Gove is absolutely wrong about what we need to be teaching kids.

There is no inherent value in knowing, for example, the order of the kings and queens of the UK; they’re just names. Far more interesting to have a debate on the political pressures faced by those monarchs. Are monarchs dictators? Why did we move from feudalism to capitalism? From thinking of “democracy” as being an ungodly anarchy to the only legitimate form of government?

The same can be applied to basically any subject: no child should have to learn the “formula” for compound interest, instead they should learn how to convert concepts into a formula so they can work the formula out for themselves, plus a whole bunch of other formulae should they need them.

If we’re truly interested in turning children into adults prepared for everything the world will throw at them, we need to teach them to think for themselves rather than consult a big lookup table built over 11 years.

So yes, I agree wholeheartedly with this article. And I’m really interested to here the arguments of those that don’t.

Ahh! Unmarked spoilers for Of Mice and Men!

The ability to marshal facts is a key skill in exam performance and, like it or not, fact acquisition is integral to the sciences in particular.

If you have the highest expectations for your children (Ox-bridge) then they must learn to become exam monkeys – and to be the best exam monkey you need to be able to trot out facts.

A child may be very talented but Cambridge (for example) will select on exam grades rather than latent ability.

In short there is only a single endpoint (exams) when it comes to either opening or closing doors for children – a significant % who do best out of our system do so not because they are the brainiest, or most original but because they have been taught how to tick the boxes that will allow them to get the best out of educational system?

So Gove is going to sit in his ivory tower and have a “top down” govt enforced approach, telling teachers how and what to teach.

Hang on a minute. That is BIG GOVT. The very thing the tories say they are against. As usual with the so called anti govt liars ……what they really mean is they don’t want anybody else but them making the decisions. It is just like the fake libertarians. They hate govt except when they are running it.

@3 Fair point, if subjects were assessed via coursework and progress throughout the year, rather than on ability to cram the greatest number of facts in a short time period, then Gove’s proposal would be bonkers. A greater focus to educating rather than training to pass exams, would be a better idea.

@5 Cylux: if subjects were assessed via coursework and progress throughout the year,

… then people would cheat.

@6 How?

@3 the a&e charge nurse:

The ability to marshal facts is a key skill in exam performance and, like it or not, fact acquisition is integral to the sciences in particular.

If you have the highest expectations for your children (Ox-bridge) then they must learn to become exam monkeys – and to be the best exam monkey you need to be able to trot out facts.

If tests are important, then people will be taught to the test. If tests can be passed merely by memorising a load of facts, that’s how they’ll be taught.

So if you want to improve how children are taught, focus on the ewxams and what skills are necessary to pass them.

Teaching over the past twenty years has shifted away from this idea of education as equivalent to the accumulation of facts, towards a view that it is concepts, skills and analytical processes that a child really learns at school.

We live in a world where access to any fact is merely a Google search away. So teaching people a vast number of facts is a good deal less important than it was in the 1950s (when it generally did matter to understnding the world).

That doesn’t mean we can’t do without facts at all; for example, it’s important to know that the Roman Empire preceded Victorian Britain.

Gove forewarned us before the election about his plans for remodelling the school curriculum:

“Children will be instructed to learn poetry by heart and recite the kings and queens of England, in a return to a ‘traditionalist’ education planned by the Conservatives.

“The national curriculum would be rewritten under a Tory government to restore past methods of teaching history, English, maths and science, Michael Gove, the Shadow Children’s Secretary, told The Times.

“He promised that a committee of the ‘greatest minds in Britain’ would decide what children were taught. The Prince of Wales’ Teaching Institute would also be involved in drawing up a new curriculum.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7052010.ece

But before we prescribe a new history curriculum, we really do need to worry about these very basic failings of schools:

“Up to 12 million working UK adults have the literacy skills expected of a primary school child, the Public Accounts Committee says. . . The report says there are up 12 million people holding down jobs with literacy skills and up to 16 million with numeracy skills at the level expected of children leaving primary school.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4642396.stm

“The National Curriculum test results also revealed that in spite of an improvement in English and maths, more than a third of pupils still left primary school without a proper grasp of the basics in reading, writing and maths.”
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ba881948-9f3f-11df-8732-00144feabdc0.html

Just imagine how much worse it would have been if the Tories had allowed Balls to get his bill through at the beginning of the year. Bet theyre kicking themselves now.

If you believe that childrens education should be organised round a ‘national curriculum’ which should be set by the people in government – which is what you say you believe when youre ranting about evil free schools and home educators – then why the problem when Gove starts laying out his plans? If Ed Balls can do it, why shouldnt Gove? Its ok if you do it but not if ‘they’ do? So inconsistent.

1,8,9
I totally agree with eveyrthing in those posts.
I remember my history lessons as school were completely boring, we had weekly tests which basically asked for the dates of whatever.
My daughter studied GCSE a few years ago and it was totally different, children were guided on how to analyse the causes using economic, political and cultural norms of the time, she did very well.
Just to repeat a previous post, we can find out any fact using Google, the 1950s required a different approach to do this and, ultimately, ‘facts’ mean nothing in themselves.
To some degree A & E chargenurse is right with regard to science, but as in every other subject ‘facts’ alone aren’t very helpful in the real world. Sadly, if we return to the way history was taught, the exams will just reflect this and history at GCSE level will become very boring.

11
You are comparing two different arguments, this thread is about the way subjects are taught and not the national curriculum. It is possible to agree with some policies and not others even if it is proposed by the same party.

It always amazes me how ministers fail to take one spectacularly relevant fact into account when deciding what should be in the curriculum. Within ten years of leaving school, we all forget most of the “facts” that we learn there. This is why primary and secondary education HAS to be about concepts and skills, because nothing else will stick for any useful amount of time.

