200_1.tif Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rjve20 The Vocational Aspect of Secondary and Further Education ISSN: 0305-7879 (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjve19 The cultural background of prospective teachers in further education Ann R. Dryland & L.R. Halliday To cite this article: Ann R. Dryland & L.R. Halliday (1963) The cultural background of prospective teachers in further education, The Vocational Aspect of Secondary and Further Education, 15:32, 200-205, DOI: 10.1080/03057876380000231 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/03057876380000231 Published online: 30 Jul 2007. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 43 View related articles https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rjve20 https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjve19 https://www.tandfonline.com/action/showCitFormats?doi=10.1080/03057876380000231 https://doi.org/10.1080/03057876380000231 https://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=rjve20&show=instructions https://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=rjve20&show=instructions https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/mlt/10.1080/03057876380000231 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/mlt/10.1080/03057876380000231 T H E C U L T U R A L B A C K G R O U N D O F P R O S P E C T I V E T E A C H E R S I N F U R T H E R E D U C A T I O N By ANN R. DRYLAND and L. R. HALLIDAY Lecturer and Principal Lecturer, Garnett College MUCH CONCERN has been expressed recently about the narrowing effects o f specialisation and about the need for every teacher in further education, what- ever his discipline, to contribute, both directly through his subject-matter and indirectly by his attitude and choice o f instances, to the liberal education o f his students. In December, 1962, a survey was conducted at Garnett College among students on the one-year full-time course, virtually all of whom would be serving in further education from the beginning o f the 1963-4 session, with the aim of acquiring a general impression of the breadth o f their interests. The Test The test was based in design and technique on the general information test which forms part of the battery devised in 1950 by W. A. Skinner, the Deputy Principal of Garnett College, for selection for admittance to the course. Skinner's cultural test, like G. W. H. Leytham's Arts and Science Information Test at Liverpool, 1 derives from the General Information Test introduced by E. Anstey, R. F. Dowse, and M. Duguid, 2 in which the subject, when presented with the names o f 120 famous persons and fourteen professions, has to ' m a t c h ' each name with that profession in connection with which its owner is well- known. Skinner's profile considerably modified this, reducing the names to 100 and increasing the professions to twenty, viz: Actors (and actresses) on the stage, Actors (and actresses) on the films, Chefs, Composers, Dress Designers, Economists, Educators, Engineers, Historians, Mathematicians, Novelists, Painters, Philosophers, Playwrights, Poets, Scientists, Sculptors, Singers, States- men, Travellers. Chefs and Dress Designers were deliberately included since both needle and food subjects are important elements in further education. The writers further modified Skinner's test by combining actors (stage) with actors (film) and introducing a new category, Instrumentalists. This, it was felt, elimi- nated one source of ambiguity and gave a fairer balance between literature and music in that each was now represented by three categories (novelists, play- wrights, poets; composers, instrumentalists, singers, respectively). An arbitrary number o f names (in fact 209) was given and each subject required to indicate the profession or occupation with which he associated each name. The test was given in three stages, each lasting roughly half-an-hour, in three successive weeks. In the first week the first seven categories were tested, with A N N R . D R Y L A N D A N D L . R . H A L L I D A Y 201 sixty-nine names to be classified; in the second the second seven, with seventy- four names; in the third the remaining six, with sixty-six names. The sample For the first test the sample comprised 164 students, for the second 162, for the third 158. These students came from homes all over Great Britain, with those in Southern England predominating. Some thirty men and women from the Commonwealth and other countries of non-British cultural background took the test, but their answers have not been included in the findings. With the exception o f teachers o f building, all the major subject groups in further educa- tion were represented in the sample, in the following proportions: engineering 33 per cent, business studies (professional and secretarial) 29 per cent, general subjects (prospective teachers of English, social studies, mathematics and four future tutor-librarians) 15 per cent, food subjects (cookery, catering, baking) 6 per cent, science 5 per cent, nautical subjects, needle