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he search for ways to educate people to create a capable Britain’s best endeavours in the field of vocational training.
population is not new. It has recurred repeatedly in the Nevertheless, the high road to success today is not training
past, prompted by public disappointment with almost but education of a decidedly academic kind and in subjects
every aspect of education. In this essay, I will propose the laid down long ago. This is the world of the printed word,
essentials required for a better quality of education, knowing of memorising information, all of it second-hand, in
well that the best of intentions have yet to deliver the preparation for formal examinations. Shaped and
looked-for reforms. standardised by university entrance tutors, it is this
Two decades ago, an rsa report entitled Education for academic mindset that determines success in this country.
Capability (1985) concluded that: “A well-balanced education The promising young person will thus be enticed into the
should, of course, embrace analysis and acquisition of groves of academe rather than the less respected vocational
knowledge. But it must also include the exercise of creative courses. Undergraduates will choose from a myriad of
skills, the competence to undertake and complete tasks and academic options. When numbers were small, this siphoning-
the ability to cope with everyday life; and also doing all these off of the classically inclined and the budding scientist was of
things in co-operation with others.” no great importance to the rest of society, and therefore to
These words of a dozen or so distinguished rsa Fellows education as a whole. But now, as we have mass higher
can hardly be faulted, but in 2004 the means of fostering the education, it is a serious matter. The nub of this essay is that
looked-for capability are no closer. There seem to be some too much of the nation’s talent is being shunted out of
rooted cultural values that get in the way of the capable training and out of capability. If our best prospects continue
society. We need to know what they are. to be diverted away from capability and technology, then
At the heart of capability are transferable skills. They may businesses that depend on them, and they all do, will suffer.
be forms of dexterity, as in brain surgery, but are now more The decline of the training component of education was
likely to be intellectual skills such as writing, rhetoric and not an accident. It was the result of an active policy in higher
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computer programming. Whatever form they take, they education, which favoured academic over vocational studies.
are acquired by experience, by practice under supervision. Most of the new universities had been polytechnics and were
They cannot be taught in a didactic way but they can be not slow in seeing where resources and reputations came
learnt. To learn in this way is to be trained. from. Their enthusiasm to soft pedal vocational studies
But the word ‘training’ is immediately a problem. Outside, and to climb the academic ladder was no less than the
say, sport, music and medicine, it is seen as a downmarket determination of the older universities to stay at the top
form of education and it takes place in further education, not of that ladder.
higher education. It was once the business of polytechnics The collective will of the universities, old and new, to
and technical colleges. The skills they imparted represented reproduce their kind, has meant the perpetuation of the
TheVirtuous Cycle by consigning that labour to the pc. Because rote learning is
then an unnecessary chore, time and energy is released for
Reality and Technology, The first category, Mode 1, is far from the concept of
capability. It is the acme of scholastic achievement, a civilised,