The title of John Abbott’s new book pretty much summarises his thesis. For Abbott the current education system, with its emphasis on ‘conformity and standard procedures’ is failing to create the generation of tough and responsible young people needed to replace their elders and their ‘worn out skills’ Education for Abbott should be about preparing children to be good citizens, not just successful pupils.

For me, one of the most interesting aspect of this book is Abbott’s suggestion that new research in biological and social sciences could transform the education system. Abbott’s argument that today’s teaching goes ‘against the grain of the brain’ comes from a school of thought in neuroscience that claims that adolescents have a mental predisposition to learn in a particular way. ‘Why are so many youngsters apparently switched off by learning?’ The answer according to Abbott is because they are simply not suited to sitting still in classrooms absorbing reams of information and knowledge. Abbott refers to exciting recent discoveries in this area that are being ignored by our political leaders:

‘Forty years ago university courses on education hardly mentioned the brain for the simple reason that those brain imaging technologies which we are now so familiar with simply hadn’t been invented. Few psychologists had ever seen a brain. But since the invention of PET scans in the 1970s, knowledge of what is involved in the brain has been doubling every seven years. 80% of what we know about the brain has been discovered only in the last 20 years.’

For Abbott, building on this new knowledge of the way the brain absorbs knowledge is the way forward, and he champions those now focusing on ‘multiple intelligences’, ‘learning styles’ and ‘experiential learning’ as the real progressives in education. For him cognitive science and neurobiology can now prove what many psychologists and learning experts have instinctively felt for years, that learning must ‘go with the grain of the brain’.

This is a fascinating and insightful book and clearly keys into a widespread concern about ‘teaching to the test’ and politicians interfering more than ever to prescribe what and how teachers teach. But while described as a radical call to arms, Abbott’s thesis is actually a reflection of the now dominant discourse amongst academics and policy makers: that the solution to education problems can be found in the science of the brain.

To reject any contribution to education from neuroscience would be churlish, but I believe Abbott invests far too much hope in the ability of brain science to transform the outcomes of education. Abbott, like others in this field, reduces pupils to lab rats who will react in pre-determined ways to certain stimuli. Ironically, his approach leaves Abbott reducing our expectations and ambitions for young people no less than the managerialism he loathes. Of course, even in the best education system pupils will find work boring and demanding at times – the pursuit of knowledge is hard work. However sticking with an arduous subject can and does help pupils to learn perseverance and commitment. For some the details and dates of history can appear boring and onerous until the bigger picture becomes clear and the previous knowledge falls into place.

Yes, too often teachers fail to inspire and stimulate their pupils, but that is often because they themselves have lost faith in their own subject, and learning which neurons to stimulate is unlikely to overcome that problem. If teachers really believe they have something worth teaching and wider society values and champions the importance of passing on that knowledge, I believe we would tackle many of the problems identified by Abbott. If young people are struggling to sit still in class today, it’s unlikely to be helped by the fact that their teachers, parents and political leaders have lost their vision of the role and importance of education. The real focus of discussion should be how we tackle the crisis of authority within education, where adults including teachers appear to have abdicated responsibility for teaching. I would argue we have lost confidence in how we socialise our young people and in what values and beliefs we should pass on to them.

Nor is Abbott really swimming against the tide in his arguments that schools should play a greater role in delivering the well-adjusted citizens. At a time when schools are being asked to care as much about the welfare of each child as to teach them, and to take time away from education to create ‘active citizens’ willing to vote and well-versed in how to tackle obesity, personal debt and the environmental crisis, Abbott’s message does not sound as radical as he suggests.

I share Abbott’s belief that education influences the kinds of adults we as a society create. I also agree with much in his diagnosis of the current problem as an education system that lacks any imagination and ambition for young people. But his approach of designing education to shape the evolving synapses in the brain would actually have the opposite effect and further reduce the scope for creativity and dynamism within the teacher-student relationship.

In his desperation for a radical vision, Abbott misses the point that the truly radical vision for education today is a belief in teaching and in the love of a subject. It is that kind of quality, liberal, rounded education that we have lost, the very form of education that delivers the kind of questioning, mature, robust individuals Abbott so longs for.