The Evolution of Education: From New Schools to Postmodernity
Concept of the New School
The ideals that inspired the new school are synthesized in the seven principles of the International League of New Schools and in the thirty principles of the International Office of New Schools.
- The main aim of all education is the supremacy of spirit.
- Education must respect the child’s individuality.
- Studies and learning of life must give free rein to the innate interest in children.
- Every age has its own character. It is necessary for personal and collective discipline to be organized by the children themselves with the help of teachers.
- Competition should disappear from education and be replaced by cooperation.
- Co-education involves a partnership that allows each sex to freely exert a salutary influence over the other.
- New schools prepare the child not only for the future as a citizen, capable of performing their duties, but also as a human being conscious of their dignity.
Ferriere gives a definition of the new schools, acting as a “minimum program,” which meets the conditions necessary to synthesize the 30 principles of the International Office of New Schools:
“The school is primarily a New Family Range located in the Campo, where the child’s personal experience is the foundation of both intellectual education, in particular for the use of manual labor, such as moral education through the practice of system the relative autonomy of the students.“
Criticism of the New School
- Elitist Experience for children of social groups with economic power: In many cases, the new school facilities were private and charged for their teachings.
- Slaughter of the Concept of the Image: Work of the senses but not the ability to concentrate.
- The Anti-intellectualism of the New School turns the school into a recreation center.
- Education focuses on pleasure and play regardless of the educational value of work and effort.
- Libertarian Education forgetting the social value of discipline
- Progressive education is an unplanned improvisation
- The school is not life but an artificial microcosm that has little to do with reality
- The teacher becomes the guardian of children
- We forget the importance of drills and rote tasks, repetitive but essential,
Comprehensive Education
In England in the 1950s, there is the Comprehensive school and Comprehensive Education. This movement of secondary education for all soon spread to other European countries after the Second World War. It was to end the selective nature of secondary education by creating an integrated school, unique, versatile, and comprehensive.
In Spain, due to the political situation, it was not implemented until the late 1980s with the socialist reform approved in 1990. The ESO becomes the second stage of compulsory education for pupils aged 12-16.
Education as an Investment
It was in the second half of the twentieth century when the study of the relationship between economics and education regained more boom. The influence of education on economic development was tested. Schultz is considered the initiator of the human capital theory, based on the analysis of economic growth in industrialized European countries. Human capital was called the productivity that was dedicated to education. Thus, human capital came to mean the capacity of each person increased by their education. As it was understood that education was a crucial element in advancing the development of underdeveloped countries, the Third World countries should invest massively in education, with international support, with the conviction that in this way they would leave the development. The economic crisis of 1973, originating in the rising oil prices, meant the decline of investment in public services.
Neoliberalism and Education
Friedman is the most prominent representative of Neoliberalism. Neoliberalism proposes a more effective education system based on merit and individual effort. It proposes the creation of bodies responsible for monitoring and evaluating the quality of state education. In practice, there is no evidence that privatization has improved the quality of teaching. Neoliberal sectors are more interested in productivity and efficiency than other social, political, and human variables. The economic crisis of 1973 makes its objective of reducing public expenditure on education by improving the management of resources, lowering the cost per student, increasing the number of students per class, encouraging competitiveness among teachers, and lowering their salaries.
Postmodernity and Education
Postmodernism is a school of thought and a consequence of technological society and the alternative to modernity. In education, understood as postmodern anti-humanist and individualist philosophy, it is characterized by the dominance of technology, constant innovation, and the importance of knowing the future society and the implementation of the systems approach.