I really can’t see the point of an education system where even the cleverest children will have forgotten most of the content by the age of 19. The Tory idea of a national curriculum is one which allows bright children to prove how clever they are. That’s what I grew up with from 1985 to 1997, and although I came out of with lots of flashy qualifications, it’s since become apparent that most employers don’t place any value on them. It might have been more useful if I was taught basic financial skills (opening a bank account, navigating the tax system, how long you have to work before you’re entitled to redundancy money), rather than wasting all those maths lessons on trigonometry.

I’ve long debated with myself as to whether it is worth teaching history in schools before the sixth form because what is taught as history is usually so garbled and superficial as to be grossly misleading. Reading, writing and maths really should have a higher priority because those skills are fundamental for other subjects. Frankly, history in schools is expendable and a knowledge of basic geography is of greater value in job markets when we are counting on increasing export sales to make up for the cuts in public spending.

15
I agree that more priority is given to reading, writing and maths before the sixth form level, but I also believe that it is never too early to teach children how to analyse, intepret and question ‘facts’. This is useful for a whole load of subjects not just history, moreover, it is also a useful life-skill.

@14: “rather than wasting all those maths lessons on trigonometry.”

Don’t knock trigonometry. An understanding of trig is eseential for engineering and for surveying as well as for computing transformations – eg of figures in video games.

More money was spent on video games than on films – including both trips to the cinema and films on DVD
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/video-games/6852383/Video-games-bigger-than-film.html

Britain’s booming video games industry risks a brain drain
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/electronics/8188063/Britains-booming-video-games-industry-risks-a-brain-drain.html

History is a strange subject. I despised it at school, mainly because I had a teacher who was the spit of David Brent.
As an adult (albeit only a 23 year old adult) I now study Art History which combines my two passions. A love for art came from my school, and a love for history came from age. If we go back to memorising Kings and Queens, I fear that people will be put off these subjects for the rest of their lives.
I am sure everyone can remember that one lesson with that one teacher that made no sense because he just shot facts out at you at the speed of light and you took it in without any real concept of understanding, and then promptly forgot it all after your exams. That subject for me was Physics, and I feel that I have an under-developed understanding of the subject now that affects me when I attempt to watch Horizon.

15

I’ve just briefly gone over all the history I remember from school and most of it would fit onto one side of A4 paper. And I was one of the clever kids.

Interestingly, the bit that stuck most was World War II, because that’s the bit which is most relevant today. And knowing about the war helps you to make more sense of a lot of what has happened since. So although I don’t particularly feel that I gained anything from studying the Romans for the entirety of year 7, I can’t say that all of it was wasted. Maybe the key is to ensure that we’re teaching subjects that kids can actually connect with in history?

17

“Don’t knock trigonometry. An understanding of trig is eseential for engineering and for surveying as well as for computing transformations – eg of figures in video games.”

I’m not saying trigonometry doesn’t have its uses, but is there really any point in teaching it to a fifteen year old who already knows they won’t be studying maths at A-Level? It’s difficult, it’s tedious and it’s very hard to make it sound meaningful without any knowledge of the real world applications.

In cases where people do go on to use trigonometry in later life, they generally have to go back and revisit the subject anyway. If all engineers had to rely solely on what they remember from GCSE maths regarding trigonometry, we’d have buildings falling to the ground left, right and centre. So why waste time teaching it on a fairly superficial level to children who won’t have any use for it until they’ve completed further education anyway?

15 Bob B

Tendentious and simplistic in the extreme. My daughter studied history for GCSE, AS level and A level studying a wide range of time periods and areas. The courses were interesting, generally very well taught and required a significant amount of out of school work, essays, course work and finally exams.

She studied areas she had no prior knowledge of, was required to do a lot of reasearch, and had to think a hell of a lot more about the context of historical facts than I ever did when I studied history at school in the seventies.

Experience in English, social sciences and languages was similar to that in history.

What the educational cassandras just don’t get is that the world, and education, has moved on. Most children coming out with decent qualifications now are far better rounded intellectually than was the case in previous decades; the courses the study are far less narrow.

Anyone who can’t see Gove’s “back to the fifties” line as a total joke obviously has little idea about modern education, or very little exposure to modern children…. stun me with another!

@16: “I agree that more priority is given to reading, writing and maths before the sixth form level, but I also believe that it is never too early to teach children how to analyse, intepret and question ‘facts’.”

I agree that developing analytical skills at schools is important but such skills can be developed on current materials, such as social studies and political geography, without delving into historical periods where school students have little appreciation of the social contexts of distant times.

The pecking order of average graduate salaries in 2010 gives some insight into which degree subjects are in high demand in job markets:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/higher/table-what-do-graduates-earn-1675502.html

History comes way down whereas economics and engineering come out near the top of the salary league.

@ 20 vicky

It’s tricky, and there are good arguments either way. It is technically a waste of time teaching a child stuff that will never be useful to them, but you’ve also got to remember that the kids may not yet have decided what they want to do with their lives. I’m not sure it’s fair to ask kids to decide whether they should give up on maths completely when they’re only in their mid-teens.

I’m actually living proof of this. From when we were allowed to pick GCSE subjects onwards, I focused heavily on academic and liberal arts subjects because they interested me and I was good at them, and I ended up with a degree in English. If I’d decided against English, it would have been philosophy or history. However, since then I’ve become fascinated with evolution, and if I could go back and do it again I would have taken biology in college.

The cut-off point has got to be somewhere, of course. It’s just a case of deciding where.

3 the a&e nurse

From direct experience you are mistaken.

Oxbridge take expend a great deal of effort to ensure they get what they regard as the best possible candidates for the limited number of places they have, hence the emphasis not only on exam results, but on interviewing candidates, looking at examples of their work, and having statements from their schools.

They don’t just take ones who score the highest % marks, but bear in mind also that even given entrance requirements of 3 A’s (or in fact 2 A’s and 1 A* for Cambridge from last year) they could fill most courses 4 or 5 times over, and some like medicine and vet. science 9 or 10 time over. They still have a hell of a lot of scope to fit the student to the place, as is evidenced by the low drop out rate.

