The National Curriculum: The Manufacture of Pigs' Ears from Best Silk

Abstract

Abstract Beyond the now officially challenged child-centred view of education, there is a formidable body of psychological evidence indicating that the current government's alternative education policies, based on subject-centred, instrumental views of education, not only diminish the access of the pupils to a view of human beings as of intrinsic not merely consequential value: they also reduce the pupils' learning potential. To reach out to the challenge of learning, children need to feel safe. The National Curriculum values and promotes the concept of challenge, but appears not to understand the psychologically prior need for safety. Guidance and counselling skills can help teachers in their attempts to establish those zones of safety from which all pupils will reach out to the challenge of the new experiences we call learning.