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Dewey, Democracy and Education, and the School Curriculum
Education 3-13 (Special Edition)
Dr Neil Hopkins
School of Teacher Education
University of Bedfordshire, UK
neil.hopkins@beds.ac.uk
Abstract
This paper will investigate Dewey’s Democracy and Education in relation to the
curriculum. There are two overarching themes to the paper: the concept of the
democratic curriculum and the academic/vocational divide. Dewey is seen as a
pivotal thinker in relation to collaborative learning and the child as a vital voice in any
learning that takes place in the classroom and beyond. The paper explores whether
issues such as school governance and pupil voice facilitate Dewey’s notion of
democratic education. Alongside this is the issue of the academic/vocational divide
within English education. Acknowledgement will be made of Dewey’s theory of
knowledge which emphasises the connection between concept and application and
how this can influence the incorporation of the theoretical and the practical as part of
children’s learning in a given curriculum.
Introduction
Dewey’s Democracy and Education is a landmark publication in education generally
and philosophy of education in particular. Hence, the tributes and appraisals of the
book as part of its centenary (includsing this special editaion of Education 3-13). My
focus in this chapter will be on the relavancy of Democracy and Education to the
contemporary curriculum. Does a book published over one hundred years ago still
speak to educational practitioners, adminstrators and policy-makers? The curriculum
in state education in the United Kingdom (as with many other countries) has been
increasingly politicised over the past thirty or forty years. In the UK, the introduction
of the National Curriculum in the late 1980s standardised (to a greater or lesser
extent) what children were expected to learn and when they were expected to learn
it. There have been various government strategies and policies since then (for
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example, the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies in the late 1990s and the
debate over synthetic phonics over the last decade or so). So how does Democracy
and Education relate to this educational landscape?
I will be looking sepcifically at Dewey’s interpretation of democratic education and
how this can and does apply to current issues in English primary and secondary
education. Does Dewey’s ideas have any connection with the recent introduction of
Fundamental British Values? What the the implications for pupil voice of Dewey’s
views of the child in Democracy and Education? Where do Dewey’s thoughts
resonate in an era of standards, deregulation and national benchmarks? I will be
endeavouring to explore these questions alongside the other key element of this
paper: the academic/vocational divide in English education. I argue that this division
has been a key weakness of English education over many decades and Dewey
offers important insights into how this weakness can be addressed. I will offer his
theory of knowledge in Democracy and Education (in relaion to pedagogy) as a
means to overcoming such divisions in the curriculum.
It is important to emphasise, as part of this chapter, how important democratic values
and practices are for primary school practitioners (as well as their secondary
counterparts). I hope to show here how the current educational landscape (especially
the focus regarding ‘Britishness’ and PREVENT) relates clearly to the work and
expectations for teachers in both primary and secondary schools. These issues
remind us of Dewey’s contemporary relevance in the area of democracy, citizenship
and the curriculum for practitioners from the Early Years Foundation Stage to Key
Stage 3.
Democracy and the democratic curriculum
It is important to state from the beginning that Dewey found the notion of state-
controlled education problematic. In this sense, he was close to liberal thinkers of the
nineteenth century such as John Stuart Mill. Dewey states:
Is it possible for an educational system to be conducted by a national state
and yet the full social ends of the educative process not to be restricted,
constrained or corrupted? (Dewey 2007: 75).
Dewey was concerned that state control of education (and, by implication, the
curriculum) could lead to situations where emphasis was placed upon the needs of
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the nation rather than the needs of the individual child. This is a particular concern in
times of national strife and conflict where education is often viewed as a vehicle for
social cohesion or improving national pride and performance. It could be argued, with
the advent of the PREVENT agenda on radicalisation, the simmering issue of
Scottish independence, and the tensions created by Brexit, the UK is currently
encountering a climate of strife and conflict. Dewey was very aware of the tensions
between democratic values and nationalist sentiment in relation to education. He
argues in Democracy and Education: ‘One of the fundamental [tensions] of education
in and for a democratic society is set by the conflict of a nationalistic and wider social
aim’ (Dewey 2007: 75).
