The Music Manifesto is one in a long line of educational policy documents aimed at revolutionising the school curriculum, and one of the first to focus on an arts subject. Developed by the DFES, DCMS and Ofsted, boasting a coterie of musicians, music teachers and the musically-minded on its steering committee (headed by ‘Champion’ Marc Jeffrey), its explicit two-fold proposal is for music-making to be central to 4-14 year-old provision, and for instrumental lesson cost to be buffered for all children. The Manifesto addresses a real need for music syllabus change, and has managed to attract a great deal of well-meaning enthusiasm and support from passionate music-o-philes and fed up teachers alike.
But the clue to its real agenda lies in the name, risibly, The Music Manifesto, which is actually bent at unifying and motivating a supposedly culturally disparate and politically apathetic nation. The Manifesto elucidates primarily a waffley political vision, one based wholesale on the power of music. It’s a bit sad really, both for politics and for music.
Early on the Manifesto puts forward what it labels an ‘argument’: everybody can sing, therefore singing is universal, and it bangs on about the importance about developing a universal music provision. It’s as if the only inalienable thing people have in common any more – both politically and culturally – is the fact they can open their mouths and make some pseudo-musical noises, and it’s the Government’s job to let them do it. The problem with this is two-tone: not just is the notion of the ‘universal’ easily shown to be a misnomer ('everybody can poo therefore pooing is universal' proves nothing about the importance of going to the loo); but the fact that music is good only as the last garrison of universalism means no proper discussion of the right way to teach it (free from Government interventionism) can get off the ground.
Because the Manifesto isn’t so much about music education (or ‘provision’), so much as about dictatorially outlining why music is valuable and how it should be engaged with by children and adults alike. The cultural sphere becomes the political. The Manifesto talks about classrooms alongside community centres; music teachers alongside professional musicians; and places the same value on the musical life of adults as it does of that of children. It advocates a no-holds-barred position when it comes to distinguishing cultural life from formal education, and distinguishing private life from public. Music, it seems to say, is important only as a shared phenomenon, where it delivers health and confidence benefits (actually not quite as daft as it sounds), whose highest function is to bring people together regardless of religious belief or cultural background.
To reflect this, it advocates getting kids singing by having a more diverse range of music genres in schools. It rightly says that Classical music is not the only important or interesting sort, but only because other genres – like hip hop, music theatre and jazz – are more relevant to today’s youth. Rather than saying different types of music can be understood and learned about regardless of cultural background or religious belief, it seems to say they are important only because people have different cultural backgrounds.
It misses the proper way to construct universalism when it comes to music, which is to highlight certain features that all music shares: rhythm, harmonic structure and patterns of tension and release. To get at these things, however, takes a principled and formal approach to music education, focusing on music theory and history. Presumably these things are too ‘dull’ for today’s yobs and fly in the face of the shallow concept of a ‘creative’ subject concerned with personal expression.
But the real drive of the Manifesto comes from its excessive insistence on ‘participation’: apparently, nobody has ever ‘participated’ in music lessons before. Marry this with the emphasis on ‘personalised learning’, which allows children to choose what they sing and the onus is on them ‘feeling’ they have an influence in setting the agenda, and music lessons become little more than mini exercises in some sort of bastardised democratic decision-making. Despite the idea that children should make some music in schools being a good one, it becomes lost in a macabre project of behaviour modification, which is not immediately apparent from an enthused reading of the enthusiastic and repetitively enthusing text.
A worrying long-term consequence of the Manifesto comes with its vision for the future of Britain’s music industry. Rather than music education showing children the complexity and diversity of music, giving them tools to explore, create and better it on their own and alerting them to its potential, it advocates arming them with the skills to improve their ‘economic well-being’ through getting music-related jobs. Music copyright should be taught because it’s a hot issue, since much mainstream music is about sampling and rehashing old tunes in order to comment on culture and assert identities; skills in dealing with music equipment are key. This cloying and static picture of what music is and where it can go refuses to acknowledge that music has developed over time and should continue to do so, and this sort of educational system will produce few inspiring and knowledgeable music teachers for future generations.
