Fit for capitalism?
By Liam Conway In 1976 James Callaghan made a famous speech attacking schools for their failure to deliver a workforce suited to the needs of the economy. Callaghan was talking nonsense of course — schools had nothing to do with the failure of British capitalism to meet the crisis generated by the massive oil price hike of the early 70s. Still teachers and schools proved a useful scapegoat, along with lazy workers and militant trade unions. But the Callaghan speech was a starting point for successive government drives to vocationalise the curriculum in response to business demands. In many...