‘The Goals are the Same. zy . . ’ Are They? John White John White, reader in education in the Department of Philosophy of Education, Institute of Education, London University, examines the Warnock Report’s claim that educational aims are the same for all children. He discusses aims to do with the acquisition of knowledge, preparation for personal autonomy and the promotion of personal wellbeing, arguing that the Warnock claim is acceptable, if at all, only when aims are described at a high level of generality. The Warnock Report on the aims of education zyxwvutsr The Warnock Report stated famously that ‘the purpose of education for all children is the same; the goals are the same. But the help that individual children need in progressing towards them will be different’ (DES, 1978). I would like to put the first part of this proposition to the test. zyxwvutsr Are the goals of education the same for all children? A lot will depend on one’s conception of education and on the level of generality at which one is operating. As a starting point we can take the two-fold goals suggested in the report itself: They are, first, to enlarge a child’s knowledge, experience and imaginative understanding, and thus his awareness of moral values and capacity for enjoyment; and secondly, to enable him to enter the world after formal education is over as an active participant in society and a responsible contributor to it, capable of achieving as much independence as possible. (1,4) The report goes on to say that for some children the second of these ‘may never be achieved’. This raises a problem: if we are virtually certain already that some children will never be active participants in society, then there seems no sense in making this one of the goals of their education. If this is so, this seems to contradict Warnock’s basic claim that the aims of education should be the same for all. The place of knowledge among the Warnock aims With Warnock’s two-fold purpose, as with any other account of educational aims, we should ask ourselves such questions as: how are we to interpret these aims? why are they held to be important? what interconnections and priorities are there between them? The first aim is to do with the enlargement of knowledge, experience and imaginative understanding. Is this meant to be independent of the second aim, to do with social participation? Presumably there is some connection intended between them, in that social participation surely requires some enlargement of knowledge (etc). If so, the first aim is at least in part subordinate to the second. I say ‘at least in part’ because there may be other reasons why knowledge (etc) is educationally important: its possession or pursuit might be considered to be of intrinsic interest, for instance, or in some other way necessary for an individual’s wellbeing. Or is all this to misunderstand the first goal? Perhaps the ‘thus’ that it contains invites us to see knowledge (etc) as promoting ‘awareness of moral values and capacity for enjoyment’. If so, this is why knowledge (etc) is important. But it is also possible to interpret ‘awareness of moral values (etc)’ here uspurt of ‘knowledge, experience and imaginative understanding’ - and in this case the former’s role is not to justify the latter. There is no need to go further into such complexities. The main point is that the Warnock Report is not clear in spelling out its educational goals and the relationship between them. You may feel like replying that this is nit-picking. The report is, after all, a report, not an MA dissertation, and what it suggests about goals is clear enough for practical purposes. I disagree. If we are seriously concerned about whether or not aims should be the same for all children, then it matters a good deal how we characterise these aims and their logical interrelationships. Suppose, for instance, we say with Warnock that knowledge aims are of great importance. What is going to count as knowledge? If we take it in ways commonly understood in educational circles, for some children this a i p may not make sense. As Paul Dumbleton (1990) has persuasively argued in this journal, if what is meant is that education has to do with induction into the logically distinct forms of knowledge favoured by Paul Hirst and, with variations, by other writers, then this ‘will almost certainly implicitly exclude the possibility of some people’s engaging in education and becoming educated’. This same conclusion follows if we think of knowledge aims in more traditional terms, in connection, for instance, with the National Curriculum. If an important part of becoming educated is being able to assimilate the knowledge objectives laid down for science, mathematics, geography, history and so on, then some children with severe learning difficulties will end up incapable of progressing through the various levels of attainment and Warnock’s claim about common aims for all children will be undermined. Is there any way of thinking about education and its aims in which this depressing conclusion can be averted? Preparation for personal autonomy Many people would argue that a central aim of education has to do with preparing pupils for a self determined, or personally autonomous, life. There will be all sorts of qualifications to this, of course. In particular, one will want children to be brought up with a range of altruistic dispositions to do with intimate relationships at one end leading to more impersonal ones at the other. In some treatments, altruistic aims are seen as lying outside the autonomy aim: as well as education for autonomy, children need moral education (Dearden, 1968). In others, including my own, they fall within it: the self determined life is understood from the start as ruling out the autonomous egoist (see White, 1990; also for issues of personal wellbeing and autonomy touched on below). The autonomy aim is, rightly, very popular among teachers. They see their job as empowering children to lead their own lives as far as practically possible, and not to be conformist followers of fashion or authority. Part of their role is to open doors to children, to acquaint them with options, in the shape of activities or ways of life, from which they make their own path through life (including vocational options). Another part is to help cultivate in them the personal qualities they will need in order to be self directing: such as independence of mind, moral courage, practical judgement, self confidence, attachment to one’s projects, concern for the wellbeing of the groups and communities to which they belong. Another is to equip them with the knowledge and understanding needed to sustain these virtues: self knowledge above all, but also some knowledge of the workings of their own society, its technological basis, the historical development of their own British Journal of Special Education, Volume 18, No.1 March zy 1991