Wasted: Why Education Isn't Educating [Paperback]

Furedi argues in Wasted that the primary function of education is the intergenerational transmission of information about the world in which our young will shortly have to make their way. In the light of this criterion, he judges that the British education system has been diverted from its true purpose by a well-meaning alliance of politicians from all parties and education specialists who have embraced a therapeutic model of education. For Furedi, this means that, paradoxically, at a time when education has never been more central to political discourse, and education commands a greater fraction of national expenditure than ever before, the purely educative function of education has never been so marginalised, nor has the authority of teachers per se ever been lower.

In the author's view, the British education system is now being used inappropriately as a vehicle for theories of child socialization and personal fulfilment that lack a convincing evidential base. At best, all that can be achieved by these means is some degree of mitigation of the harm caused by serious underlying social problems that are not being tackled directly. At worst, Furedi argues that this approach has had serious unintended results: purely academic educational outcomes are poorer; teachers find themselves unconfident and deprived of the authority rooted in subject knowledge that allows them to be effective educators; and even the acknowledged social-engineering agendas - such as a reduction in the degree of inequality of educational attainment between children of different classes - are not achieved.

The real value of this book seems to me to be twofold. The first is that it foregrounds the degree to which, far from being a battleground between opposing ideas espoused by the major political parties, British education has fallen victim over the last three decades to a cross-party, cross-professional consensus, in which the ideological element has been supplied by academic educationalists whose unexamined assumptions have hardly been submitted to critical scrutiny. The second is that the book is argued quietly and without evident animus - this is absolutely the opposite of an hysterical polemic.

Furedi argues for a recovery of faith in the power of education and, simultaneously, a return to a more modest and thus more effective conception of the role of education. Anyone with an interest in the future of the British education system might read this with profit.

In a nutshell, Furedi argues that school reformers have abandoned their original agenda of making the academic, subject-based education previously only available to the offspring of a moneyed elite available to all, in favour of a blatant exercise in social engineering, accompanied by low expectations and philistinism. While this movement has intensified under the Labour government, Furedi is careful to point out that it's roots can be found in the 19th century, when universal education was first introduced. Furedi argues that education has become politicised, substituting the transmission of 'values' (i.e. whatever 'values' happen to be fashionable) for the transmission of knowledge; furthermore, that the vogue for 'child-centred learning' is more about a loss of adult authority than about engaging children in education.

Many of the themes in this book will be familiar to readers of Frank Furedi's other books, such as The Culture of Fear, Therapy Culture, or Where Have All The Intellectuals Gone - in particular the breakdown of authority in the West, or the infantilisation of adults. Admirers of Hannah Arendt's work will also find a lot to admire Furedi's books (he cites her frequently).

Yes, Furedi is a Marxist, however don't let that put you off. There *is* an implicit political impulse to his writing, but it is remarkably liberating (and libertarian). He points the way toward a political alternative that we *could* have, but currently don't - largely, in my opinion, because of the poor intellectual calibre and sheer moral cowardice of our political elites.

This book argues that the politicisation of education has undermined its true mission and that education must now be allowed "to discover its future direction for itself" (206). Education, which should be about the transmission of intellectual and cultural achievements from one generation to another, has been hijacked by politicians bent on using it to re-engineer society. Teachers have been elbowed aside by managers, behavioural experts, and social workers, and their authority (and so ability to do their job) has been undermined. Under the influence of these 'outsiders', traditional subject knowledge-based education has been replaced by child-centred learning to the detriment of all. The expansion of testing and league tables and the inflation of paper qualifications has led to a lot more education but of much poorer quality. All of this has been made worse by an erosion of adult authority generally.
I'm sympathetic to many of these arguments and the book's questioning of much of the rhetoric that surrounds education is welcome. But it falls down badly on its own mission -- it is scathing about the poor quality of much of what is being taught in classrooms, yet it is itself poorly argued. Professor Furedi makes a reasonably good job of attacking the weaknesses of the current consensus, but fails to ask hard questions about the positions he himself is advocating. This, for a senior academic (he's Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent at Canterbury), is depressing. It may be, for instance, that subject knowledge-based education should lie at the heart of education, but it is a case that has to be argued rather than a proposition that can simply be asserted. Otherwise the argument descends to the 'I'm right, you're wrong' level that renders so much debate on education unproductive.
The book is also badly written, highly repetitive, and at times verges on the ungrammatical. Almost every page cries out for the attentions of a decent book editor. Professor Furedi, for instance, complains repeatedly of a lack of faith by teachers in their pupils' ability to deal with difficult material. Yet he seems to lack faith in his own readers. He begins one sentence: "As the well-known nineteenth-century man of letters, Goethe, observed...". I think "As Goethe observed..." would have displayed rather more faith in his readership.
The book raises some important and interesting issues. But because it is poorly argued and badly written, it is unlikely to trouble those who oppose its claims. All in all, a wasted opportunity.