Worse, the Manifesto leaves little room for a personal and private appreciation of music. Whilst group singing is supposed to iron out inequalities in music opportunities by providing a music education for all, it does little to accommodate the tone-deaf, the potential academic scholars or the musically gifted. It seems to say anybody who isn’t moved by or interested in music – anybody who doesn’t feel the unconquerable need to sing every morning – is a lesser human being. The strange logical inference steps in again, where ‘I like singing’ seems to entail the truth of ‘everybody should sing’. Music becomes a necessarily shared activity, where learning to appreciate a symphony and growing with it over time, listening to the radio or attending a concert, are not sanctioned musical activity.
The Manifesto wants more people to make more noise, but it certainly doesn’t want more music.
The Music Manifesto has a dedicated website: http://www.musicmanifesto.co.uk/.
Friday, 3 August 2007
Monday, 18 June 2007
Colin Christie ponders the educational jargon and flawed proposals in the Secondary Curriculum Review
The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) in its Secondary Curriculum Review presents us with a bewildering range of new educational jargon: ‘curriculum lenses’, ‘importance statements’, ‘curriculum dimensions’ and ‘key concepts’ among others. As so often, teachers are expected to embrace a whole new vocabulary and frame of reference. Familiar ideas are not developed and expanded within current frameworks but repackaged and relaunched to maximise impact. The result is confusion.
At the heart of the review is the aim of a more flexible curriculum where content overload is reduced and pupils and teachers alike have more room to explore areas in depth and make links between subjects. The implementation of this aim is flawed in several ways.With attainment elevated to such a key indicator of a school’s, and government’s success, published in league tables, one would expect any curriculum review to address the issue of how it will improve and measure attainment. The secondary curriculum review, however, appears to treat curriculum and assessment of learning as two entirely separate issues. The proposals highlight changes to the programme of study (what should be learnt) but nowhere propose revisions to the descriptors of the levels of attainment (what aspects of that learning must be demonstrated).
The argument may be advanced that the level descriptors themselves are in many cases very general and allow for a variety of content. However, this hardly represents a systematic, coherent approach to curriculum planning, whereby new syllabus content has to be grafted onto pre-existing assessment criteria.
Even if one accepts that the existing national curriculum assessment criteria can be fitted into the new curriculum, two questions remain.
Firstly, the backwash effect of the GCSE examination. The current national curriculum for modern foreign languages (MFL), for example, already allows teachers to stipulate content. It has, in effect, been content free since the areas of experience were removed in the last review. In practice, however, teachers import the GCSE specification into KS3. This has the demotivating effect of the KS3 topics being revisited (often in their entirety) at KS4. It is, in other words, the GCSE specifications which drive the KS3 syllabus for MFL as teachers seek to give learners an ‘early start’ to GCSE, taking the long view on maximising examination results. It seems totally irrational not to review the GCSE specifications at the same time, taking the KS3 outcomes as stepping stones to KS4 outcomes.
Secondly, the review states: ‘By its very nature, most assessment is not one-size-fits-all but must be specific to the learner, personalised and therefore inclusive, that is, relevant to all learners in the class’. This statement is simply at odds with the current national, centralised GCSE assessment regime. Alternatives, such as the German Abitur, where teachers submit locally devised assessments for approval by the regional education minister are not discussed. Instead, teachers and senior managers are encouraged to plan the detail of what is taught and how. It is highly questionable as to whether the job of curriculum planner, isolated in a department or even as a whole school, is a teacher’s role. If this is a valid role, it is doubtful that teachers will be given any extra quality time to fulfil it. In the field of MFL, in the late 1970s, teachers came together at grass roots level, in regional groups, to devise graded objective tests for learners. This was a successful enterprise, which formed the basis of the GCSE examination. It will take a similar time commitment for teachers to be able to work together to produce meaningful curriculum documents. Furthermore, it is important for teachers to work within the framework of a shared approach to subject-specific pedagogy, building on effective practice. The development of curriculum programmes on a school-by-school basis will lead to a further erosion of this shared understanding.
Finally, if it is the role of government to establish a coherent curriculum which teachers can then adapt, that coherence is missing. Teachers still have to work with different frameworks which are independent of each other: QCA schemes of work; subject-specific teaching frameworks, programmes of study, attainment descriptors and GCSE specifications. Only a review which considers all of these together would be one worthy of the word ‘coherence’.
Details of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) Secondary Curriculum Review can be found on the QCA web site: http://www.qca.org.uk/secondarycurriculumreview/.