A key issue regarding the government, the curriculum and a sense of nationhood has
been the introduction of ‘Fundamental British Values’ and the PREVENT duty for
teachers in schools and colleges. Fundamental British Values (FBV) were introduced
by the Department for Education in 2014 and comprise of ‘democracy, the rule of law,
individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and
beliefs’ (DfE 2014: 5). Schools are encouraged to integrate FBV as part of pupils’
spiritual, moral, social and cultural (SMSC) development (as stipulated in the
Education Act (2002)). On the surface, FBV could be seen as relatively benign – a
statement of values that most ‘reasonable’ people would conform and adhere to as a
means of working and living together within a multicultural society. However, the
labelling of these values as ‘British’ has caused considerable debate (see, for
instance, Elton-Chalcraft et al. 2017). There is little that is inherently ‘British’
regarding the values themselves and it is often taken as read what the concepts
mean. Fundamental questions occur over whether the curriculum is a place to induct
pupils into a sense of what it means to be British and the relative lack of consultation
prior to formulating these particular values as being ‘Fundamentally British’. For
Dewey, there is an inherent tension between education-for-national identity and
democratic education as a social activity and aim. He would be sceptical of
government interpretations of democracy in an educational context.
Dewey had a very deep attachment to the concept of democracy and what this
looked like within the classroom. Most people are familiar with Dewey’s famous
phrase of democracy being more than a form of government; it is primarily a form of
associated living, of conjoint communicated experience’ (Dewey 2007: 68)’. For
Dewey, democracy and democratic education was an inherently collective affair. He
states: ‘In order to have a large number of values in common, all members of the
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group must have an equable opportunity to receive and take from others’ (Dewey
2007: 66). What is interesting when comparing FBV and Dewey’s views on
democracy is the relative absence of collectivity and equality regarding FBV
(although the reference to ‘democracy’ in FBV does hint at collective decision
making). Dewey viewed the classroom as a place where people discovered and
constructed knowledge together as relative equals (the teacher having a particular
responsibility due to her/his role). Education, for Dewey, is a shared enterprise and
this is what made him seem dangerous and radical to those educationalists and
politicians who had a traditional view of the curriculum and the child’s place within it.
If democracy was to have any meaning beyond the dry practice of electoral
procedures and the knockabout ‘Punch and Judy’ of parliamentary discourse, then it
should occur as part of the educational process itself. Democracy is not something
that happens (as if by magic) when a student turns into a citizen at eighteen. Children
learn to work together, discuss and argue over common themes and problems
encountered daily as part of their educational experiences. The teacher’s role is
critical but does not ‘trump’ the children’s voices within the learning environment. In
Experience and Education (1938) which was, to some extent, a follow-up to
Democracy and Education, Dewey says:
it is not the will or desire of any one person which establishes order but the
moving spirit of the whole group. The control is social, but individuals are part
of a community, not outside of it … the teacher exercises [authority] as a
representative or agent of the interests of the group as a whole (Dewey 1950:
58-59).
The sense of collectivity and equality is clear in this passage. However, it also
presents challenges for teachers, pupils and policy-makers. If, as Dewey indicated in
Democracy and Education, there is a concern with state-controlled education, how
can we also advocate education as social participation without that being a
contradiction? Where do we draw the line between the classroom as a community
and the ‘national community’ controlling the classroom? Is the classroom a ‘sealed
unit’ where participation and discussion occur without inference from outside or is the
classroom an essential part of the wider community? Dewey appears to suggest the
latter:
An undesirable society … is one which internally and externally sets up
barriers to free intercourse and communication of experience. A society which
makes provision for participation in its good of all its members on equal terms
and which secures flexible readjustment of its institutions through interaction
of the different forms of associated life is in so far democratic. Such a society
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must have a type of education which gives individuals a personal interest in
social relationships and control, and the habits of mind which secure social
changes without introducing disorder (Dewey 2007: 76).