Of course there is a danger that schools will “teach to the exam”, and Gove’s proposals will only make this worse; they are of course a huge retrograde step driven by outmoded ideological spite rather than a coherent approach to policy (no great surprise there then!).

If anything you assertion that entrance to Oxbridge in particular is predicated on becoming an “exam monkey” is better directed at the rest of the system; if MORE universities had the resources, time and inclination to interview and sort through applicants more intensely they might have more chance of selecting more on the basis of natural ability and criteria other than just exam points.

@14 vicky:

The Tory idea of a national curriculum is one which allows bright children to prove how clever they are.

Surely that’s a good thing?

It might have been more useful if I was taught basic financial skills (opening a bank account, navigating the tax system, how long you have to work before you’re entitled to redundancy money), rather than wasting all those maths lessons on trigonometry.

Er, to open a bank account, you just go into a bank and say “I’d like to open an account, please”. Do people really need to be taught this?

Regarding trig, OK you personally might not have used it in your job or life, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be taught. Should we only teach people things they are actually going to use in their lives? No, education is — or should be — about creating a well-rounded individual. So yes, one can get by without knowing trig, or Of Mice and Men, or plate tectonics, or that the milk in supermarkets comes from cows, or that Caesar invaded Gaul; but I think my mind would be impoverished if I didn’t know these things.

There are other reasons maths should be taught:

- The society of which you are a part can only exist because lots of people know trig and other maths.

- it’s all about understanding, not about memorising facts. Maths is the ultimate ungradgrindian subject.

- but the main reason I think maths should be taught is that it’s one of the most impressive achievements of the human species

@24 Galen10 Of course there is a danger that schools will “teach to the exam”,

If the exams are important, then it’s a certainty.

and Gove’s proposals will only make this worse

I don’t see how.

@23 Chaise Guevara: The cut-off point has got to be somewhere, of course. It’s just a case of deciding where.

It certainly should be no earlier than 16.

@21: “Most children coming out with decent qualifications now are far better rounded intellectually than was the case in previous decades; the courses the study are far less narrow.”

That’s demonstrable rubbish – as shown by the shrinking percentages of candidates at school taking maths and the hard sciences at A-level, the early dropping of foreign languages altogether and the ascendancy in recent years of soft subjects, like media studies, for school leaving exams.

Of course, a much greater percentage of the adult population has educational qualifications now: in the mid 1970s half the adult population had no educational qualifications at all – by the mid 1990s that percentage had fallen to a quarter and over 40% of young people are now going on from schools into higher education.

A big change for the better is that children nowadays have much easier and lower cost access to educational materials at home and in public libraries via the internet.

If anything, schooling has arguably become more narrowly focused because of exam pressures – a charge that is often made by those who challenge the need for any prescribed school curriculum. There are also still unresolved serious issues about grade inflation in school leaving exams – and degree classes – as well as concerns about the shift from difficult to easy subjects for the GCSE and A-level exams.

26

Because rote teaching of facts will turn exams into memory tests for those good at learning by rote, not necessarily marshalling facts, arguing a case or building an argument. It ain’t rocket science.

@ 25 Phil Hunt

“Surely that’s a good thing?”

It is, but obviously schools should do more than just that.

“Er, to open a bank account, you just go into a bank and say “I’d like to open an account, please”. Do people really need to be taught this?”

True, but there are more complex aspects of banking (and that’s just one example) that it would be good for people to know. If kids had been taught that you can’t legally insist on selling someone insurance when they take out a loan, we wouldn’t have had the PPI scandal. If people had been taught that the government will compensate you for up to £50,000 of losses when your bank went bankrupt (£36,000 at the time), Northern Rock might have survived.

And it might also be good for people to know how to bleed a radiator, change a car tyre and so on. Or what their statutory rights are. I think there’s a good case to be made for “life skills” lessons, even if they sound a bit new agey.

anonyperson,

I totally agree. The problem is created by setting up a system where the state decides what everyone should learn, and then the leftwing and the rightwing fight over who’s in charge.

As for teaching facts instead of analytical skills, if you don’t have any facts, what the hell are you going to analyse?

Education is not the same thing as school. If we want to be educated we have to take responsibility for ourselves. All that school can do is put in place the foundations of our development, with numeracy, literacy and general knowledge. This then allows individuals to specialise in those things that interest them. Too much specialisation at a young age cuts people off from life chances they don’t even know about. General knowledge is important because it enables people to participate in society. I only learnt Roman and Greek history well into my adulthood. It may not seem important to children and trendy teachers, but it is part of a culture we share with people from across Europe if not the world.

28

I meant the courses for individual subjects are less narrow. The fact that fewer pupils study “hard” sciences and languages is a bad thing, but a slightly different issue; with languages in particular it’s been an on-going debate for decades, and represents a huge failure of collective will by successive governments, but also the teaching establishment.

A big part of the problem in the UK is that sciences in particular aren’t valued as they are in say the USA or Germany; far too many of our companies are dominated by bean counters not engineers or scientists… but it’s hard to lay responsibility for that totally at the door of the education system (altho it definitely played a part).

I’m not going near the grade inflation argument, as it’s been had so many times before, and positions are just too entrenched for much interesting to come out of it. Things are different now, which many of those harking back to the good old days just can’t expect; it’s the educational equivalent of calling for birching to be brought back as part of penal policy and an answer to all societies ills; not just wrong, but crass.

@ 31

“As for teaching facts instead of analytical skills, if you don’t have any facts, what the hell are you going to analyse?”

I don’t think it’s about not teaching facts at all. It’s the opposite – the accusation is that the Tories ONLY want to teach facts.

If true, there are two problems here. First is that analytical skills are important, probably more important than knowing which king did what. Second, it’s important to let kids know that the “facts” they are taught are not always accurate. My history lessons focused a lot on the reliability of sources, which is a good mindset to have when addressing any issue.

I think Gove’s absurd nostalgia for a non-existent golden age is bringing down the red mist in many respondents here. While this is understandable we’re in danger of missing the woods for the trees: As has been suggested by others, one of the biggest problems we have with education is due to political interference. This has been the bane of education as in other areas, where we should trust well-trained professionals to know their jobs. Of course there will need to be oversights but the control-freakery needs to be reigned in.

