Abstract
I think if you can’t read and write they should ask you questions, because I am quite bright if they ask me questions, but I am just a dead loss when it comes to putting it down on paper. They should have more practical stuff instead of all this paper work.
This quotation, a clear cry from the heart, exposes one of the fundamental weaknesses of modern industrial societies. Educational systems, with the apparent aim of equal opportunity, become geared to providing for the most able, who through examination results and qualifications gain entry to employment or higher education: what Titmuss called ‘the spread of credentialism’.1 This inevitably creates a pool of educational ‘failures’. Although special educational provision may be made for the least able, ‘success’ in employment rests primarily on paper qualifications. The labour market and educational systems have come to reflect each other in a hierarchical way, the latter being organised to supply the former. Paradoxically the spread of universal education may have created as many barriers as it destroyed. The market value of education overshadows its other values. Entrance to employment above the unskilled level becomes more and more difficult as professional and other bureaucratic groupings demand more and more educational qualifications.
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Notes and References
Titmuss, R. M. (1974) Social Policy (London, Allen & Unwin) p.66.
Department of Education and Science (1978) Special Educational Needs (London, HMSO).
See, for example, Harris, A. I. et al. (1971) Handicapped and Impaired in Great Britain, vol. 1 (London, HMSO).
Reubens, B. G. (1970) The Hard-to-Employ: European Programmes (New York, Columbia University Press), p. 126.
Walker, A. (1976) The hardest job, Community Care, no. 139, pp. 20–2.
Inner London Education Authority (1975) Survey of Opportunities for School Leavers, p.1.
Department of Education and Science, Special Educational Needs, p.41; Rutter, M. et al. (1970) Education, Health and Behaviour (London, Longman);
see also Department of Education and Science (1975) Integrating Handicapped Children. (London, HMSO) p.3.
See, for example, Thorpe-Tracey, R. (ed.) (1976) Integrating the Disabled: Report of the Snowdon Working Party (Horsham, National Fund for Research into Crippling Diseases);
Cope, C. and Anderson, E. (1977) Special Units in Ordinary Schools (London, Institute of Education). The concept of special education as separate full-time education in special schools and classes has been seriously questioned in recent years, and the policy of integrating handicapped children in ordinary schools has been embodied in Section 10 of the Education Act, 1976, though this is not yet enforced.
See Craft, M. and Miles, L. (1967) Patterns of Care for the Subnormal (Oxford, Pergamon).
National Union of Teachers (1975) Educating the Handicapped (London, NUT) p.73; Department of Education and Science Special Educational Needs, p.43.
Department of Employment (1977) “Manpower planning: young people leaving school in Scotland and Great Britain”, Department of Employment Gazette. vol. 85, no.6, pp.600–62.
Kelsall, R. and Kelsall, H. (1971) Social Disadvantage and Educational Opportunity (New York, Holt, Rinehart & Winston) p.2.
Liebow, E. (1967) Tally’s Corner (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul).
Liebow, E. (1970) ‘No man can live with the terrible knowledge that he is not needed’, New York Times Magazine, 5 April; Marsden, D. (1975) Workless (Harmondsworth, Penguin) chaps 7–9;
Sennet, R. and Cobb, J. (1977) The Hidden Injuries of Class (Cambridge University Press).
Walker, A. (1976) ‘Justice and disability’, in Jones. K, and Baldwin, S. (eds), The Yearbook of Social Policy in Britain 1975 (London, Routledge & Kegal Paul).
Department of Employment (1980) Unemployment: summary analysis UK Table 104 Department of Employment Gazette, vol. 86, no. 8, p.978.
Department of Employment (1974) Unqualified, Untrained and Unemployed: Report of a Working Party set up by the National Youth Employment Council (London, HMSO) p.19.
Kalachek, E. (1969) The Youth Labour Market (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan).
Robertston, E. J. (1970) ‘Local labour markets and plant wage structures’ in Robinson, D. (ed.), Local Labour Markets and Wages Structures (London, Gower Press) p. 16.
Doerings, P. B. and Piore, M. J. (1971) Internal Labour Markets and Manpower Analysis (Lexington, D. C. Heath) chap. 8;
Doerings, P. B. (1974) ‘Low pay, labour market dualism and industrial relations systems’, in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, (1974) Wage Determination (Paris, OECD) p. 16.
Bosanquet, N. (1973) Race and Employment in Britain (London, Runnymede Trust).
Jones, P. et al. (1975) All Their Future (Oxford, Department of Social and Administrative Studies, Oxford University) p.37.
Ashton, D. N. and Field, D. (1976) Young Workers (London, Hutchinson).
Boudon, R. (1974) Education, Opportunity, and Social Inequality (New York, Wiley).
Lipset, S. M. and Bendix, R. (1959) Social Mobility in Industrial Society (London, Heinemann); Schorr, A. (1966) ‘The family cycle and income development’, Social Security Bulletin, February.
See, for example, Williams, W. M. (ed.) (1974) Occupational Choice (London, Allen & Unwin).
Beynon, H. and Blackburn, R. M. (1972) Perceptions of Work (Cambridge University Press).
Allen, S. (1975) ‘School leavers and the labour market’, London Educational Review, vol. 4, no. 2–3, p.65.
Titmuss, R. M. (1968) Commitment to Welfare (London, Allen & Unwin) p. 159.
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© 1982 National Children’s Bureau
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Walker, A. (1982). Introduction. In: Unqualified and Underemployed. National Children’s Bureau series. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-16687-9_1
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