John White
John White
Contact: [email protected]
John White is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy of Education at the UCL Institute of Education, where he has worked since 1965 after teaching in secondary schools and colleges in Britain and France. His interests are in the mind of the learner, and in educational aims and curricula. Recent books include Intelligence, Destiny and Education: the ideological origins of intelligence testing (2006), What schools are for and why (2007), Exploring Well-being in Schools (2011), The Invention of the Secondary Curriculum (2011), An Aims-based Curriculum (with Michael Reiss) (2013), Who needs examinations? Climbing ladders and dodging snakes (2014), and What’s wrong with private education? (2015).
Over 200 of his publications, most of them freely downloadable, are viewable at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/John_White53
Contact: [email protected]
John White is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy of Education at the UCL Institute of Education, where he has worked since 1965 after teaching in secondary schools and colleges in Britain and France. His interests are in the mind of the learner, and in educational aims and curricula. Recent books include Intelligence, Destiny and Education: the ideological origins of intelligence testing (2006), What schools are for and why (2007), Exploring Well-being in Schools (2011), The Invention of the Secondary Curriculum (2011), An Aims-based Curriculum (with Michael Reiss) (2013), Who needs examinations? Climbing ladders and dodging snakes (2014), and What’s wrong with private education? (2015).
Over 200 of his publications, most of them freely downloadable, are viewable at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/John_White53
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Papers by John White
https://www.philosophy-of-education.org/on-the-origins-of-pesgb/
about its origins in the 1960s, including the origins of its journal, now the Journal of Philosophy of Education. The piece argues that in its early days, PESGB's raison d'être was teacher education. Its early journal articles also reflect this. More recently its focus has become more many-sided, but the blog post argues that teacher education should become a more prominent concern than it is now. An audio recording accompanies the written text.
http://newvisionsforeducation.org.uk
The online version plus a Q and A with Oli Belas and a spoken version can be found at
http://pesgb.publicagency.co.uk/inaugural-blog-post-education-for-a-simpler-more-frugal-life/
https://www.philosophy-of-education.org/on-the-origins-of-pesgb/
about its origins in the 1960s, including the origins of its journal, now the Journal of Philosophy of Education. The piece argues that in its early days, PESGB's raison d'être was teacher education. Its early journal articles also reflect this. More recently its focus has become more many-sided, but the blog post argues that teacher education should become a more prominent concern than it is now. An audio recording accompanies the written text.
http://newvisionsforeducation.org.uk
The online version plus a Q and A with Oli Belas and a spoken version can be found at
http://pesgb.publicagency.co.uk/inaugural-blog-post-education-for-a-simpler-more-frugal-life/
Chapter 1 is about their multiple shortcomings.
Chapter 2 asks why they have existed for so long, given that their deficiencies have been well-known for a century and more. It suggests that one factor in the UK has been their value to upper echelons of society as stepping stones to interesting careers; and documents attempts since 1900 to prevent other parts of society from using them for the same purpose, except children allowed as a safety valve to climb the ‘ladder’. The chapter attempts to show continuities between the Coalition’s schools policies and these earlier developments, bearing in mind today’s greater need to attend to democratic legitimation.
This chapter continues the theme of social advantage and the protection of privilege concludes by looking at how nineteenth-century enthusiasm for exams was exported from the West to South and East Asia, leading to the so-called ‘examination hells’ that blight schooling there today.
Chapter 3 looks at suggestions for replacing school exams with something more educationally defensible.
Awarded second prize by Society for Educational Studies in November 2012 for best book published in 2011.
To be published in Korean (with a Preface by JW) by Hakjisa Publishers 2016
Across much of the world there is now a standard secondary school curriculum based, with variations, on a traditional array of academic subjects. This book’s originality lies in its being the first work to tell the story of its invention, tracing this from the sixteenth century until the present day and highlighting its links, until recent times, with radical protestantism. The central focus is on British history, but international, not least American, perspectives also appear throughout. There are two more original features of the book. Its historical account is supplemented by a critical commentary on the shifting arguments given across the centuries for favouring such a curriculum. – And the book concludes with a philosophically-rooted sketch of a more acceptable alternative: a curriculum based on a well-argued set of fundamental aims rather than one taking traditional school subjects as its starting point.
Exploring well-being in schools: a guide to making children’s lives more fulfilling London: Routledge
Please refer to the published work when quoting or referring.
The paper takes its inspiration from Ray Elliott’s great essay of 1974 called ‘Education, Love of One’s Subject, and the Love of Truth’. It begins with a wider focus than Elliott’s, looking at love not just in the education of those who become scholars and future teachers of their subject, but in the education of all children. After an attempt to say what love is, the paper gradually builds up a case for the centrality of love in an ideal school education. A final section looks at love’s very different role in schools as they often are today in the UK and elsewhere.
As from 16 January 2019, Ofsted is consulting on a revised draft inspection framework. Problems raised by Ofsted's new-look inspection plans have their roots partly in the incoherence and inadequacy of the National Curriculum and its aims that we have been stuck with now for over 30 years and were made even worse under Michael Gove. Ofsted’s problems may cause people to look again at the whole structure and replace it by something more coherent and acceptable.