5. Our respondents refer in many different ways to the importance of school as a
place where habits of respect are (or are not) developed, between students and
teachers and amongst students. Positive remarks were much more likely to be
found amongst respondents schooled in other countries, illuminating differences
in cultural attitudes and practice.
6. Crucially significant is the role of initial education in developing good
communicative skills, so that young people have both the confidence and the
skills to make themselves properly understood, and to understand others.
7. One encouraging finding is the way that people tend to remember and cherish a
good teacher, even when they may not have been successful generally at school
or even in the subject taught by that person. This ‘sleeper’ effect reinforces the
importance of good teaching even where the outcomes are not immediate.
8. The lack of guidance offered emerges strongly. This is age-related, in that
proper guidance systems have only developed relatively recently. The difficulty
of delivering effective student-centred guidance is evident, given people’s
diverse personalities and their natural uncertainties as young persons.
Adaptation and change
One of our projects focused on parents with young children, and how learning helped
them to manage the changes brought about by parenthood. We also include findings
from the other project (concerning social cohesion), that relate to this theme.
9. A major benefit to parents, especially to mothers, of taking part in education is
that it provides them with a change of scene, routine and company. It enables, or
pushes, them to get away from the home and their children for a while, and to
maintain or recover their sense of identity as an adult. The strength of the effect
ranges from a mild benefit to a sense that their participation saved them from
severe mental health problems.
10. Education provides a structure to people’s lives. This may be on a daily/weekly
basis, where otherwise they felt they were losing control; or in the sense of
giving them a focus and goal, long- or short-term, such that they could see a
way to progress beyond the current phase of their lives. This was most strongly
expressed by mothers of small children.
11. Education provides the confidence, skills and opportunity to access knowledge
relevant to new situations occasioned by parenting. This is obvious where it
refers to specific parenting courses or other similar learning. But education also
provides people with the ability to draw on knowledge sources, notably books;
and gives them the opportunity to do so by furnishing access to libraries. These
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