Purpose

The purpose of the study is to examine educational history through television's portrayal of educational activity in post-apocalyptic society. The paper examines how and why television drama set after a catastrophe is in dialogue with, but rejects, both contemporary government discourse of “protect and survive”.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper treats television programmes as historical artefacts made during periods of heightened anxiety about nuclear and bacteriological war. This paper follows established methods for interpreting educational history by examining the representation of schooling and the discursive construction of teachers and their practices via television. This paper proceeds by tight selection of sections from two texts, examining them as documentary evidence of education in later-20th-century Britain and representations of specific types of schooling that were found in real-world Britain in the period, namely, the minor public school and educational television.

Findings

Television drama showing education during and after an apocalyptic event was a reaction to and critique of official assurances that life would continue after a large-scale catastrophe. The representations of schooling reflect the preoccupations of the writers and depict the intersection of schooling, teachers and students with contemporary anxieties in a period where global war and large-scale catastrophe were prominent fears in popular consciousness. Representations of schooling enabled a twofold critique of education. One is critique of the industrial and civil society that had called formal schooling into existence, questioning the value of what in the 1970s and 1980s was being taught in schools. The second is the subversion of the assurances contained in “disaster” education, which promised that disaster would be a temporary setback and underlying social structures and institutions would survive. This paper suggests these sources of educational history present the need to unlearn old knowledge, urge the recourse to self-teaching and question the reliance on a television to teach.

Originality/value

This paper endorses educational, historical and popular cultural research that has found meaning and importance in popular television as a reflection of actual educational practice. Efforts to educate a civilian population about civil defence have received some scholarly attention; however, so far, the way educational practice is portrayed in television that shows the end of the world as we know it has received limited attention. These sources yield valuable insights regarding the interaction between education, disaster and popular consciousness.

中文翻译：

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世界末日的教育：灾难与英国电视台的教学

目的

这项研究的目的是通过电视对世界末日后社会教育活动的描绘来审视教育历史。本文探讨了灾难之后的电视剧如何以及为什么与当代政府关于“保护和生存”的论述进行对话，但又拒绝了它们。

设计/方法/方法

本文将电视节目视为对核战争和细菌战争的高度焦虑时期制作的历史文物。本文遵循既定的方法，通过检查电视的教学形式和教师的话语结构及其实践，来解释教育历史。本文从两个文本的各个部分中进行了严密的选择，将其作为20世纪后期英国教育的文献证据进行了考察，并考察了现实世界中未成年人在该时期发现的特定类型的教育，即未成年人学校和教育电视台。

发现

电视剧展示了世界末日大战期间和之后的教育状况，是对官方保证大规模灾难后生命将继续存在的反应和批评。在全球战争和大规模灾难成为民众意识的主要担忧时期，学校教育的表现反映了作者的专注，并描绘了学校，教师和学生与当代焦虑症的交集。学校教育的表现形式引起了对教育的双重批评。一种是对工业和公民社会的批评，这种社会要求正规教育的存在，并质疑1970年代和1980年代在学校中教授的东西的价值。第二是颠覆“灾难”教育中包含的保证，它承诺灾难将是暂时的挫折，而底层的社会结构和机构将幸存下来。本文认为，这些教育历史渊源提出了学习旧知识的必要性，敦促人们寻求自我教学，并质疑对电视教学的依赖。

创意/价值

本文赞同教育，历史和大众文化研究，这些研究在大众电视中已发现了意义和重要性，反映了实际的教育实践。对平民进行公民防御教育的努力受到了学术界的关注；然而，到目前为止，我们在电视上描述教育实践的方式表明了我们所知道的世界末日受到的关注有限。这些资料提供了有关教育，灾难和民众意识之间相互作用的宝贵见解。