cover image: Show, Tell and Leave Nothing to the imagination:

20.500.12592/g06dhb

Show, Tell and Leave Nothing to the imagination:

23 May 2023

The influences on school life have always been the subject of debate, with flash points of concern – such as those leading to the introduction of Section 28 in the 1980s, or the 1 controversy behind Victoria Gillick’s attempts to test the boundaries of parental rights.1 However, the growing complexity and reach of our state apparatus and the interaction with new technologies increasingly standardi. [...] Further, since 1992 as signatories to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the capacity of any UK school (RRSA-affiliated or not) to prevent pupils joining protests, such as the 2019 Thunberg-inspired climate ‘school strikes’, is compromised by the state’s duty to protect the rights of children to protest. [...] Ironically it was the need to educate a growing workforce in response to the industrial revolution that had spurred the expansion of schools and the development of education for the masses in the second half of the 19th century. [...] Indeed, although in practice the absorption into our culture and politics of the excesses of the international rights agenda is proving problematic, the foundational values of the UN declaration as ratified in 1948 also stated that ‘parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children’. [...] The remarkable rise in the number of children being home schooled (whilst the government is looking to restrict these rights) does point to a serious and recent shift in the public perception of our education system and indicates a radical direction of reform that could take on the original energy behind the Free School Movement and the logic of education vouchers to enable market liberalisation.

Authors

R Neal

Pages
52
Published in
United Kingdom

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