Social, Political and Aesthetic Education through Television

Abstract

All teaching is necessarily both a social and political activity. The fact that the social and political functions of teaching generally remain implicit should not blind us to the fact that all educational practice inevitably proceeds from assumptions about how people ought to relate to each other, and postulates the preferability of certain kinds of human behaviour over others. The processes of social and political education begin when the assumptions upon which the practice of education is based are made explicit to pupils. More needs to be said however, and this chapter, in attempting to clarify the processes of social and political education and to show how these processes may be carried out within the study of television, draws together a number of strands of central significance to this book. Finally, the role which television might legitimately play in the aesthetic development of school pupils is examined.