(Yet another) primary curriculum shakeup. The report is due next month, but unsurprisingly, a draft found its way to The Guardian.
Children will no longer have to study the Victorians or the second world war under proposals to overhaul the primary school curriculum, the Guardian has learned.
However, the draft plans will require children to master Twitter and Wikipedia and give teachers far more freedom to decide what youngsters should be concentrating on in classes.
I am all for allowing teachers to, God forbid, use their skills in the classroom and to use experience and intuition to guide the learning process. But Twitter?? Wikipedia, fine, if the curriculum is prefaced with a lesson on the art of taking information with a grain of salt. But Twitter?? The fact that Stephen Fry is transfixed with it does not a worthy area of academic study make!
I mentioned teachers. Here is the response of the general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers:
The leak led to a row when it emerged unions had been excluded from the consultation about what should be included, and subject specialists were given only three days to respond. Bousted said: “It’s entirely unacceptable that it hasn’t come to the teaching unions. Our members have to teach this. We’ve responded at all other stages of consultation. I don’t know why we have been missed out now.”
I genuinely feel bad for teachers, though perhaps that feeling is informed by my brief stint in the teacher training program at university. I can’t imagine that many people enter the profession because they have a fetish for forcing squirmy kids to take meaningless tests. If the above is to be believed, they’re being jerked around just as much as parents and pupils are. At least pupils can be withdrawn from school–in this economic climate, teachers have fewer options. The least the government can do is involve teachers fully in matters concerning the work they are responsible for carrying out, if treating them with respect and deference is indeed beyond them.