At the heart of the review is the aim of a more flexible curriculum where content overload is reduced and pupils and teachers alike have more room to explore areas in depth and make links between subjects. The implementation of this aim is flawed in several ways.With attainment elevated to such a key indicator of a school’s, and government’s success, published in league tables, one would expect any curriculum review to address the issue of how it will improve and measure attainment. The secondary curriculum review, however, appears to treat curriculum and assessment of learning as two entirely separate issues. The proposals highlight changes to the programme of study (what should be learnt) but nowhere propose revisions to the descriptors of the levels of attainment (what aspects of that learning must be demonstrated).
The argument may be advanced that the level descriptors themselves are in many cases very general and allow for a variety of content. However, this hardly represents a systematic, coherent approach to curriculum planning, whereby new syllabus content has to be grafted onto pre-existing assessment criteria.
Even if one accepts that the existing national curriculum assessment criteria can be fitted into the new curriculum, two questions remain.
Firstly, the backwash effect of the GCSE examination. The current national curriculum for modern foreign languages (MFL), for example, already allows teachers to stipulate content. It has, in effect, been content free since the areas of experience were removed in the last review. In practice, however, teachers import the GCSE specification into KS3. This has the demotivating effect of the KS3 topics being revisited (often in their entirety) at KS4. It is, in other words, the GCSE specifications which drive the KS3 syllabus for MFL as teachers seek to give learners an ‘early start’ to GCSE, taking the long view on maximising examination results. It seems totally irrational not to review the GCSE specifications at the same time, taking the KS3 outcomes as stepping stones to KS4 outcomes.
Secondly, the review states: ‘By its very nature, most assessment is not one-size-fits-all but must be specific to the learner, personalised and therefore inclusive, that is, relevant to all learners in the class’. This statement is simply at odds with the current national, centralised GCSE assessment regime. Alternatives, such as the German Abitur, where teachers submit locally devised assessments for approval by the regional education minister are not discussed. Instead, teachers and senior managers are encouraged to plan the detail of what is taught and how. It is highly questionable as to whether the job of curriculum planner, isolated in a department or even as a whole school, is a teacher’s role. If this is a valid role, it is doubtful that teachers will be given any extra quality time to fulfil it. In the field of MFL, in the late 1970s, teachers came together at grass roots level, in regional groups, to devise graded objective tests for learners. This was a successful enterprise, which formed the basis of the GCSE examination. It will take a similar time commitment for teachers to be able to work together to produce meaningful curriculum documents. Furthermore, it is important for teachers to work within the framework of a shared approach to subject-specific pedagogy, building on effective practice. The development of curriculum programmes on a school-by-school basis will lead to a further erosion of this shared understanding.
Finally, if it is the role of government to establish a coherent curriculum which teachers can then adapt, that coherence is missing. Teachers still have to work with different frameworks which are independent of each other: QCA schemes of work; subject-specific teaching frameworks, programmes of study, attainment descriptors and GCSE specifications. Only a review which considers all of these together would be one worthy of the word ‘coherence’.
Details of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) Secondary Curriculum Review can be found on the QCA web site: http://www.qca.org.uk/secondarycurriculumreview/.
Mark Taylor responds to the GTC’s view of the future of assessment in schools
The General Teaching Council (GTC) has applauded the Education and Skills Select Committee (ESSC) inquiry into testing and assessment in England’s schools. According to the GTC, England’s pupils are among the most tested in the world, leading to a narrowed curriculum where teaching is ‘to the test’. For the GTC, a broad and balanced curriculum would be better than the current test-based one, which encourages anxiety and de-motivates children.
Unfortunately, the GTC does not provide details of the content of such a curriculum. Instead, referring approvingly to 2020 Vision (see my review on Education Opinion), the GTC notes that the current assessment system ‘may impede the full realisation of new approaches to education, including more personalised learning.’ 2020 Vision is also praised for perceiving that national tests are not ‘diagnostic tools’ of pupils’ learning needs. Furthermore, national tests fail to develop ‘desired skills and aptitudes’.
The GTC also backs the fashionable pedagogical idea of ‘Assessment for Learning’ (because it redefines teacher-pupil interaction) and supports the government’s new 14-19 diplomas: ‘Their introduction provides the opportunity to begin the process of moving away from an assessment system dominated by the purposes of quality control and ….towards a more balanced model with a greater element of diagnostic and formative assessment for learning.’ (Paragraph 18)
This report usefully clarifies the educational aims of the GTC in relation to government policies. For both, there is no longer a connection between subject knowledge and assessment. Instead, assessment means creating ‘diagnostic tools’ to develop ‘desired skills and aptitudes’ in a more ‘balanced’ system. And ‘quality control’ (national testing) should be replaced by ‘cohort sampling’ (local self-evaluation based on ‘professional judgment’ by teachers). Not surprisingly, therefore, the GTC report confirms their opposition to the ‘measurement culture’ set up by the 1988 Education Reform Act, which originally introduced the national curriculum.
