Government attempts in recent years to create a national system of vocational education and training have marked a profound shift both in educational policy and in underlying concepts of the purpose of education. Relations between schools and the working world are changing all the time and the implementation of ideas of vocationalism has forced a blurring of the time-honoured boundaries between education concerned with concepts, and training concerned with skills. Now the challenge is to define how schools can give young people the foundations for life in a working world in which they are likely to have to change jobs, and where work will fill a smaller proportion of their lives than ever before. Meeting this challenge will require profound changes in the educational and training systems in the direction of a core of fundamental studies for all young people, and a more broadly based approach to training. "The Vocational Quest" offers a critical assessment of the evolution of vocationalism in Britain in historical terms and examines how the particular forms that have come into being in the last few years, compare with developments in other parts of the world, including continental E

This volume investigates crucial ways in which nature has been apprehended, understood and valued in different cultures and over time. It is grounded in current global concerns about growing threats to the natural environment. Through a critical appraisal of specific examples, it ranges widely over historical and contemporary attitudes and behaviours. It presents a wide ranging analysis of selected ideas and attitudes in the evolution mainly of western civilisation, from the time of the cave artists to the present day. It argues for preservation and conservation of the natural resources and beauty of the earth in the face of religious supernatural arguments and the rise of consumer capitalism and consumerism.