What does education mean?

It’s an interesting subject especially when looking at different time periods.

Students of the humanities with the Open University might remember one of the foundation course textbooks, Arthur Marwick’s book The Sixties about main and countercultures of the “long sixties” from 1959 to 1974.

One could argue that much of popular culture is a form of counterculture as each new generation seeks to exert it influence and clashes with older generations.

Counterculture is very much represented by popular music. Rap anybody?

One might also argue that marginalised communities aka subcultures such as LBGTQ are counter cultures. When oppositional forces reach critical mass, countercultures can trigger dramatic cultural changes.

Something very much in the news at the moment: Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (or DEI) wouldn’t necessarily be viewed as a counterculture but it is a form of resistance that has challenged the status quo of many organisations and workplaces - and is making certain people in politics who really don’t like change very uncomfortable.

And brass bands. We still have a brass band celebrating its 75th anniversary this year. The band practices at the local Methodist church not far from where I live. On warm evenings I can hear them playing. When it was founded in 1950, the local council paid for the instruments (second hand) and the uniforms. The band is now self-supporting.

This thread is an education in itself. I looked up popular culture on Wiki, which has an informative entry:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_culture

Intthought popular culture was culture that was popular with lots of people, like pop music, going to night clubs, soap operas and social media.

In the past, one way "ordinary people" participated in music was with brass bands. Many towns had them in addition to choirs.

Popular culture is however more than books and music. It's also affordable holiday destinations like Blackpool was in its heyday. It's unselfconscious neighbourliness and moderating of unsocial behaviour from inside the group.

There isn't an old -style working class any more to make a natural camaraderie. Some who would benefit from a functioning popular culture are quite well off compared with the old days.

PS ,yes anyone can read a book or listen to music, as Doodledog said. There are levels of skill for reading and listening and it's a rare person who does not benefit from a teacher who can teach the higher , fuller skills of reading and listening.

Silverbrooks and Doodledog, I agree. Silverbrooks, I was indeed stretching "participatory" a bit too far.

The trouble is that cash-strapped schools are cutting subjects such as music and drama, and universities get less funding for Arts subjects, so we are moving back to the days when only those who can afford it can participate in those things. Yes, anyone can listen to music or read a book, and TV is pretty much universally available in the UK. But the important thing is which voices are heard/read/watched? If only a particular set of people are able to produce TV programmes, publish poetry, write music (as opposed to picking up a few chords on a guitar*) get their plays performed and so on, it will be their world view that is passed on as 'culture'.

This is a shame, as we have been moving away from that for some time now. 'BBC accents' are seen as quaint, and people like Alan Bleasdale, Shaun Meadows and Phil Redmond have been very influential in getting regional dialects and working class life seen as mainstream. Do we really want to go back to Cambridge Footlights being one of the few ways for emerging talents to make careers?

Education should allow everyone to develop their talents to a point where they can make a career of them if they are capable, and to enjoy a range of pursuits in their leisure time if not.

* I know that many pop/rock guitarists don't read or write music and have made a fortune, but that's in a limited genre, and most don't.

Yes, but he was writing in the 1930s when there wasn't the breadth of culture for the ordinary working person that there is now if only they had time to actively participate.

That said, some of those "old" pursuits are now beyond the reach of many people. Tickets for football matches and pop festivals can be prohibitively expensive.

But those are only participatory in the sense of cheering or singing along which has always been the case were one to go to a match or a pub performance then. I think describing it as active partipation from an educational standpoint is stretching it a bit.

There used to be the old Working Men's Institutes that offered adult education and recreational activities to working-class men.

What's on offer now to someone who had done an eight hour shift of hard unskilled labour?

Adult Community Learning has shifted it's focus and the number of courses offered is much reduced. There used to be a good range of vocational evening courses. Now all gone, certainly around here.

The Open University has now aligned its course costs to mainstream universities making it prohibitively expensive to the student who is looking for enrichment or a change of career unless they can get funding or sponsorship.

There are numerous free course available but they don't necessarily have the duration or structure some might prefer. Nor so they provide the cameraderie that institutional learning offers.

As Elegran says:
You wouldn't think that there is a career in walking miles in rough country, either, but there is.

There most definitely is. One of DD's friends from very many years ago became an expedition leader after university, working for Raleigh International and now teaches outdoor pursuits including mountaineering.

Some schools encourage participation in the Duke of Edinburgh award scheme (not just outdoor activities) and teachers take pupils on many outdoor pursuits, eg Ten Tors, sports trips, activity weeks.

Although some subjects have, sadly, been dropped eg music, it should not just be a question of the Three Rs in this day and age.