The second issue I have is the narrow focus on an aspect of education that needs the least attention. The failure to address the needs of those termed NEETs and other strugglers hasn’t been mentioned anywhere. Of course the Tories don’t care about them, but any progressive position on education should look at how they may be helped.

We need to develop a broader idea of education and to really take home the idea that it doesn’t end when a person leaves full-time education at a particular level.

@ 34

Incidentally, I remember stories earlier on that Gove wants to “revise” (read: “falsify”) history so that Britain comes out looking better. Do you (or anyone else) know whether that’s true? Because if so, it’s pretty appalling.

34

“We need to develop a broader idea of education and to really take home the idea that it doesn’t end when a person leaves full-time education at a particular level.”

Agreed. It might also help to be putting a hell of a lot more resources into supporting pre-school/ under fives, as it seems to be such a vital period for laying the groundwork for later success…or failure.

[deleted]

@35 Chaise, I’m sorry, I don’t really follow Govey. It wouldn’t surprise me though, all those damn American movies need to be corrected…

[deleted]

@19: “Interestingly, the bit that stuck most was World War II, because that’s the bit which is most relevant today.”

Absolutely – that’s an important observation IMO because much of the modern world can’t be understood without an appreciation of the legacy from WW2 – which is rather more important than knowing about what exactly happened at eg the Battles of Alamein or Arnhem.

A parable: Around the time of the 2005 elections in Germany I wanted to read up about Germany’s PR electoral system so I went to the (well-respected) central reference library of the borough where I live and asked for the assistance of a librarian to find books on modern German politics and government.

There was only one in the stock – a good academic textbook – but the computer search turned up several dozens of books on the Third Reich. It later occured to me to make a comparison with France. The outcome was similiar: dozens of books on the history of Napoleon and the revolutionary wars but only one text on modern French politics and government. It seemed to me that priorities were being grossly distorted when the past had become more important than the present.

31
Who said that children shouldn’t be taught facts?
The point being made here is that ‘facts’ on their own are generally unhelpful, what is being proposed is that children are taught to analyse the facts.
I have always found that those people who are very good at general knowledge tend to do well in pub quizes and the like, but know very little about details and are unable to expand on the answer.
Also, nobody has mentioned specializing although I’m interested to know how specializing from a young age would cut people off from life-chances they didn’t know they had, surely this applies to everyone who is not aware of every single life-chance available.
In fact much of your post is nothing more than straw men arguments.

[deleted]

@ 41 Jojo

“I have always found that those people who are very good at general knowledge tend to do well in pub quizes and the like, but know very little about details and are unable to expand on the answer.”

I know that I remember quite a lot from my history lessons, but I’d be hopeless at telling you what happened when, because dates are not particularly memorable. So I remember some stuff about the history of medicine – the invention of innoculation and sterilisation, for example – but I’d be hard-pressed to tell you what else was going on at the time: who was running the country, whether we were at war, that sort of thing. So in a way I learned a load of fact nuggets without really being shown the broader picture.

16% of school pupils don’t know basic facts sufficient for getting higher than a C grade in English, Maths, a science, history or geography, or a foreign language. How can you say what’s needed is more “blue skies” analytical bollocks when these kids can’t even master basic facts? Get the facts first, then let kids make up their own minds without brainwashing them to interpret facts into your small-minded left-wing view of the world.

@ 44

Um, analysis would be about people reaching their own conclusions. Giving people facts with no consideration of their reliability would be brainwashing.

But please, carry on distorting what people are saying so you can vent your hatred of the left. You do it so well.

[deleted]

[deleted]

44
Are you a descendant of Mr. McChoakamchild?

[31] “If we want to be educated we have to take responsibility for ourselves” – yes, I think that is a very important point.

What I find staggering are claims that “17% of teenagers are leaving school functionally illiterate and unable to cope with the challenges of everyday life”.
http://www.teachingtimes.com/news/school-leavers-functionally-illiterate.htm

At least 11 years in education yet so little to show for it?

@ 44

Is the figure you quote (from where…?) worse or better than it was 5, 10, 15 or even 50 years ago? Adults with poor literacy and numeracy are hardly a modern phenomenon caused by some wicked Trotskyist/New Labour/Pinko/Guardian [delete hobby horse of choice].

Most people aren’t saying we need more blue skies thinking, or yet another review, of whatever ideological hue.

The “facts” are only part of what children, or anyone seeking to inform themselves about any subject, need to know. Knowing lists of dates, monarchs, battles etc will only take you so far; they are relevant but not ends in themselves.

A big part of the reason for bad performance is the lack of resources at very young, pre-school age ranges. Coalition policy will do nothing to help there (not that Labour were any better, or would be doing anything much different I expect).

Your fixation that it’s all a plot to brainwash poor innocents with left wing ideas is lame beyond belief.

Incidentally – “a 7% increase in children going to Primary school over the next 3 years will have a dramatic impact on class sizes, the appeals process and education resourcing across the board. Unless there is some coherent approach we are in real danger of having a generation of children schooled in over-crowded schools far from their community”.
http://www.keystone-education.co.uk/2010/12/rising-pupil-population-the-real-issue-facing-schools/

In other words, an increase of 265,000 primary pupils in 2013/4. At an average of £4500 per pupil, that’s an extra £1.2bn per annum just to stand still.

Oh God, I’ve just realised. Govey’s ideas about Education basically stem from the belief that we need an answer to Saving Private Ryan and that Enid Blyton was spiffing.

It seems very common to respond to the debate that’s been started about the curriculum with a Dickensian picture of rote memorisation of context-free and poorly understood facts. Several of the claims in the comments (about lists of Kings or plot events in books being taught *instead* of an understanding of history or literature) just strike me as ridiculous straw men.

This isn’t very helpful.

