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Schooling And Education: Although schooling may have had its advantages when not compulsory - as a means for social progress, to inculcate religious knowledge and values, as a 'baby-sitting' service - once the 'right' to schooling was imposed across the western world, it was resented by both parents and children (Cunningham 1995). Secular education was resented by the churches (Horn 1989). The status quo was preserved for those who had always been able to pay for their own children's schooling but the roots of the duality of modern British children's educational experiences (private versus state) matured then.
Britain, the 'school', as we now accept it, is a relatively recent phenomenon. Until the nineteenth century 'education', rather than 'schooling', was much more the result of what individual parents vere able to provide than a national expectation. The class structure ensured that certain values were transmitted across the generations, maintaining a male-oriented, hierarchical system. The Church, part of this power structure as well as a traditional provider of schooling, protected and reinforced its place by selectively passing on knowledge to those who would maintain its position. Parents, if wealthy enough, could choose to tutor at home or pay for public schooling. In both scenarios, parents could be assured generally that the knowledge passed on to their offspring would respect and match their values and culture.
If there is anything to be learnt from the literature and research on 'stress' and stress management, it is that it often generates challenging behaviours and disaffection, resulting in exclusion or rejection of schooling and education. On the positive side, proper recognition of the whole learning process as interaction and as a human activity can lead to many benefits. Amongst these benefits are accelerated learning; proper application of emotional intelligence and later adjustment; appreciation of multiple intelligences and individual talent or 'giftedness'; a feeling of valued education in a caring society; a reduction of difficult or challenging behaviour and consequent exclusion or marginalisation. A significant number of these benefits to statutory schooling seem to be eluding us at the moment.
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