As is evident, Dewey did not want to sacrifice the individual in pursuit of collective
experiences in education. In that sense, his views match the emphasis on the
individual liberty element of FBV. Much has been made in the past century of Dewey
as an advocate of ‘child-centred’ education by both his supporters and critics. Dewey
was very sensitive to such labels and how they could be misinterpreted. In
Experience and Education, Dewey was critical of those educationalists who took the
child-centred approach to mean they were absolved of curriculum planning or
organization: ‘Failure to develop a conception of organization upon the empirical and
experimental basis gives reactionaries a too easy victory (Dewey 1950: 22). Although
Dewey could see the dangers of taking such ideas too far, he believed in education
as a means of facilitating and enhancing children’s individual growth. He had a
complex view of how such growth occurred, critiquing education as form of
‘unfolding’, ‘preparation’ or ‘formation’. For Dewey,
The idea of education … is formally summed up in the idea of continuous
reconstruction of experience, an idea which is marked off from education as
preparation for a remote future, as unfolding, as external formation, and as
recapitulation of the past (Dewey 2007: 63).
Children’s experiences were to form a critical aspect of a given curriculum. It is
through experience that concept and context can work together to support and
develop a child’s understanding:
An experience, a very humble experience, is capable of generating and
carrying any amount of theory (or intellectual context), but a theory apart from
experience cannot be definitively grasped even as theory (Dewey 2007: 110).
Dewey provides here important criticisms of rote and didactic forms of pedagogy.
Without children being able to make connections between ideas and their basis in a
child’s sense of reality, the ideas remain abstractions without meaning or applicability.
These notions embody Dewey’s philosophical pragmatism and have had important
consequences regarding the curriculum and how children learn. After Democracy
and Education, it became increasingly difficult for educationalists to argue for a
curriculum where children were largely passive and seen as the recipients rather
than participants in the construction of their knowledge.
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The Common School as a form of democratic education
How might Dewey’s views in Democracy and Education translate in practice? An
interesting example is provided in Michael Fielding’s paper, ‘On the Necessity of
Radical State Education: Democracy and the Common School’ (2007). In this paper,
Fielding takes the historical example of St. George-in-the-East Secondary Modern
School in Stepney, East London in 1953. According to Fielding,
St.George-in-the East had the most sophisticated formal democratic structure
I have ever encountered in a secondary school, with multiple, organically
related democratic constituencies operating on a weekly and monthly basis in
the three arenas of staff, students and school (Fielding 2007: 548-549).
Alongside this democratic decision-making structure were what Fielding terms as
‘existential frameworks for democratic living’ (‘Our Pattern’). These include values
and principles that underpin the work of the school. As part of ‘Our Pattern’, a far-
reaching set of beliefs and attitudes were formulated within the school body:
No streaming/setting heterogeneous, sometimes mixed-age grouping
No punishment restorative response
No competition emulation
No marks or prizes communal recognition
(Taken from Fielding 2007: 550)
These values and principles at St.George-in-the-East supported what Fielding calls
‘radical collegiality’ in relation to the school curriculum. Fielding depicts this idea in
the form of a table:
Radical collegiality
Emergent curriculum Dialogic engagement
School study
The community as a resource
Electives
Residential camps
Animating dynamic of mutual
learning between students and
staff
Weekly reviews
Continuity of relationships
Form meetings, pupil panels,
pupil committees, joint panel and
whole school council
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(Taken from Fielding 2007: 550)
With regards to the ‘emergent curriculum’, Fielding takes each element in turn and
described it in relation to his views on radical education:
(a) the School Study – school-wide thematic work interpreted differently by
different groups and individuals within different classes but communally
interrogated and appreciated in a variety of often mixed-aged settings; (b)
widespread use of the community, of London, not just the local district as a
learning resource; (c) daily electives in which the afternoon curriculum was
chosen by the pupils themselves; and (d) residential camps in which
intergenerational, exploratory learning was much in evidence (Fielding 2007:
551).
This portrayal of the curriculum is a refreshing antidote to the frequent concerns and
complaints that the primary and secondary curriculums in England are too closely
linked to measurements, standards and performance in relation to external bodies
and indicators. There is a degree of curriculum choice and pupil autonomy that is
difficult (but not impossible) to create in the current school environment. I personally
found it very encouraging when staff and students from Hockerill Anglo-European
College discussed (at the Democracy and Education centennial conference at
Homerton College, Cambridge) how values and principles very similar to St.George-
in-the-East are integrated into their own curriculum as part of a conscious effort to
encourage and facilitate democratic structures and beliefs within the school.