Nobody is saying that education should be about rote memorisation, but there is a lot of concern about children currently being taught dumbed-down subjects with staggeringly little content on the flimsy excuse that this will enable them to develop vague “skills” of one sort or another. Knowledge is a vital part of education and it is being devalued. A greater emphasis on facts is needed, not because memorising lists is more important than reasoning or understanding, but because one can’t reason well or understand properly without having the basic facts in one’s head (as opposed to having them available on the internet).

Probably worth reading this:

http://blog.coreknowledge.org/2009/03/24/understanding-is-remembering-in-disguise/

@ Chaise 33

“Second, it’s important to let kids know that the “facts” they are taught are not always accurate.”

I don’t disagree, but this is just something for the preface, not the main body. If you stress this too much then you undermine the purpose of learning. Why bother to learn at all if it’s all in doubt? Also, the better the knowledge you have, the better your ability to analyse.

School can only give a general and broad introduction to that vast body of knowledge that we have accumulated over the centuries. As far as possible this information should be passed on without leading the children by the nose to prior conclusions, and inculcating a sense of doubt in everything is just as bad in this sense as inculcating credulity.

I’m not necessarily arguing with you. I think we can agree on the ingredients, it is the ratio between them that we may fight over!

@25 Phil Hunt

“Surely that’s a good thing?”

Is it? I had plenty of opportunities to show how clever I was at school and I came out with lots of dazzling qualifications that proved it. But I still feel let down by the education system, I still can’t remember much of what I was taught and I still feel like I spent most of 20s learning about basic things I should have been taught earlier. So what is the point of being able to prove how clever am I with lots of qualifications that no employer takes seriously?

“Er, to open a bank account, you just go into a bank and say “I’d like to open an account, please”. Do people really need to be taught this?”

I was 18 when I first opened a bank account, and the customer service person at HSBC insisted that I open a credit card at the same time because it was part of the package. I have friends who were mis-sold payment protection plans, who didn’t know what to look for when opening bank accounts and who were duped into opening accounts with unnecessary bonus features that they had to pay for. So yes, I would say people need to be taught this, and they also need to be taught about direct debits and standing orders. These things may seem obvious to you, but they’re only obvious because you know them. A sixteen year old trying to learn this stuff doesn’t have many sources of unbiased information.

“Regarding trig, OK you personally might not have used it in your job or life, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be taught. Should we only teach people things they are actually going to use in their lives? No, education is — or should be — about creating a well-rounded individual.”

If it were solely about creating a well-rounded individual, there are dozens more topics that would have to be added to the national curriculum. There isn’t time in a 5-16 year old education to teach everything that may be of interest to someone. There’s a time and a place, and I think the time and place for learning about fairly complex mathematics and science topics is when someone has already chosen to study this at a higher level. If there is only time in school to teach these things on a superficial level, you do need to ask: are there more relevant, useful and engaging things we could be teaching to children of this age?

“There are other reasons maths should be taught:”

I never said anything about not teaching maths. There are children coming out of schools who don’t know how to do long division, work out percentages or balance a budget. That is an absolute crime, because these are skills which people need to know, which should be taught at an early age and which stay with you through life. And it’s not belittling the importance of maths to say that we should restrict certain topics to higher level study – in fact I feel it’s belittling topics like geometry or calculus to say, “let’s cram a superficial overlook of this into GCSE maths without fostering any appreciation of its real-world uses.”

@ 54 Trooper

“I’m not necessarily arguing with you. I think we can agree on the ingredients, it is the ratio between them that we may fight over!”

Yeah, I’m with you on that one. It’s not an ideological battle (which makes for a nice change of pace on this site!)

“I don’t disagree, but this is just something for the preface, not the main body. If you stress this too much then you undermine the purpose of learning. Why bother to learn at all if it’s all in doubt? Also, the better the knowledge you have, the better your ability to analyse.”

I think the question here is: what are you actually trying to teach?

To return to my own history lessons, which were big on assessing sources, we were being taught how to study history rather than being taught history itself. In other words, we were being prepared for possible future careers as historians (or, as I’ve said, other careers where said skills would be valuable, such as journalism).

I should make it clear that this was at GCSE level. Up until then, stated facts were not often presented as controversial. So we got a factual overview of history (or some of it) up until year nine. From year ten onwards, when we were taking history as a non-mandatory subject, we augmented that kind of learning with analytical skills.

I assume this was deliberate, and I for one favour it, although I’m not an educational expert. People might say that the analytical stuff should come first, but your ability to handle that sort of thing grows with age, and there’s something to be said for the Lying To Children concept (which says that it’s ok to tell kids things that are technically untrue but a useful way for them to understand what you’re teaching them).

@56

“To return to my own history lessons, which were big on assessing sources, we were being taught how to study history rather than being taught history itself”

This is too much the case, I think. It is not history but rather histiography. Also, I suspect there is too much stress on the question of bias, rather than the fact that the record is partial (by which I mean so much is lost, rather than falsified, e.g. about two thirds of Livy’s History of Rome).

“I think the question here is: what are you actually trying to teach?”

From my point of view, what should be taught to children at school as history is the broad sweep from earliest records up to date, so that they have a sound basis of the chronology. Once that’s done, the possibilities for filling in the gaps are pretty much endless. I think people should be realistic in what can be attained during school. If a child can come away with a good general knowledge of history, then they will be able to pursue the subject as their fancy dictates, and if there must be a national standard, I would rather it consists of such a general knowledge, which should be less susceptible to political interference from the top.

Yes, analysis is an important skill, but so’s being able to remember things. After all, if you don’t have any facts, you won’t have anything to analyse, and all your analytical skills will be useless.

” Now what I want is, Facts . . . Facts alone are wanted in life.”

I think you must be the reincarnation of Mr Gradgrind, Mr Gove. Would it be too obvious to point out that what you both have in common is your purblind association with Hard Times? Oh yes, old Charles Dickens had your card marked in 1854.

Thanks for your comments everyone – good to see this generating a badly-needed debate about what education is for.