Silverbrook, I agree with Bertrand Russell that popular culture is in a sad state of disrepair. Although it's not as bad as he says. Attending a football match, pop festival, and pub gig is participatory. Within high culture theatre now involves audience participation , quite deliberately as a production technique.

Popular culture probably wont revert to some sort of retro Arts and Crafts movement but it's not dead . AI has possibilities as a tool for helping people to find ways to communicate ideas with others.

Elegran you are right it is a political question concerning the sort of regime that governs a country. Trump and Co want to divide society into social classes and have already made inroads against Harvard University. Reason is universal but Trump and Co want to limit the use of reason to the governing elite . That way, the governing elite get more money and power for themselves.

the most interesting discussion here in a very long time, thanks.

Caleo We all know that President Trump just loves illiterate and ignorant people.

You wouldn't think that there is a career in walking miles in rough country, either, but there is.

A young relative has just graduated and is about to start her first full-time job - which promises to be anything but boring.She has always gone hill-walking and rock-climbing with her family (and she has also played squash since her schooldays, so is very fit) she liked animals, mostly as pets - but what teenage girl doesn't. She did well in her A-levels, and was accepted for a science course at University. she had no idea of what career she would go for at that point.

One of the elements of the course was biology, where she learnt a lot about the physiology and life of various types of animals.

The final year of biology had projects and field work, where the students set up studies on animals in the wild, collected results daily, and analysed the findings with statistical tools - she enjoyed that immensely. It included long and often uphill treks to the study sites, which were never conveniently near a car park. This put off some of the students, but to someone who climbed mountains for pleasure, this was not a problem.

Then she took part informally in a real-life study by a local firm who did this kind of study for developers before they put in an application for planning permission. By the time that had finished she was sure that was what she wanted to do - and she will now be employed full-time doing it.

She has the interest and knowledge about wildlife and concern for their welfare, the knowledge and experience of studying them in the wild, the stamina to do the trudging about in rain or shine collecting data, and the mathematical and statistical ability to collate those results and interpret them.

Had she not already developed an interest in walking in the countryside for its own sake, she might not have embraced the physical demands of ecology as a career.

This discussion has reminded me of a conversation with an old school friend which took place about 20 years ago. We were talking about the unpleasant holiday jobs we did when we were teenagers, happy to take any work going for six weeks, often in grotty factories. It was just a way to earn some money to buy clothes, make-up and records. My worst job was in a cockroach-infested steam laundry. We got onto the subject of job satisfaction, musing on when that became something that people felt entitled to.

I’ve looked up job satisfaction in the OED. The first recorded written appearance was in an American educational journal published in 1935. The next example is from the British journal Accountant published 1972 - so it seems a relatively recent demand for want of a better word.

This made me think about Bertram Russell’s essay In Praise of Idleness. This was published in 1932 so it was of its time but it also has much to say that is relevant today.

Here it is:

files.libcom.org/files/Bertrand%20Russell%20-%20In%20Praise%20of%20Idleness.pdf

This should be seen in context, written at a time of high unemployment and severe economic depression. We still have high rates of unemployment now but for different reasons.

He was advocating that people should only work a four-hour day and have more time for active (rather than passive) leisure pursuits:

Quote:

When I suggest that working hours should be reduced to four, I am not meaning to imply that all the remaining time should necessarily be spent in pure frivolity. I mean that four hours' work a day should entitle a man to the necessities and elementary comforts of life, and that the rest of his time should be his to use as he might see fit. It is an essential part of any such social system that education should be carried further than it usually is at present, and should aim, in part, at providing tastes which would enable a man to use leisure intelligently. I am not thinking mainly of the sort of things that would be considered 'highbrow'. Peasant dances have died out except in remote rural areas, but the impulses which caused them to be cultivated must still exist in human nature. The pleasures of urban populations have become mainly passive: seeing cinemas, watching football matches, listening to the radio, and so on. This results from the fact that their active energies are fully taken up with work; if they had more leisure, they would again enjoy pleasures in which they took an active part.

Our economy had long been based around the eight hour day or even longer. It would take a massive, arguably impossible, shift to change that but it is something that governments will have to face as AI takes over routine work.

Would the most mundane means-to-an-end job become more tolerable if the working day was shorter, allowing more time in Russell’s words, ^ to use leisure intelligently, to allow education to be carried further than it is at present ^ for everybody?

Otherwise what do people do? They spend all their active energies on work. They come home, slump in front of the TV, are fed adverts that tell them their life is rubbish if they don’t have the latest car, luxury holiday, a new sofa, a new kitchen appliance or Flash-clean floor. So they go out and buy all this stuff on credit and then have to work even longer hours to pay for it. If people weren’t trapped in this capitalist system and had more time for active leisure including continuing education I suspect people would be a lot happier.