This can all sound appealing to teachers weary of government initiatives. But this is not ‘professional judgment’ in the sense that should matter most to teachers – their love of their subject and the way it is taught. And this is not ‘balanced’ in the sense of the education that most members of the ESSC have had. However flawed the 1988 Act was, at least it offered a national curriculum rooted in genuine subject knowledge. The GTC report is really arguing for the replacement of external examinations of subject knowledge with internal examinations of the child’s mind.
The GTC proposals merely aim to replace one measurement culture with another. It is a further indication that self-assessment is becoming the central component of the educational system - and that subject knowledge is perceived as irrelevant. The GTC is right to argue that tests are undoubtedly unimaginative and possibly overdone. However, children are perfectly capable of doing them – and so much more besides, if only they are taught by adults who themselves value a genuinely intellectual education – and the subjects that provide it.
The GTC paper Assessment in the Future: Building the Case for Change was presented to the GTC pupil assessment conference on 21 March 2007.
A paper based on the report was presented to the Education and Skills Select Committee in June 2007.
Unfortunately, the GTC does not provide details of the content of such a curriculum. Instead, referring approvingly to 2020 Vision (see my review on Education Opinion), the GTC notes that the current assessment system ‘may impede the full realisation of new approaches to education, including more personalised learning.’ 2020 Vision is also praised for perceiving that national tests are not ‘diagnostic tools’ of pupils’ learning needs. Furthermore, national tests fail to develop ‘desired skills and aptitudes’.
The GTC also backs the fashionable pedagogical idea of ‘Assessment for Learning’ (because it redefines teacher-pupil interaction) and supports the government’s new 14-19 diplomas: ‘Their introduction provides the opportunity to begin the process of moving away from an assessment system dominated by the purposes of quality control and ….towards a more balanced model with a greater element of diagnostic and formative assessment for learning.’ (Paragraph 18)
This report usefully clarifies the educational aims of the GTC in relation to government policies. For both, there is no longer a connection between subject knowledge and assessment. Instead, assessment means creating ‘diagnostic tools’ to develop ‘desired skills and aptitudes’ in a more ‘balanced’ system. And ‘quality control’ (national testing) should be replaced by ‘cohort sampling’ (local self-evaluation based on ‘professional judgment’ by teachers). Not surprisingly, therefore, the GTC report confirms their opposition to the ‘measurement culture’ set up by the 1988 Education Reform Act, which originally introduced the national curriculum.
This can all sound appealing to teachers weary of government initiatives. But this is not ‘professional judgment’ in the sense that should matter most to teachers – their love of their subject and the way it is taught. And this is not ‘balanced’ in the sense of the education that most members of the ESSC have had. However flawed the 1988 Act was, at least it offered a national curriculum rooted in genuine subject knowledge. The GTC report is really arguing for the replacement of external examinations of subject knowledge with internal examinations of the child’s mind.
The GTC proposals merely aim to replace one measurement culture with another. It is a further indication that self-assessment is becoming the central component of the educational system - and that subject knowledge is perceived as irrelevant. The GTC is right to argue that tests are undoubtedly unimaginative and possibly overdone. However, children are perfectly capable of doing them – and so much more besides, if only they are taught by adults who themselves value a genuinely intellectual education – and the subjects that provide it.
The GTC paper Assessment in the Future: Building the Case for Change was presented to the GTC pupil assessment conference on 21 March 2007.
A paper based on the report was presented to the Education and Skills Select Committee in June 2007.
Sunday, 10 June 2007
Dennis Hayes examines some arguments about the demise of subject teaching in a report from CIVITAS
The Corruption of the Curriculum, a new book from CIVITAS, argues that schools are used to promote political objectives, and fashionable values, whether or not they relate to the discrete subjects that made up traditional education. If a teacher does not pass on the particular ‘grammar’ of the ‘corpus of knowledge’ applicable to subjects, argues the editor, Robert Whelan, then pupils will be forever denied access to those subjects and, we should add, to the knowledge and understanding that constitute our essential humanity.