Certainly, St.George-in-the-East epitomized the Deweyan philosophy regarding the
curriculum in its incorporation of the wider community as part of the learning
environment and the importance of students’ own interests and experiences as
central elements of the learning process.
What is particularly interesting in Fielding’s portrayal of St.George-in-the-East as a
‘common school’ is how closely many of the processes are closely to what
contemporary educators would term as ‘pupil voice’. One of the criticisms of pupil
voice in the contemporary school and classroom is how effective it is in genuinely
allowing and encouraging children to participate in their own learning. The danger is
that pupil voice becomes tokenistic or a ‘tick box’ to satisfy inspection regimes.
St.George-in-the East’s emphasis is on a dialogical relationship between teachers
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and pupils, encapsulated in the phrase, ‘Animating dynamic of mutual learning
between students and staff’ (Fielding 2007: 550). This prevents pupil voice lapsing
into the tokenistic because the dynamic between teacher and students is ongoing
and pervasive. As Robin Alexander has pointed out in relation to dialogic teaching in
practice (from his work in schools in Yorkshire and Barking and Dagenham in 2001
and 2002):
There is more talking about talk, by children as well as teachers
Teachers and children are devising ground rules for the management
of discussion
Children are speculating, thinking aloud and helping each other, rather
than competing to spot the ‘right’ answer
There is greater involvement of less able children who are finding the
changed dynamics of classroom talk provide them alternative
opportunities to show competence and progress, and of those quiet,
compliant children ‘in the middle’ who are often inhibited by unfocused
questioning, the competitiveness of bidding and the dominance of
some of their peers
Student contributions are becoming more diverse. Instead of just
factual recall there are now contributions of an expository, explanatory,
justificatory or speculative kind
There is more student-student talk
(Adapted from Alexander 2008: 115-117)
Dewey and the academic/vocational divide in the curriculum
A critical area where Dewey’s Democracy and Education challenged contemporary
assumption on the curriculum was the idea that children and knowledge could be
categorized as ‘academic’ and ‘vocational’. Such divisions have straitjacketed British
education for the last 150 years both institutionally (eg. grammar and second modern
schools; sixth-forms and FE colleges) and in terms of qualifications (eg. O
Level/CSE; A Level/BTEC). These divisions have often replicated class divisions
within society-at-large to the extent that schools have often been seen as the
nurseries of inequality and social injustice.
Dewey attacked the academic/vocational divide in terms of both knowledge and
education. As a philosophical pragmatist, he was skeptical of purely abstract
knowledge, stating that ‘the separation of “mind” from direct occupation with things
throws emphasis on things at the expense of relations or connections’ (Dewey 2007:
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109). These relations and connections are vital – once mind is separated from body,
we lose the vital thread that ties ideas with standard notions of reality. Knowledge is
an interaction of key concepts with the world as we know it. It is this sense of
application and practicality that distinguishes Dewey’s work from some of his
contemporaries. He was critical of
intellectualism [where] [p]ractice was not so much so much subordinated to
knowledge as treated as a kind of tag-end or aftermath of knowledge. The
educational result was only to confirm the exclusion of active pursuits from
school, save that they might be brought in for purely utilitarian ends – the
acquisition by drill of certain habits (Dewey 2007: 197).
This separation of intellect and practice, mind and body is often mirrored within the
education system itself:
To these two modes of occupation, with their distinction of servile and free
activities … correspond two types of education: the base or mechanical and
the liberal or intellectual’ (Dewey 2007: 188).
To this extent, education replicates and prepares children for the division of labour
that exists within a capitalist society. This state of affairs deeply concerned Dewey in
two ways. Firstly, as I have alluded to above, the partition of learning into academic
and vocational gives a false depiction of how knowledge is conceptualized and
transmitted. Secondly, the use of academic and vocational routes for students does
not allow each to develop their faculties to their fullest extent. In England, this divide
was formalized with the creation of grammar schools and secondary moderns after
the 1944 Education Act. The curriculum for each type of school was geared explicitly
towards the function students were expected to play once they had left the education
system. This, it could be argued, had the benefit of specialisation, allowing students
to develop their perceived strengths in tandem with others of like minds and abilities.
