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Wasted: Why Education Isn't Educating [Hardcover]

Frank Furedi (Author)
4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
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Product details

  • Hardcover: 256 pages
  • Publisher: Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd.; 1 edition (25 Sep 2009)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1847064167
  • ISBN-13: 978-1847064165
  • Product Dimensions: 21.8 x 14.2 x 3 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 44,073 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
    #14 in  Books > Study Books > Teachers Resource > Educational Policy & Practice

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Frank Füredi
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Product Description

Product Description

Furedi turns his attention to the education system, skilfully analyzing current processes and providing a way forward. Never has so much attention been devoted to education - and the problems with it. Yet we rarely ask why everyone from the government to parents continually obsess about it. Why are we so constantly worried about it? Why do so many of the solutions proposed actually make matters worse? Tony Blair's 'education, education, education' slogan ensured it remained at the forefront of political agendas. However, the more education is talked about the clearer it becomes that education is not considered as a value in its own right. It is praised for its potential contribution to economic development, as a central instrument for encouraging social inclusion and mobility. Increasingly, the promotion of education has little to do with learning as such. This book is a brilliant piece of analysis. No one from Piaget to David Cameron is safe from Furedi's criticism.

About the Author

Frank Furedi is Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent at Canterbury. He is the author of numerous books including Invitation to Terror and Paranoid Parenting, all published by Continuum.
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Customer Reviews

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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Worth reading even if you don't have kids, 8 Jan 2010
This review is from: Wasted: Why Education Isn't Educating (Hardcover)
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.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A careful and powerful analysis of the failures of British education, 28 May 2010
By Paul Bowes (Wales, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Wasted: Why Education Isn't Educating (Hardcover)
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.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars An iconoclastic demolition of mushy, feel-good schooling., 23 May 2010
By Dr Neil MacNeill "Dr Neil MacNeill" (Ellenbrook, Western Australia, Australia) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Wasted: Why Education Isn't Educating (Hardcover)
Furedi: Wasted

Furedi steps into the ring to fight the years of educational neglect and indoctrination of students. He delivers telling blows to the wishy-washy, feel-good schooling that has been paraded under the guise of progressive education. What is surprising is that the champions of this progressive education, in trying to break down societal structures to advantage the dispossessed, failed dismally and further disadvantaged the disadvantaged. That is unforgivable.

Furedi's opponents in this heavy-weight bout are the chameleon-like ideologues whose role is to subvert society and education by:
1. Disparaging formal knowledge;
2. Disparaging automatic responses and memorisation, the necessary and sufficient building blocks of deep learning;
3. Disparaging the teachers' knowledge;
4. Disparaging the teachers' authority (guide on the side);
5. Disparaging schooling; and
6. Disparaging parents and societies' knowledge and culture.

The strength of Furedi's argument is based on his sociological view of societal changes. For example, the author asks- "Hey, what has happened to adult authority in the last fifty years?" Then, we realise the incremental, subliminal changes, which have affected our lives since the 1960s (the pill, the Beatles and Vietnam), together, add up to an identifiable paradigm shift. The resultant changes in the classroom management have been clothed in reassuring words and theories, but cognitive learning suffered at the expense of affective-social learning, which counts for nought in a globally competitive situation.

This book is a wakeup call, not an academic paper and would not be out of place at Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park. It is aimed a broad range of readers and is written in a provocative style. Readers need to take in the argument and then ask, "Is Furedi right?"

This excellent book will generate passionate debate about the real purpose of schooling and education.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars About Time
Thanks Frank Furedi! In this book Frank says some of the things I've been thinking (and moaning) about education. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Maggie

5.0 out of 5 stars magnificent
This is a very well and persuasively written book that extensively spells out all the arguments against postmodern educational ideology. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Willem Van den Broeck

2.0 out of 5 stars Wasted opportunity
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)... Read more
Published 8 months ago by jsm

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