subjects and printing groups 4 per cent each. The average age was 33 years. Presentation As in Anstey, Dowse and Duguid's test, scoring was objective, but a discrimin- ation factor over and above chance was present (e.g. David Ricardo, the economist, and H. R. Ricardo, the engineer, appeared in the same test; Lord Acton, the historian, figured in the second test, Lord Anson, the traveller, in the third, a week later). Names were presented with or without Christian name or initials according to normal usage (e.g. Sibelius--surname only, but Benjamin Britten in full; Givinchy--but Hardy Amies; Pestalozzi--but A. S. Neill) except where, whatever the usual practice, a prefix was essential for clarity (e.g. the Ricardos; Graham and Joan Sutherland; Brook and A. J. P. Taylor; Roger Bacon; T. H. Huxley). The results The order o f 'popularity' of the twenty categories proved to be as shown in Table 1. The predominant interest in music shown by a sample which was weighted on the scientific, but not specifically on the mathematical, side would appear to be significant, and that ' Scientists' came in the lower half o f the table is a little surprising. O f all names in the 209 proffered only two, Louis Armstrong and Sophia Loren, were correctly identified by 100 per cent of the sample. All the following, however, were correctly labelled by over 90 per cent of the sample: Terence Rattigan, Chaucer, Caruso, Ella Fitzgerald, Maria Callas, U Thant, Charles de Gaulle, Captain Cook, Cole Porter, Dior, Marconi, Yehudi Menuhin, Eileen Joyce, Jane Austen, Pythagoras; and over 80 per cent were right on Naunton Wayne, R o d Steiger, Sarah Bernhardt, Stravinsky, Elgar, Benjamin Britten, Vaughan Williams, Sibelius, Sir Percy Nunn, Pestalozzi (both these last had been recently mentioned in lectures on the course, though not as yet studied in any depth), George Stephenson, Fritz Kreisler, Dave Brubeck, Leon Goossens, 202 The Cultural Background of Prospective Teachers in Further Education TABLE 1 The percentage of each category correctly identified Category Instrumentalists Composers Singers Actors Playwrights Statesmen Poets Engineers Novelists ) Painters Scientists Educators Travellers ) Mathematicians Dress Designers Economists Historians Philosophers Sculptors Chefs The number of names correctly identified in each category (expressed as percentage) 67 64.5 63.5 60 54 53 51.5 49 46 45 44 43 41 32 31 25 21 17 Euclid, Cdzanne, D y l a n Thomas, A r t h u r Miller (association with p o o r Marilyn ?), Brendan Behan, J o h n Osborne, Darwin, Faraday, J o a n Sutherland, W o o d r o w Wilson, Marco Polo and Sir Ernest Shackleton. Again the prevailing musical interest will be observed. The names receiving the lowest correct scores are given in Table 2. T A B L E 2 Names receiving least identification Percentage of Name sample correctly identifying } Ella Maillart (traveller) Brook Taylor (mathematician) Elizabeth Frink (sculptress) Edward Alleyn (actor) A. S. Makarenko (educator) Jean Froissart (historian) Eugene Ysaye (instrumentalis0 Zeno (philosopher) William Wycherley (playwright) 1 A N N R . D R Y L A N D A N D L . R . H A L L I D A Y 203 As well as Eugene Ysaye's poor showing in the category which on average was the most successfully answered, Jacqueline du Pr6 collected a mere 21 per cent, and in the second most highly scored classification, Composers, only 23 per cent were right on William Byrd and 26 per cent on Michael Tippett. Among the names in the third highest, Singers, that of Richard Lewis was correctly identified by only 14 per cent. At the other end o f the scale, while it is hardly surprising that the Chefs category finished last in 'popularity', a remarkably high proportion (viz. 49 per cent) of all subjects identified Auguste Escoffier. The frequent use of his name in connection with culinary products may have helped here. He was muddled by only 3 out of the total of 164; these labelled him a composer, a dress designer and an'economist respectively--verdicts that would seem to suggest bad guessing rather than real confusion. Among the sculptors Henry Moore was an easy winner with 77 per cent but his runner-up, Reg Butler, received a score of only 20 per cent, and, although the average for the category o f Philosophers was higher than those of the last two, only one name, that of Hegel, was correctly classified by more than 40 per cent of the sample. It was a slightly saddening reflection on the course at Garnett to date that while A. S. Makarenko (7 per cent) might understandably have been compara- tively unknown, Rudolf Steiner received a score of only 12 per cent. That R. M. Rilke was correctly identified by only 15 per cent is hardly odd, but Wilfred Owen's 18 per cent seemed a meagre response when one recalls that the General Subjects group alone constituted 15 per cent of the sample. Can some schools still be classing him as a Georgian and therefore someone to be dismissed ? Certainly few anthologies below sixth form level carry much of his work. The champions of television as a source of popular