Lessons for Schools from Quaker Education

This chapter will summarise the findings and discuss how they offer new ways to understand the value of a personal conception of education, where the individual is viewed as independent of the ways the dominant education systems aim to measure and quantify learning. The review of the findings requires a shift in perspective, and it is for this reason that readers will find we return to several themes more than once, each time expanding how these are to be seen in light of different sets of considerations. We will discuss the contextual factors necessary for the personal to survive within the contemporary school environment. This discussion will lead into consideration of what young people say they want from a school and, based on the findings from the Quaker schools, why this is desirable educationally and how it may be achievable. We will also consider how the research challenges us to re-imagine the importance of inclusiveness and how it is related to engagement with the curriculum. Finally, the chapter aims to suggest why the vulnerabilities of the conception of education found within the schools may be a small price to pay, if young people receive the kind of education possible when mutual respect, equality and inclusiveness are more highly valued.