AS WE START at the beginning of a new year, so starts a new chapter in this journal. With numerous parts of Britain involved in major disputes over education funding and teacher pay, educators across all the nations are not only discussing the terms and conditions of their employment but also what it means to be an education worker and what education is.

The battle over the future of education has increasingly moved onto pedagogical ground, with government agencies and corporations seeking more and more to control what is taught and how it is taught, and fake ‘grassroots’ movements being funded to promote certain ideological agendas. It seems appropriate, therefore, that this first issue of the new EfT seeks to intervene in this debate.

Terry Wrigley opens with a challenge to those pushing a ‘knowledge curriculum’ with little understanding of what real knowledge is. This is further explored in contributions by Ken Jones and Jess Edwards, who look at the consequences of Michael Gove’s ‘elitism’ and creative alternatives to curricula of disembodied knowledge respectively. This theme of alternative pedagogies is picked up in Phil Yeeles’ contribution on dialogic reading, which draws on the work of Paulo Freire. Freire also features, alongside Lev Vygotsky and Che Guevara, in Gawain Little’s search for a radical pedagogy and in James Douglas’ critique of the Scottish and English curriculum.

Patrick Yarker and Kiri Tunks deal with some longstanding myths about the human brain. Ideas of measurable intelligence and gendered brains have long been used to sustain racism and sexism, as well as placing limits on all children. The concept of measurable intelligence has played a particular role in the rationing of educational opportunity that sustains the oppression of the working class. The authors’ demolition of these myths are an important contribution to our understanding of pedagogy. No less important are the exploration of recent developments in mathematics Teaching and the Early Years by Julian Williams and Lucy Coleman respectively. Finally, David B. Morgan and Aretha Green explore pedagogy in two very different national contexts, the development of the Donaldson Report in Wales and the question of student voice in Cuba.

We are pleased to present this collection as an intervention into the pedagogical debate at this crucial time.

Other developments make this a significant time in education. The launch of the National Education Union represents a significant step forward in terms of professional unity in education and has changed the topology of education trades unionism in Britain for good. As a collective, we have always argued that Professional Unity is a necessary but not sufficient condition for education workers to win the battle for Professional control over the education process. Unity is essential but it also matters what that unity looks like. Because only a single united education union, rooted in every workplace, with strong networks of solidarity amongst parents and in the local community, is capable of defeating the neoliberal seizure of education.

What is needed then is a deep discussion across all education unions about their long-term strategy – whether their response to neoliberalism assault on education over the past 40 years has been adequate and, if not, how to develop it beyond mere resistance and into something transformative that can organise educators to win. This will be the focus of our second issue, due out at the start of April, in which we are pleased to welcome, amongst others, Professor Howard Stevenson to share his thoughts on the subject.

Education for Tomorrow is, of course not only a new publication (in its current form) but also a publication with a long and proud history. As we move forward, we also pay tribute to those who established and maintained this tradition. In particular, we mark the passing of our comrade Tony Farsky, who contributed so much to Education for Tomorrow and who would, no doubt, be pleased to see it relaunched in this way. It is thanks to the work of Tony and all the Editorial Boards that went before us that we are able to bring this issue to publication today. We are proud to continue in their footsteps by entering into the battle of ideas.

The future of education is in valuing teachers, valuing education and valuing students, not in valuing human capital. It is in this spirit and in these pages that we examine the question of pedagogy, consider the role of educators in taking professional control of the learning process, and begin to set out a vision of education for tomorrow.

February 2019

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