Torsten Husen's book, School in Question, is the best review of research and experience in education of the past twenty years that we are likely to see for some time-if ever. These were years that witnessed the explosive growth of education and, as Husen documents, a subsequent retreat from previous commitments to education on the part of many segments of many societies-participants and supporters as well. Husen's account is written with wisdom and balanced judgment, avoiding the despair so often heard, on the one hand, and quick panaceas, on the other. His is social analysis of the best kind and the book is the one indispensable guide to recent research in education. In addition, it offers excellent suggestions for further research and policy formation. Husen's own career spans the disciplines of psychology and sociology by training, and the world of politics by experience. He has an encylopaedic knowledge of the literature of education and its relationship to other segments of societies around the world. In fact, he conducted the outstanding cross-national research on the comparative effectiveness of different systems of education in six subject areas of the curriculum [I]. I agree in full with his analysis of the problems of schools in the I970s and with his judgements about what issues policymakers need to address in order to reshape the school to meet the challenges of the future. Thus, my comments are in the nature of supporting notations on one of the three great problems he identifies, The relationship between school and work, dealing mainly with problems of transfer from school to working [2]. Why has the movement into the adult, working world become so problematical in all the industrialised countries? For centuries children learned the family trade, or worked on the family farm, from the time they were very young; or they were apprenticed to others where they learned not only skills for working life but moral axioms and possibly how to read, write and figure. Those from aristocratic families followed another but equally predetermined path from childhood to adulthood. Adolescence as a stage of life was not widely recognised until early in this century [3], and only in recent years has a further stage in the lives of some persons been explored, the stage of 'youth' coming between adolescence and adulthood. As has been shown by Erik Erikson and others [4], the stages of youth and young adulthood, falling between the end of compulsory schooling and the adult roles of jobholder, family member, and settled member of a community have been accepted in recent years as part of the lives of young people in relatively advanced societies. Youth is a social stage, between the compulsory school-leaving age of about 14 to I6 at the lower end and 2I to 24 at the other, with its own culture, dress, even language patterns; it is also a stage of individual development, marked, according to Erikson, by a search for personal identity. It merges into 'young adulthood', for we are talking about people who are physically mature, and increasingly responsible for themselves [5].
Read full abstract