ChatGTP answered
my question
"Is it the case that even today 2025 some employers prefer that some workers are not educated?"

David it seems your idea is correct, but not in every case of employment.

David wrote:

"If you think education is the discovery of new things and new experiences that’s a problem. When you start the world of work that ends because you are entering an existing system that doesn’t change, repeating the same tasks day by day, until you complete more training and get promoted.

School is a combination of education and training maths, english, science could be termed training, history, geography, literature largely education"

While I think a mathematician or scientist may be educated it's sadly true that an undergraduate curriculum has no time for history and philosophy of mathematics or science.

It was also true that in the bad old days an employer may stipulate that workers must be illiterate. I have sometimes wondered if something of the sort applies to some work situations today even if not mentioned explicitly.
I must ask ChatGPT what it knows.

escaped

^It has a great deal to do with their wider education and development - the education of their senses and emotions.^
Nicely put, Elegran. And their eagerness to be receptive.

Yes, and an awareness of what is available for them to learn. Not all children grow up in families that nurture their inquisitiveness - whether from lack of interest or just because they themselves are unaware of what's out there.

Schools can (and should, IMO) introduce children to music, drama, poetry, astronomy etc and let them find out where their interests lie. I have no idea whether I could have had a successful career as an ornithologist, for instance*, as we didn't study birds at school, neither I nor my parents knew any ornithologists, and I don't suppose I was even aware that there were careers in that field.

*I probably wouldn't, as I'm not a great lover of the outdoors, and have only a passing interest in wildlife, but it's just an example of how 'preparing for the world of work' need not be about learning to obey orders and carry out routine tasks.

It has a great deal to do with their wider education and development - the education of their senses and emotions.
Nicely put, Elegran. And their eagerness to be receptive.

My DD's decision to do a degree in STEM subjects at the OU, rose from an interest in astronomy that started with seeing the milkyway for the first time in a truly black sky.

She signed up for a one off astronomy course, at the OU, and one led to another, and that awakened the latent engineer in her so she started studying science subjects and so it progressed, until she got serious and decided to do a degree. When she got it that led to a completely new and lucrative career.

All starting from a bit of recreational education.

Are they to be allowed a rewarding weekend, or rewarding evenings, once their rewarding working life has paid for their rent and living expenses but left their inner self strangely unsatisfied?

Team games, perhaps, to enjoy the competitive pleasure of joining with team-mates against a common foe opposition?

A solo sport like athletics or cycling which pits the individual against other individuals or against their own personal best?

A musical instrument, from guitar to bagpipes, for the pleasure of creating music, or a choir where the instrument is the human voice (very inexpensive and already in the possession of everyone)?

Starting earlier at one of these or similar (which are often classed as unnecessary luxuries in schools) can give a person a sense of their worth and a focus for the time when they are not engaged in their employment. If they have no experience of them in the home, being exposed to them at school can show them that they are not just for the elite experts, but for all. While

One of the minority who have "have great challenges changing from an education to working environment" in particularly could be helped to reconcile to the long boring day at work by having the prospect of doing something different once they down tools.

While "Musicgirl has an excellent example of recreational education, just for the sake of it to prove you can" , many a young person (probably most) makes or enjoys music in one way or another in their teenaged years, some play musical indtruments, some travel to concerts or listen to their favourite genres online, from classical music to the latest ear-busters. It has a great deal to do with their wider education and development - the education of their senses and emotions. Life is more than work, and an effective workforce has a satisfying life outside work as well as in it.

I don't think people are hostile to change, they are hostile to your sterile view of school education.

The education system is not fine, but until we find a better way of educating around 10 million children all at the same time, it won't change drastically. It has to work for the majority and as it is, it offers a way of measuring academic ability and performance levels. I think some of the curriculum is just teaching monkeys tricks, but that's a different area for discussion.

The potential in every child can be recognised fairly on, but it isn't as simple as just stretching the individual to succeed. So many other factors come into play.

Allira

^recreational education^

What would you define as recreational education David49?
Art, Music, Sport? Home economics including cookery, crafts?

All with the possibility of leading to fulfilling careers.

Musicgirl has an excellent example of recreational education, just for the sake of it to prove you can, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the education and decisions a child makes in their teenaged years.

We never stop learning, what I have been saying is that schools should concentrate on the education that will enable them to have a rewarding working life. There isn’t a problem with most children but a minority do have great challenges changing from an education to working environment.

Practically all posts seem to be hostile to changing anything, if you all think that the education system is fine don’t change anything there is no point me whistling in the wind.