Ideas Matter: Culture Wars, then and now, episode 3: 'The role of the state in education culture wars'

The debate surrounding Parkfield school in Birmingham and wider
discussion on the role of sex and relationship classes 
within educational programmes, are just the latest incidences of
schools becoming a battlefield for the culture wars.  


Starting with developments in the 1870s when the state
intervention in schooling in England & Wales became more
pronounced, James Tooley explores the impact of the ethos of
state control over education right up to today’s controversies
over Relationship and Sex Education


Lecturer


James Tooley, professor of educational entrepreneurship and
policy, University of Buckingham; author, The Beautiful Tree


Talking Points in this podcast


In the 1870s, private non-profit and private for-profit
schools made up nearly all the educational establishments,
educating 95 per cent of children.

State intervention in education reflected a desire to push
forward a particular set of values, creating an early instance of
the education culture wars.

Schools were used to also keep the working class in their own
station as opposed to increasing their social mobility.

An affordable grassroots private school movement that would
create schools of high quality at half the cost of state
education is possible.



Bibliography


The Beautiful Tree: a personal journey into how the world’s
poorest people are educating themselves, James Tooley, Cato
Institute, 2013


Education and the State: A Study in Political Economy, Edwin G
West, 3rd revised edition, 1994


THE ACADEMY 2019


In the context of today’s instrumental approaches to knowledge,
The Academy summer school is a modest attempt to demonstrate the
value of scholarship, and of the worth of the university as a
place of free enquiry dedicated to the pursuit of truth.


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