culture might be dismayed not only at the poor performance already mentioned on Elizabeth Frink, who had a ' M o n i t o r ' spot not very long before the test, but also at the mere 25 per cent collected by A. J. Ayer. Conversely, it might be argued that the familiarity of his fellow panel-personalities A. J. P. Taylor and Alan Bullock might well have contributed to their scores of 58 per cent and 48 per cent respectively, and that the big response to the name of Elgar might have been influenced by the B.B.C. programme devoted to him only a fortnight before the first test. Names most frequently muddled Twenty-one names were more wrongly than correctly identified. These are given in Table 3 with relevant percentage figures. It will be seen that no fewer than five out of the twenty-one were travellers, although on average (see Table 1) this category came only 12th in order o f ' p o p u - larity.' An unforeseen ambiguity was manifest in the name o f the composer Bartok. Although 63 per cent o f the sample put him in the intended category, those who did not totalled 23 per cent and the vast majority of these classified him u n d e r ' Actors/Actresses', presumably taking us to mean his more publicised 13 204 The Cultural Background of Prospective Teachers in Further Education T A B L E 3 Names most frequently muddled Name Roger Bacon Thucydides Marino Marini Apollonius Peter Fleming Reg Butler Sir John Franklin Franz K a f k a Gorki Rudolf Steiner Lord Anson H. R. Ricardo Pirandello Edward Alleyn D. H. Robertson William Wycherley Sholokhov Elizabeth Frink Sidney Nolan Ella MaiUart C. M. Doughty Percentage of sample giving correct a n s w e r 16 12 5 31 25 20 21 20 25 12 21 18 15 6 11 9 12 4 13 3 4 Percentage of sample allocating name to wrong category 44 40 36 35 35 32 29 29 28 27 23 23 21 19 17 17 16 16 15 10 9 n a m e s a k e Eva. W e were also s o m e w h a t c h a s t e n e d b y the revelation o f o u r o w n ' s q u a r e n e s s ' in never h a v i n g h e a r d o f a f r e q u e n t T o p T e n t e n a n t with the s a m e n a m e as t h a t o f the s c u l p t o r M a r i n o Marini. O f the 36 p e r cent w h o g o t h i m (in o u r view) wrong, o n l y a h a n d f u l classified h i m as a n y t h i n g b u t a singer. Thucydides a n d A p o l l o n i u s b o t h drew a high poll as p h i l o s o p h e r s , p r o b a b l y o n the score o f their classical n a m e s , while R o g e r Bacon, the m o s t f r e q u e n t l y m i s p l a c e d p e r s o n a l i t y o f the lot, was labelled b y a l m o s t all the 44 p e r cent in T a b l e 3 as a poet. T h e c o n f u s i o n with F r a n c i s was n o t unexpected b u t w h e t h e r this designation was the nearest they c o u l d find t o essayists o r reflects a high p r o p o r t i o n o f Baconians in the s a m p l e r e m a i n s obscure. Conclusion W e h a v e already referred t o the conflicting evidence a b o u t the influence o f television. I t would be interesting to k n o w w h y a p p e a r a n c e o n the T.V. screen seems t o lead t o greater r e c o g n i t i o n o f s o m e n a m e s b u t n o t t o affect others. Since the profile was n o t conceived as a Science versus A r t s test we were n o t c o n c e r n e d when, in its final f o r m , eleven o f the twenty categories could b e labelled ' A r t s ' , three ' S c i e n c e ' a n d six, we t h o u g h t , did n o t fit into the A r t s / ANN R. DRYLAND AND L. R. HALLIDAY 205 Science categories, h o w e v e r b r o a d l y based. These six ' g e n e r a l ' categories were: chefs, dress designers, economists, educators, s t a t e s m e n a n d travellers. O f these six, e c o n o m i s t s a n d chefs scored low a n d c a m e sixteenth a n d twentieth on the list setting o u t the a v e r a g e correct in e a c h category. T h e o t h e r f o u r scored in the middle ranges with scores between 41 a n d 53 p e r cent. Finally, o n e f a c t d i d emerge, which, t h o u g h n o t new, was o f interest t o us at G a r n e t t College. I n spite o f the f a c t t h a t 46 p e r cent o f the students were n o t ' A r t s ' p e o p l e the first o f the three categories with a scientific slant did not a p p e a r until the eighth place, with a score o f 49 p e r cent. o n the list showing the average c o r r e c t in e a c h category. T h e o t h e r t w o c a m e eleventh a n d thirteenth on the list with scores o f 45 a n d 43 per cent. T h e s e figures seem to b e a r o u t the widely held s u p p o s i t i o n t h a t ' scientists' k n o w m o r e o f the arts side o f the two cultures t h a n d o ' A r t s ' students o f the science, even t h o u g h the test did n o t involve the u n d e r s t a n d i n g o f theories b u t m e r e l y the recognition o f names. R E F E R E N C E S 1. LEYTHAM, G. W. H. (1960). 'An Arts and Science Information Test', The Vocational Aspect, Vo|. XII, No. 24, pp. 3-15. 2. AI'4STEY, E., DOWSE, R. F., and DUGUID, M. (1948). ' A New Genera[ Information Test', B. J. Ed. Psy., Vol. XVIII, Pt. lII, pp. 156-160. (Script received: May 8, 1963)