What Should We Teach Our Children?
an Institute of Ideas debate at Edinburgh International Book Festival
14 August 2000

Toby Marshall

Guy Claxton (author of Wise Up: The Challenge of Lifelong Learning), Maureen Freely (author of The Parent Trap), Linda Grant (author of When I Lived in Modern Times), and the youth worker and journalist Stuart Waiton kicked off the debate.

Stuart Waiton and Linda Grant opened the discussion by considering the ways in which children develop social skills. The real danger facing children, Waiton argued, was not paedophiles, but the effects of the paedophile panic. Youngsters, he suggested, were no longer being given unregulated spaces in which to develop. And by supervising them all the time adults were, he argued, 'strangling the life out of children.' This, he concluded, was leading to the development of an 'antisocial generation'.

Linda Grant disagreed. She felt that it was the school playground's 'culture of conformity' that was at issue. This makes education hard, particularly for boys, she argued, who find it 'hard to break out and develop their individuality'. This playground culture needed to be tackled, she concluded, as many young people simply buckle under the pressure of their peers.

Maureen Freely and Guy Claxton then examined the content of schooling. According to Freely the national curriculum is too narrowly defined and teachers are too focused on examinations. What is needed, she argued, is a return to the values of liberal arts education. This would enable teachers to foster critical thinking, she concluded, and would allow pupils to develop 'a love of learning'. Guy Claxton concurred. In his experience pupils, teachers and educationalists were dissatisfied with the current system of education. Pupils need to be taught how to be 'confident about uncertainty', he argued, and to 'know what to do when you do not know what do.' The government's 'tinkering', he argued, was clearly insufficient, as the root of the problem is a curriculum that is focused on delivering knowledge, rather than developing pupils' learning skills.

The discussion from the floor covered a wide range of issues. One participant felt that a child's early years experience was crucial and that this is where they 'build self-esteem and confidence.' Another took issue with the lack of content in the schooling suggesting that 'pupils are being taught about themselves, rather than to think for themselves.' Yet another suggested that there was a lack of leadership and that any clarity about the purpose of education was being lost.

The speakers then concluded in reverse order. Both Grant and Claxton suggested that more time should be devoted to those pupils who do not succeed in school. Freely argued that schooling should become less exam-driven and broader in its scope. Waiton ended the debate by arguing that we expect too little independence from our children: 'in the past we assumed that [they] should be able to deal with hard knocks, while today we assume that they cannot.'