Just a quick note to say that my thoughts on this issue have been changed somewhat by the editing process for this magazine! In the full article I make the additional point that this is certainly not just the Tories’ way of doing business – but is a more endemic problem with Government “consultation” in general.

The full article is on my blog at http://paidtoreason.wordpress.com/ so please do take a look.

Yeah, who needs facts!? You can prove anything with facts!

@ 57

“This is too much the case, I think. It is not history but rather histiography. Also, I suspect there is too much stress on the question of bias, rather than the fact that the record is partial (by which I mean so much is lost, rather than falsified, e.g. about two thirds of Livy’s History of Rome).”

Lot of that about. For example, I’ve noticed a tendency for people who should know better treat the first recorded use of a word as if it was literally the first time that word was used, whereas it could have been around for centuries but never written down in something that survived long enough to end up as a reference for a dictionary.

Shakespeare’s a particularly bad example of this. The amount of words and phrases he’s claimed to have personally invented is ridiculous. Were it true, he’d have been writing plays in a style similar to A Clockwork Orange.

“From my point of view, what should be taught to children at school as history is the broad sweep from earliest records up to date, so that they have a sound basis of the chronology. Once that’s done, the possibilities for filling in the gaps are pretty much endless. I think people should be realistic in what can be attained during school. If a child can come away with a good general knowledge of history, then they will be able to pursue the subject as their fancy dictates, and if there must be a national standard, I would rather it consists of such a general knowledge, which should be less susceptible to political interference from the top.”

Possibly. Two things, though: firstly, by the time you reach GCSE, you’re preparing the student to take history in college and possibly uni, where these skills will be needed. Secondly, analysis may well be more engaging than just rote learning. Getting a child actively involved in the subject might actually help them to internalise the facts as well.

@9 Phil Hunt: “We live in a world where access to any fact is merely a Google search away.”

Cobblers. The internet records the world very well after 1995. Depending on your research topic, you can find valuable archives or zilch for stuff before that date.

Google is scanning the contents of libraries, posting magazines and books. Perhaps in the future every printed document or manuscript will be scanned. That might give us access to all records, but not every fact.

This is a fascinating discussion. I think first of all lets remind ourselves of the hypocrisy of Gove here; advocates free schools to de-centralise the education system, and then advocates a centralised curriculam.

““Er, to open a bank account, you just go into a bank and say “I’d like to open an account, please”. Do people really need to be taught this?”

Most people no, but most local authorities have financial inclusion strategies aiming to improve the amount of people with bank accounts – as there are still people who don’t – for some reason – have them. In fact if you know somebody who runs financial education classes you can hours of fun listening to their annecdotes about trying to explain interest rates (no…the higher number doesn’t mean the credit card is better). But more generally financial education is pretty much essential – see http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/family/financial-education-important

It is easy to see why: is it important to know the fact that George shoots Lenny at the end of Of Mice and Men? No, of course not. But it is important to understand the thousands of reasons why he feels he has to do it, his feelings afterwards, and how Steinbeck’s skilful writing allows the reader to understand the significance of this ending to this book.

This is a remarkably fatuous analogy. It is, pretty obviously, impossible properly to analyse Steinbeck’s writing style and use of emotions without having read the damn book.

Before you can usefully learn how to analyse trends in history, and learn how to treat sources with proper suspicion, you need a good factual grounding in the subject first. If you don’t know what happened, you can’t possibly expect to understand why, or how. Someone once wrote an article precisely on this topic…

http://www.attainmagazine.co.uk/index.cfm?fuseaction=archive.content&cmid=153

63
I think you are missing the point here, however, to answer your assertion that google can be limited on providing some facts well so are most libraries found in secondary and further education establishments.
This post is about the style of teaching history (or it could be a number of other subjects) to children who will be doing limited and low-level research and who do not require the sort of in-depth material required at degree level and above.

65
I’ve just read this thread and it appears that each time a new person posts on this thread (dare I say, the ones with more right-wing views) they make the proposition that you need facts to analyse. And yet it’s been pointed-out that nobody has suggested that facts are dropped, and I would imagine that it is self-evident that without a fact there can be no analysis.

67 – It was a response to this section of the OP:

He has explicitly said he wants more “facts” in the national curriculum, as if “facts” were somehow of value in and of themselves.

And the bit where he said:

is it important to know the fact that George shoots Lenny at the end of Of Mice and Men? No, of course not

Which is less contentious, except that he means ‘important in understanding the book’. Facts are of value in and of themselves. Before you can begin to learn the process of analysis and thematic interpretation, you need to know what you’re talking about. Otherwise there’s a risk that you end up rote-learning inane buzz-words as a replacement. Which is a trap the writer of this piece does not altogether seem to have avoided.

[66] “This post is about the style of teaching” – so is it a shift in style that accounts for such high rates of functional illiteracy?

I must admit I am not sure how the 17% figure [see link at 49] compares to yesteryear but allowing for those with a learning disability it still seems a very high failure rate after 11 years of teaching?

Of course the call ‘more facts’ is utterly futile since the optimum number of facts have never been quantified to form any basis for comparison – anyway, it is almost certain that debate over ‘facts’ is little more than a smokescreen for Gove to push through changes that are ideologically driven as opposed to restructuring education because there is reliable evidence to support such changes?

The coalition have caused havoc in higher education – it seems they are merely extending their brief in the rest of the system?

The author of the OP wrote:

“He has explicitly said he wants more “facts” in the national curriculum, as if “facts” were somehow of value in and of themselves. …Teaching over the past twenty years has shifted away from this idea of education as equivalent to the accumulation of facts, towards a view that it is concepts, skills and analytical processes that a child really learns at school.”

However, saying Gove wants “more facts” in the curriculum is not the same as saying he believes education is “equivalent to the accumulation of facts”.

