Is it possible for schools to try and standardise the essential nature of human diversity? Why do so many students fail to value the education that they receive at school, and why do they forget virtually everything that they were taught just as soon as they have taken the next set of external examinations? Indeed, is schooling children really synonymous with seeking to enable young people to receive a truly enlightening and liberating education? Why is it that academic study is regarded as the pinnacle of human achievement, often leading to the subordination or exclusion of other vitally-important areas of learning? Why do we not place creativity at the very heart of what goes on in schools, for example? Could it even be maintained that the endless, politically-motivated and often contradictory, ill-considered interference of successive UK governments in schooling represents little more than ignorant and incompetent meddling, perhaps even child abuse? And why is it that schooling seems to lead most young people to eventually stop asking "Why?" Few people will deny the importance and influence of compulsory education, not only for the life of every individual, but also for the life of the local community, of the whole nation even the world. Bernie Gilman is concerned that the education which secondary schools in the United Kingdom are currently required to provide falls far short of its potential to develop successful, confident, socially responsible young people. He believes too many complete their formal education with a sense of failure and a lack of self-worth as well as a lack of direction in life, and this book explores his thesis that it is not our children who fail school, but it is our schools which fail our children. Bernie Gilman argues that the prescriptive, target- driven, assessment-dominated, standardised direction in which secondary schools in the UK have been taken by successive governments since the early 1980s has impeded schools and teachers from providing a truly enlightening education for every individual child, irrespective of what their particular strength, talent and ability may be. This is not a book of esoteric educational theory, but rather his own critical reflection of a career spent in education, written with the heart as much as the head and written with passion, erudition, humour, humility and, occasionally, indignation. Not many people will agree with everything that he proposes, but that is not his intention. He challenges traditional orthodoxy and the conventional wisdom about the nature and structure of compulsory education in the hope that it will encourage his readers to reflect in unconventional ways about the education that they received and which today's youngsters are currently receiving, and to consider how radical changes might lead to significant improvement, to the benefit of the future well-being of every individual and of the nation as a whole. It is, therefore, a book which is of relevance and interest, not only of educational professionals, but to students, their parents and anyone interested in education!
