Cultural Education: A Revised Program

Abstract

Processes of social technological economic and cultural transformation and the recomposition of the labour market in the UK, require a radical reshaping of the humanities to provide education and training which will equip students - particularly the non-traditional entrants who, make up an increasingly high proportion of the student body in Wolverhampton Polytechnic - with the knowledge skills and competencies to enable them to enter employment. Moreover, a restructured humanities curriculum is capable of satisfying a need for graduates with the intellectual and practical resources to manage processes of change which current occupational specialist courses ignore. 'Culture' is not to be perceived just as a critical discourse, but primarily as a business which, if students are to gain access to employment in one or other of its sectors, requires training in an appropriate body of skills - those associated with the day-to-day running of a cultural enterprise.