seeds of change began to take root at my secondary comprehensive school, which I attended from 1973 to 1978. High school lasted for five years, with the last two years specifically designed for the final exams before leaving, which in my case were the now discredited C.S.Es - many students left with what was known humorously as a ‘daft boy certificate’. In the final two years there was a limited choice for student to choose some of the subjects they would like to pursue, although, core subjects, such as Maths, English and Science were compulsory. This meant that for the first three years the school could engage students, not only in preparing them for their final exams, but also in new, challenging and invigorative ideas. Later on, government, not least by M. Thatcher during her administration, eventually challenged some of these new and creative ideas. One of the ideas that took root during this time was that pupils should not be encouraged to be competitive. Some spurious reasons were put forward to justify this standpoint, but the cliques responsible for this idea were powerful enough to hasten a change to the policies of schools on this issue.

One of the more enlightened new ideas was that girls and boys should engage in the same lessons, such as woodwork, metalwork, cooking, sewing, art, technical drawing and so on, with the aim of fostering equality between the sexes, which in part was aimed at fostering equality between the sexes in society at large and preparing pupils for a rapidly changing world in which gender equality was becoming an inevitability. The woodwork class, which was in a spacious area, was fitted out with all the hand tools, electric saws, hand and electric drills and pieces of wood necessary for a class of children to learn basic woodwork and make something in the process. I made a wall decoration, which featured a wooden whale, though I had the advantage of leaning some woodworking skills at a local boy’s club. Some of the girls took to woodwork like a fish to water and made some extraordinary wooden objects of beauty. It was the same for the metal work class, which was adjacent to the woodwork class, though the quality of teachers for both of these subjects left a lot to be desired.

At my high schools boys had to learn how to cook alongside the girls, and our first effort was to make some chocolate pop rice cakes. We were asked to bring to class some pop rice, cooking chocolate and some little cake holders. The school supplied all the cooking utensils. We stood next to our individual gas cooker in a huge classroom, and shown how to operate it. We were shown how to melt chocolate using the steam from boiling water in a pan, and how to mix pop rice with the melted chocolate with a wooden spoon. The following week we each made a sponge cake, which we sliced in half to put a thin layer of jam in the middle. Each week we would learn something new, including peeling and preparing vegetables and how to beat eggs, and finally in the last lesson we each made bacon and egg pie, otherwise known as Quiche Lorraine, which utilises many cooking skills. My pie was taken home and eaten by my family at teatime, much to their delight.

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