Re: Theory & PracticeI completely agree - "there is no clear idea of what our education systems are trying to achieve." If the school system could articulate a single principle and implement it well then we would at least know what the focus is. There would be, in a sense, a unifying principle to help guide the whole process (doing one thing well). Everyone would at least know where they stand.

Back in my days as an educator I felt the constant onslaught of increasing demands. It seemed there was a desire for schools to become everything - even a kind of parent. Some of this was driven by the frantic lifestyles of two-income families. Another part by an increasing swamp of information by the way of new technologies. Yet another by the increasing psychological problems students were having and increasing levels of violence. Still another by bizarre demands from the economic sector to prepare students for some mystical world of the future. In behind this rages the concept of the prerequisite and curriculum as mass communication which further drives the education into a downward spiral. The modern proposition for schools is in many ways unrealistic.

If I was to express a first principle it would focus on the desired quality of communication in education (in contrast to the current one). It seems to me that it is the nature of communication that needs to be changed in education more than anything else.