The Prince of Wales opened the fourth Prince of Wales Education Summer School and warned that young people would be let down if we allowed a short-term approach to dominate education.

The School, founded by The Prince in 2002, is being attended by 80 English Literature and History teachers from state secondary schools across England.

For many years, His Royal Highness has taken a keen interest in education and has met pupils and teachers from across the country.

The Prince created the Education Summer School to give teachers time away from the classroom to debate the teaching of English and History with leading academics and writers.

Guest speakers at this year's school, held at Dartington Hall in Devon and funded by donations and a grant from the Department for Education and Skills, include Alan Bennett, Melvyn Bragg and Seamus Heaney.

In a speech, The Prince reiterated his belief that the two core subjects of English and History are vital to the development of knowledge and insight in young people and restated his belief in a more ‘organic' approach to learning.

His Royal Highness said: “I have talked before about my belief that we must maintain what I would describe as an “organic” approach to learning - in other words, something which has its roots in what has gone before and is, to all intents and purposes, a living organism reflecting the fundamental nature of our humanity.

“Teaching must not become a “genetically modified” hybrid which cuts us off from all our cultural and historical heritage and depends for its continuing existence on ceaseless, “clinical” experimentation.”

The Prince said that when he founded the School in 2002, his aims were threefold: to underpin some of the timeless principles which form the bedrock of teaching; to re-inspire teachers in their chosen subjects and to help to strengthen the essence of good classroom practice - that is, knowledge taught well by expert and enthusiastic teachers.

The Prince also said that he had been interested in creating “some kind of teacher training institute”, or at least an organisation which would help fill the gap which many in the field of education believe had existed for too long.

Feedback from the teachers over the past four years has been positive, said The Prince, with each annual Summer School receiving some “very warm responses from the professional individuals and organizations charged with delivering teacher training”.
His Royal Highness said: “I am even more convinced it is absolutely vital that through our schools we are able to continue to impart substantial bodies of knowledge to the next generation, even though pupils may not necessarily yet be able to appreciate or understand the need for such depth and breadth.

“I did not always understand it at school, but I do now.”

“But those of us who are now older and were lucky enough to have a body of knowledge imparted to us should realize that, at the end of the day, we would be selling our young people short if we allowed short term, fashionable approaches to become excessively dominant.
“Not only that, but we would undermine the foundations of civilized existence if we lost the vital balance between “relevance” and a shared cultural heritage based on the transmission of a body of knowledge.”

The Prince said he was pleased to announce the expansion of the Education Summer School and said that the school was hoping to establish an alumni association for attendees across the country in the very near future.

Bernice McCabe, the Course Director of the Summer School, said that the most powerful effect of the Summer Schools to date had been that teachers had returned to their schools “feeling that it had been within their power to change classroom approaches.”

The fourth Prince of Wales Education Summer School is being held at Dartington Hall, Devon, from the 7th to 10th June, 2005.