Politics or philosophy — which should we teach?

There have been recent proposals that schools should teach politics. In a recent book Political Education and Political Literacy (Longman £3.95), the case is argued at length on behalf of the Hansard Society. It is in effect a report of a working party, chaired by Professor Bernard Crick, in which political literacy is defined as: the skills, knowledge and attitudes to be effective in political situations. The survey reveals that school‐leavers are politically inept and almost totally ignorant. (A quarter of them thought the IRA was a Protestant organisation). The report also recommends that a small core of general politics should be taught to all teachers in training, that all local education committees should have advisers on political education, and that the DES should have its own specialist HMI on the subject. In fact two of these three recommendations have already been adopted in part: an experienced HMI (an historian) has been given responsibility for political education, and Sheffield recently appointed a subject adviser in politics.