Surely, facts are “of value in and of themselves”; but, equally, “concepts, skills and analytical processes” and the accumulation of facts are more or less equally important in education. As children’s intellects grow the emphasis changes from the latter to the former; but, in the early years, learning (multiplication tables, poems, monarchs, capitals, spelling, grammar etc, etc) by rote can be made fun, will develop memory skills and will provide a bedrock of knowledge.

planeshift @ 64:

“lets remind ourselves of the hypocrisy of Gove here; advocates free schools to de-centralise the education system, and then advocates a centralised curriculam.”

With any service, you can want to decentralise the provision, while retaining central standard-setting. There is no contradiction in this, so no hypocrisy either. It is what Labour did with care home provision, for example.

It doesnt matter how much you fiddle with teaching styles and the national curriculum. The problem is so much deeper than that.

For a start, its in the idea that subjects can be seperated from each other into neat lessons that dont much touch each other. History seperated from Music seperated from Literature seperated from Science seperated from Religion seperated from..

Then theres this idea that any subject can be broken down into bits that are ‘important’ and bits that are not. The Second World War is important, popular culture from the second half of the twentieth century is not. Shakespeare is important, Tolkien is not. Population density is important, astronomy is not. etc.

Then theres this other idea that you have teachers, who are the authority on their subject and all adults, and there are pupils, who are subordinates and all children. Given that these days a lot of teachers only know as much of their subject as they can read from their lesson plans, thats a laugh. Look at a subject like IT, where kids often know far more than the teachers, and this is now considered a ‘problem’. Only because the system is twisted.

Then theres this idea that learning is something you do at school during specific hours on specific days. No respect for the other learning that anyone does, not even any acknowledgment. If it isnt done in school and there isnt a grade at the end of it, its worth nothing. This leads to the ridiculous position where people are forced to ‘learn’ at a level far beneath/behind them in order to ‘progress’ to learning what they already know, in order that they can get a grade that allows them to further ‘progress’ to studying what they wanted to be doing in the first place.

Credentialism sucks, time to ditch it, if you did cheating would be irrelevant. Seperating subjects or according some of them more value than others sucks, it is illogical, it stunts learning, and it puts people off – better that everyone be learning something theyre interested in than finding ways to ignore/avoid the few subjects on offer.

This thread is interesting but its still moving in small circles. Thats the problem. Until you can get out of that, it doesnt really matter how you fiddle with the ingredients, state education is still going to taste bland and lacking, and kids in their thousands are still going to avoid it.

“you can want to decentralise the provision, while retaining central standard-setting”

Yes, but the whole free schools/vouncher movement has been based around the idea that there isn’t a one size fits all model for education. So they’ve advocated a system where different schools can enter the education market catering for particular groups – hence some schools would concentrate on sciences, others arts, some would be faith schools, other’s secular etc. Indeed Gove himself, when finding out Richard Dawkins wanted to set up a secular school, pointed out that this difference was a virtue of free schools as whilst he himself wouldn’t send his child to such a school he respected the rights of other parents to do so.

Indeed in a wider sense, the voucher advocates would see nothing wrong with me setting up “Planeshift’s school of rock” teaching kids how to play guitar, smash hotel rooms, and snort cocaine from the breasts of strippers (a skill transferable to the world of banking). If I could attract enough parents to send their kids to such a school in the education marketplace, then that would be fine – the consumer is king and all that.

So by setting a centralised curriculum, Gove undermines the basis of his entire project.

So by setting a centralised curriculum, Gove undermines the basis of his entire project

That’s not really the case. I don’t believe that the plan is for a centralised curriculum to cover every part of a school’s teaching, merely that it provides a framework within which schools have operational freedom. It’s mandating the ends, but leaving schools free to determine the means.

[71] “Until you can get out of that, it doesnt really matter how you fiddle with the ingredients, state education is still going to taste bland and lacking, and kids in their thousands are still going to avoid it” – I’m sure Sir Ken Robinson would strongly agree with you – he claims it is the current education paradigm that must change if you want children to benefit from “education”.
http://comment.rsablogs.org.uk/2010/10/14/rsa-animate-changing-education-paradigms/

So long as schooling is based on an industrial model – production line, standardised testing, batches of children, etc – many need to be virtually anaesthetised to cope with the process (exemplified by the epidemic kids said to have ADHD and thus requiring pyschoactive drugs).

Sir Ken cites a longitudinal study on divergent thinking, something we have near universal capacity for when very young, but a quality that diminishes in proportion to the amount of ‘education’ kids are exposed to.

Anyway I would strongly recommend watching this short film for those interested in the wider debate.

planeshift

“So by setting a centralised curriculum, Gove undermines the basis of his entire project.”

Allowing certain schools to specialise is perfectly compatible with a centralised curriculum, as they will be specialising in the relevant part of the central standards. Even under an education voucher scheme, as I understand it, the state as the funder would still set the standards and basic currculum that schools would have to adhere to.

I might set up care home specialising in dementia: I would have to follow the centrally-set standards for dementia care, but not those that relate to other specialisms. The centrally-set standards do not undermine the last government’s wish to have a diversity of providers.

““Planeshift’s school of rock” teaching kids how to play guitar, smash hotel rooms, and snort cocaine from the breasts of strippers (a skill transferable to the world of banking)” Brilliant!!!

Gove and the tories love big govt.

The stench of hypocisy is srong. But it is ok as long as you are a conservative,

“““Planeshift’s school of rock” teaching kids how to play guitar, smash hotel rooms, and snort cocaine from the breasts of strippers (a skill transferable to the world of banking)” Brilliant!!!”

For the guardian readers, I’m going to set up Planeshift’s school of moderate soft rock, teaching kids how to lightly strum guitars whilst singing folk songs, leaving travellodge’s in a slightly untidy state, and drink wine with suitably dressed ladies.

” it’s all about understanding, not about memorising facts. Maths is the ultimate ungradgrindian subject.”

Just repeating this line from 25, since it didn’t get the attention it deserves. Anybody who is somehow equating “facts” with the idea of a solid, basic foundation to an education and seeing the alternative as sitting around in a circle talking about how plate tectonics “makes us feel” is very mistaken.

