Sacrificing education to health and safety?

We’ve often criticised the ‘Every Child Matters’ agenda on the basis that, as well as being an outrageous intrusion into children’s and families’ privacy, it sets up a dangerous confusion between child protection and more general child welfare concerns.

In today’s Guardian, an interesting comment piece points out the effects of ECM on education:

The French philosopher Montesquieu observed in The Spirit of Laws that education systems seem to transmit a main principle which informs both individual behaviour and a corresponding system of government, a principle for what Foucault would call “the government of self and others”. Education transmits the principles of honour in a monarchy, virtue in a republic and fear in a tyranny. If Every Child Matters is anything to go by, we can say that today’s society is ruled according to the principles of health and safety.

Well worth reading.