However, the downside of such specialization is the focus on certain areas of
education and life at the exclusion of others at an early age. Dewey, in Experience
and Education, states:
A fully integrated personality … exists only when successive experiences are
integrated with one another. It can be built up only as a world of related
objects is constructed (Dewey 1950: 43).
Such integration cannot occur effectively when the curriculum is biased towards
either the academic or the vocational. According to Dewey, the relation between
people, concepts and objects is a holistic relationship – we lose something when we
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study any of them in isolation from others. Dewey was concerned that creating
different ‘pathways’ or ‘routes’ for children was preventing them from viewing
knowledge ‘in the round’ and this, in turn, would have a detrimental effect on their
overall development as students and as human beings.
The move towards comprehensive schools in the 1960s and 1970s was an attempt
to soften or eradicate these social and educational differences. Some educators saw
opportunities to transfer comprehensives into Fielding’s depiction of the Common
School (2007) (as discussed in the section above). Whilst there were notable
attempts1 at common schools, the bipartite division in the secondary examination
system (GCEs and CSEs) tended to replicate the academic/vocational divide found
in grammar schools and secondary moderns – the difference being that the students
were now studying within one institution. The movement towards GCSEs was an
attempt to remove these barriers and ensure all children took one qualification at the
end of compulsory schooling. However, even within the GCSE system itself there has
been a tendency to draw distinctions that are not dissimilar to the GCE/CSE situation
of the 1960s and 1970s in England. It could be argued that the focus on national and
local benchmarks for GCSE A*-C2 and the introduction of the EBacc have created
similar distinctions between students and subjects even within a system that is
purportedly uniform.
The introduction of the National Curriculum in England in the late 1980s provided an
entitlement for children (in terms of curriculum aims and programmes of study)
across England. What has been a concern throughout the lifespan of the National
Curriculum is the creation of ‘core’ and ‘foundation’ subjects with priority given to
those ‘core’ subjects at the expense of other areas of study. Dewey argued,
The notions that the “essentials” of elementary education are the three Rs
mechanically treated … is based upon an ignorance of the essentials needed
for realization of democratic ideals (Dewey 2007: 145).
No one would suggest that Dewey’s depiction above is bourn out in contemporary
primary and secondary classrooms in England. However, Dewey’s point does carry a
wider charge – there is a danger, when we focus on certain parts of the curriculum to
the exclusion of others, that we jeopardise the social gains we could potentially make
1 Michael Fielding offers Countesthorpe Community College, Leicestershire and Bishops
Park College, Clacton as examples (Fielding 2007: 551).
2 It will be interesting to see if this process remains as the GCSEs revert to a numerical
grading system (9-1).
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when education strives towards being more democratic. For Dewey, such an
education contained elements of both the academic and the vocational.
Does the ‘creative curriculum’ challenge this divide?
Over the past ten or fifteen years, many primary and secondary schools have taken a
more holistic, integrated or thematic approach to the curriculum. This has sometimes
been described as a ‘creative curriculum’ although other terms have also been used.
I am going to look briefly at one instance of such an approach. The school in
question is Kingsholm Primary School in Gloucester. The school was the subject of a
Teachers TV broadcast entitled ‘Primary Topic Work – Customise Your Curriculum:
Giant Leaps’.
Kingsholm Primary made a strategic decision to move from a subject-based to a
thematic curriculum to meet the perceived needs of the pupils at the school. As can
be seen in Figure 2 below, the curriculum has been envisaged as a set of
interconnecting circles to incorporate aspects of the child’s world, specific
themes/curriculum areas, the geographical location and what the school has termed
‘the wider curriculum’. One particular theme that was concentrated on in the video
was ‘Earth and Beyond’. This was a Year 5/6 project that uses the idea of space to
explore different elements of the primary curriculum. The theme included
transforming the learning environment itself (see Figure 1) alongside work on the
creation of a space poem using ‘word stones’ and a collaborative dance interpreting
the concept of space in the form of bodily movement (as well as other activities).
