Editorial
Amidst all the pressures of todayís educational rat-race of performance analysis, targets, SATS results, Grades A-C statistics and endless policy documents, it is easy to lose sight of the more important fact that schools are also the battleground of some heavy-duty philosophical differences of opinion about the nature of human beings and what it is they need for success and ìhappinessî. There are the evolutionary biologists who see everything as explicable in terms of genetic hard-wiring, and there are the anthropologists who see everything in terms of society and acquired conditioning. Lurking in a few corners there are also some romantic leftovers from the Enlightenment of Rousseau and the mood of the Nineteen Sixties, who believe in the supremacy of individuals and their right to unfettered personal growth. This issue of LACE Magazine calls attention to those questions, although it cannot hope to answer them all satisfactorily in two-dozen pages.
The question of what is needed for human success and ìhappinessî is the nub of the problem facing all PSE programmes, and it is compounded by the requirement to introduce Citizenship as a subject into all schools. The LACE Conference in October was devoted to Citizenship Programmes, and it provided a lot of food for thought. It was especially good, as is the way with LACE meetings, at producing the right blend of practical suggestions combined with a probing of the underlying questions. Are schools once again being required to slap a sticking plaster on some fundamental ills of society? There is a certain irony in the fact that he who used to be Secretary of State for Education, with responsibility for schools, is now Home Secretary with responsibility for prisons and ìlaw and orderî. He is currently promoting a parliamentary Bill to tackle anti-social behaviour as a ìprime concernî, and he has proclaimed the need for a ìcultural changeî in society in which families must take greater responsibility. It will be interesting to see if he has anything to say about the role of schools in this respect.