Facts are obviously essential – but they are, as the great conservative political philosopher Michael Oakeshott remarked, in and of themselves ‘inert’. We’re not clear if the neocon Gove is aware of those people who have thought more deeply about education than himself, although all the available evidence would suggest that even if he’s read them, he didn’t understand them…

“although all the available evidence would suggest that even if he’s read them, he didn’t understand them”

Unimportant, as long as he can reel off their names without having to look back at his notes.

“And yet it’s been pointed-out that nobody has suggested that facts are dropped, and I would imagine that it is self-evident that without a fact there can be no analysis.”

Have you looked into the 2007 National Curriculum? Knowledge was utterly sidelined.

74,

Arrrrgh, not Ken Robinson’s nonsense!

Read this:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/daniel-willingham/willingham-is-a-paradigm-shift.html

[82] you might regard KR’s ideas as ‘nonsense’ but that is not what Daniel Willingham is saying (in the article you link to) even though he is critical of Robinson.

For example Willingham says “I find myself agreeing with some of what Robinson says, for example, the idea that educational institutions should be more tuned to an individual student’s interests and abilities”.

Wallingham dismisses the medicalisation of certain behaviour amongst children (under the label of ADHD) – I think he is very wrong about about this and strongly agree with Robinson that this so called epidemic is largely manufactured to avoid confronting certain realities about the way children are processed in schools, especially in America.

82,

That’s hardly a comprehensive response to Robinson’s talk. It doesn’t make a very strong argument that a paradigm shift is needed, and gets sidetracked by specific bits of it without tying it together into a coherent rebuttal.

That said, while I probably have some sympathies towards Robinson’s perspective, it’s very ill-argued in that talk, and (without reading anything else by him, which might fill in the gaps) doesn’t seem like a very good argument for anything in particular. It’s lacking in evidence, and tries to make up for those lacks with some very rickety material- his own uninformed musings on ADHD and that ridiculous “divergent thinking” test which seems to have all the failings of an IQ test but none of the rigour. It’s not true that the ideas that Robinson espouses in that talk have already been tried and tested in the past because- well, he never really proposes anything. “Don’t group pupils by age” is the only concrete proposal I managed to distill from it, but he doesn’t offer any solutions to the big problems he identifies. So I really wish that people who favour an alternative view or paradigm shift in education would stop rallying around that video.

Personally I think the changes that need to be made are far less revolutionary. For example, this TED talk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlvKWEvKSi8 gives an excellent perspective on how to teach mathematics (er, I think this is the right video, I don’t have sound at the moment, so I’m having to go from memory of the slides). These principles could be used in most sciences- physics, chemistry, possibly biology. There’s no revolution there, just a more easily approachable, engaging and logically structured way to learn mathematical thinking and principles. I imagine many other subject teachers or experts could provide insights into their own areas, and I think it makes much more sense to focus on these relatively easy, common-sense improvements at first before any sweeping ideological revolutions or paradigm shifts.

Prior to the launch of the national curriculum for schools in 1988 by Kenneth Baker, Mrs T’s education minister, Granada TV ran a series of high-brow seminars during the summer of 1987 on schools and education – I’ve good personal reasons for recalling this.

One of the programmes was about teaching maths. Professor Brown – a women professor of maths – made the point that rote learning doesn’t and can’t develop maths skills. To illustrate her point, she showed a video clip of a class of 11 year-olds set a problem of finding the largest volume open-topped box that could be made by folding up the edges of a sheet of card 15cms square.

The class was divided up into small groups and each was encouraged to find a different way of solving the problem set, whether by analysis, spreadsheet modellling or experimentally by making up boxes of various dimensions and weighing the amount of rice that boxes of different dimensions could contain.

One of the conclusions to be drawn was that there was no single, set way of solving the problem – although some methods were more efficient than others.

At one time, I put the problem to various adult colleagues. Some dismissed it as a silly problem – in essence, it’s a very basic engineering problem which has a definite solution so it’s hardly silly. Professional economists usually found it easy as the problem involves maximising a function subject to constraints, the substantive problem of economics. A bit of spreadsheet modelling with boxes of different dimensions made from card of 15cms square should lead to the answer although Excel does have a Solver function which will solve the problem in a blink if it is set up correctly.

IMO it’s no use complaining that our engineering industry in Britain has shrunk if school leavers have insufficient maths to solve basic engineering problems.

“as if “facts” were somehow of value in and of themselves.”

Of course they are – if we collectively fail to learn the (random) facts that an aircraft that flys into a mountain will kill everyone on board, or that eating certain mushrooms is dangerous to health then we probably wouldn’t have lasted this long would we ?
Fact free education is the most pernicious legacy of 1960s progressive (funny how its still called that after 50 years) teaching, and it is mysteriously never applied to “facts” about the subjects de jour – currently climate change, healthy eating, etc, which seem to get pumped into my kids on a daily, or possibly hourly, basis.

“Teaching over the past twenty years has shifted away from this idea of education as equivalent to the accumulation of facts, towards a view that it is concepts, skills and analytical processes that a child really learns at school”.

In other words it has put the cart before the horse. Concepts, skills and analytical processes cannot develop, and are pointless, without raw materials (the facts) to operate on. It is this type of thinking that leads to the beleif that studying golf course management is somehow equivalent to studying economics. Ultimatley it leads to a education system that is little more than a production line of information processors, battery thinkers who are incapable of critical thought have zero depth of knowldge but can cut, paste, assemble information with their eyes closed. I don’t know about you, but I don’t consider than an education.
The fact is intelligent people have always developed analytical tools implicitly, they don’t need to be “taught”any more than sneezing or blinking do.

“He has also denounced the idea that GCSE English Literature requires the study of only one novel – as if making pupils study ten novels in the same timespan would somehow make them better-educated than studying one in great depth.”

You are contradicting yourself. Conceptual thinking requires the study of more than one novel – for example analysing the role of fate in Hardy novels is conceptual thinking, whereas simply re-gugitating the plot of one novel is not.