It has to be acknowledged that such examples already build upon the excellent work
on themes and projects undertaken by schools throughout England. These examples
offer interesting opportunities to challenge the academic/vocational divide in the
school curriculum. It allows children to see and create the connections between
different aspects of knowledge so that concepts and their application become
concrete. As we have already seen, this dynamic between concept and application
was important in Dewey’s theory of knowledge. However, such innovations are likely
to be easier to undertake in Early Years and Key Stage 1 – the requirements of
programmes of study in Key Stage 2 and beyond make such thematic work more
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challenging (although not necessarily impossible), It will be interesting to see if the
development of academies and free schools that can operate outside the parameters
of the National Curriculum will lead to radical curriculum experiments in secondary
schools. For Dewey, such curricular innovation needed to take this statement as a
starting point:
In just the degree in which connections are established between what
happens to a person and what he [sic] does in response, and between what
he does to his [sic] environment and what it does in response to him, his acts
and the things about him acquire meaning. He learns to understand both
himself [sic] and the world of men [sic] and things (Dewey 2007: 202).
Figure 1
Screen shot from ‘Primary Topic Work – Customise Your Curriculum: Giant Leaps’ showing a
Year 5/6 classroom based on the theme ‘Earth and Beyond’
© Teachers Media 2017
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Figure 2
Screen shot from ‘Primary Topic Work – Customise Your Curriculum: Giant Leaps’ showing
visual representation of how Kingsholm Primary School moved from a subject-based to a
thematic curriculum
© Teachers Media 2017
Conclusion
Dewey’s Democracy and Education still has relevance and resonance for the
curriculum a hundered years after its first publication. His views on what constitutes
democratic education are as pertinent now as they were in 1916. English education
is currently debating how to facilitate identity, voice, nationhood and society into the
curriculum. I have explored above how and whether Fundamental British Values
supports this debate and the wider issue of a democratic school and curriculum.
Dewey demands a lot of educationalists and pupils to create and maintain
democratic ideals in the classroom but the returns are worthwhile for the child and
society. Allied to this is Dewey’s belief that education should not be
compartmentalised into the ‘academic’ and the ‘vocational’. This has been an
Achilles’ Heel for English education for at least two centuries. Dewey’s theory of
knowledge emphasises a deep relationship between theory and practice, concept
and application. When the curriculum separates these elements, it creates a
fundamental dislocation in a given curriculum with implications for the pupil, the
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school and society. Those with an interest in education should take a pause and
reflect on Dewey’s concerns for the curriculum – the centenary of Democracy and
Education has been an ideal opportunity to do this.
Word Count: 4,458 (excluding references)
References
Alexander, R. (2008), Essays in Pedagogy, London: Routledge.
Department for Education, Promoting fundamental British values as part of SMSC in
schools. Available at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/380595
/SMSC_Guidance_Maintained_Schools.pdf
Dewey, J. (1950 [1938), Experience and Education, New York: Macmillan.
Dewey, J. (2007 [1916]), Democracy and Education, Teddington: Echo Library.
Elton-Chalcraft, S., Lander, V., Revell, L., Warner, D. and Whitworth, L. (2017), To
promote, or not to promote fundamental British values? Teachers’ standards,
diversity and teacher education, British Educational Research Journal, 43:1, pp. 29-
48.
Fielding, M. (2007), On the Necessity of Radical State Education: Democracy and
the Common School, 41:4, pp. 539-557.
Teachers Media (2017), Primary Topic Work – Customise Your Curriculum: Giant
Leaps [video] [online]. Available at: http://www.teachers-media.com/videos/primary-
topic-work-customise-your-curriculum-giant-leaps#video_title_bar (Accessed: 5 May
2017).
Dear Neil
I think this is great and will fit in well with the other papers. I have a genuine question
for you to consider - I wonder if primary educationalists might welcome you making
the point early on that democratic values and practices are not just the reserve of
secondary education but are highly relevant to primary aged children too?
If you could do a final check on spelling etc ref the track changes I’ve made and get
back to me I’d be grateful - then perhaps give a final word count?
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Many thanks for all your efforts on this – I really like the inclusion of the Primary
school example..
Christine
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