Book review

What is Education about?

by Geoffrey Marshall

Geoffrey Marshall’s book is a timeline of his pedagogical and leadership journey within primary education in a series of articles dating from 1976 to 2019. This collection may on first appearances seem a wistful and nostalgic look of how ‘things used to be’ but as it progresses it becomes a sharper critique of what has gone wrong ideologically and who is to blame. That said, Marshall does offer pertinent advice and a warning for current teachers to see beyond the clouding of daily teaching to treat his memoirs as a clarion call.

Reading the whole book, the reader cannot fail to notice how the collection of articles can be summarised as a series of tensions. The book begins with a definition of education that realises the difference between the right of a child to have ‘choice’ within her learning versus ‘compliance’ for the jobs market. There is the discussion of the need for a ‘child-centred’ approach to learning to the demands of the imposed ‘curriculum’’ a need to understand ‘childhood’ and the ‘controlling’ aspects that children encounter in school. For teachers, Marshall asks them to consider what is meant by ‘education’ and how children are ‘educated’ a nuanced reflection that has a powerful resonance; and a recalling of how teachers should be seen as a central figure within a constructivist-based pedagogy rather than how they appear to be powerless as indicators of a market-based system.

‘What is education about?’ tackles the core thread of how those who have an interest in education, namely parents, have been misguided by politicians as to what education is now about. The critique of neoliberal policy in education shows not only how the author feels a sense of loss but how a history of educational development can show politicians how education can be restored for the child and for employers who value problem solving skills, autonomy, collaboration, and outcomes. Marshall’s philosophy is underpinned, among other factors, by the Hadow report (published in the year of his birth) and how that has served his vision of meaningful child-oriented learning.

The values that are expressed in the book are shared by NAPE, indeed a few articles were previously published in Primary First and this is a book worth reading if only to get teachers questioning current practice and whether there is any true merit in it.

Dr Robert Morgan