This theme is pursued by Frank Furedi, in his introduction, who argues that the contemporary crisis in education is unique because education has become politicised. There are three destructive tendencies in this politicisation: the loss of faith in knowledge; a philistine pedagogy that rejects standards of excellence in education as ‘elite’, and the infantilisation of children and young people brought about by seeing them as vulnerable and, therefore in need of therapeutic, or emotional ‘education’. Furedi suggests that we need to depoliticise education, and reverse these destructive tendencies, by arguing for knowledge, for elite education, and by taking children seriously and not denying their potential.
This is the context that explains the dire state of subject teaching in English (Michele Ledda); Geography (Alex Standish); History (Chris McGovern); Modern Foreign Languages (Shirley Lawes); Mathematics (Simon Patterson) and Science (David Perks).
Furedi’s identification of the destructive tendencies that constitute the contemporary crisis of education is a useful starting point as the authors that follow identify several specific instances of these in their own subjects. Ledda shows, by reference to the literature from examination boards, that what has been taken out of the English Curriculum is the canon of English literature, along with standard English, which is now treated as just another dialect. Standish details how geography is a vehicle for environmentalist propaganda and global citizenship training. McGovern tracks the impact of the ‘new history’ from 1972 to show how it brought about a rejection of history as a body of knowledge, particularly its chronological aspect, leading to political selection of topics and the fragmentation of understanding. Lawes criticises the dull instrumental approach that puts pupils off foreign languages and argues that, unless they are defended as giving access to high culture, their decline will continue. Patterson looks at the repetitious and incoherent subject that mathematics has become in the national curriculum, the structure of which precludes student understanding, and puts them off maths. Finally, Perks pulls to pieces the new science GCSEs and argues that, by approaching science through the contemporary academic prism of relativism, they make science uncertain rather than objectively true. He ends his paper with what is a six point manifesto for science education. It should be on every science teacher’s classroom wall.
This book does something different from the mass of works bemoaning the overwork and stress caused by an over-assessed and bureaucratised curriculum. It exposes the anti-intellectual political manipulation of the curriculum that is destroying education.
A young adult exposed to this new curriculum could have no idea who Milton is, be unable to speak standard English, point out important places on a map, know nothing of many major historical events, be unwilling to learn a foreign language, not understand basic mathematics, and see magic as an acceptable alternative to science. This disgraceful situation is not young people’s fault, but that of those who distort their education for political ends.
One general criticism of this book must be made. It is all well and good to describe the crisis of education and to assert that knowledge and the disciplines should be defended. It is another thing to provide a convincing case for what Furedi at one point calls a ‘faith in knowledge’. This book suggests that there is a need for another, In Defence of Knowledge, or the battle against the corruption of the curriculum will not be won.
Robert Whelan (Ed.) The Corruption of the Curriculum, London: CIVITAS: ISBN 978 1 903386 59 0. Price: £9.50. Published on 11 June 2007: www.civitas.org.uk
A summary appeared in the Daily Telegraph on 11 June.
This theme is pursued by Frank Furedi, in his introduction, who argues that the contemporary crisis in education is unique because education has become politicised. There are three destructive tendencies in this politicisation: the loss of faith in knowledge; a philistine pedagogy that rejects standards of excellence in education as ‘elite’, and the infantilisation of children and young people brought about by seeing them as vulnerable and, therefore in need of therapeutic, or emotional ‘education’. Furedi suggests that we need to depoliticise education, and reverse these destructive tendencies, by arguing for knowledge, for elite education, and by taking children seriously and not denying their potential.
This is the context that explains the dire state of subject teaching in English (Michele Ledda); Geography (Alex Standish); History (Chris McGovern); Modern Foreign Languages (Shirley Lawes); Mathematics (Simon Patterson) and Science (David Perks).
Furedi’s identification of the destructive tendencies that constitute the contemporary crisis of education is a useful starting point as the authors that follow identify several specific instances of these in their own subjects. Ledda shows, by reference to the literature from examination boards, that what has been taken out of the English Curriculum is the canon of English literature, along with standard English, which is now treated as just another dialect. Standish details how geography is a vehicle for environmentalist propaganda and global citizenship training. McGovern tracks the impact of the ‘new history’ from 1972 to show how it brought about a rejection of history as a body of knowledge, particularly its chronological aspect, leading to political selection of topics and the fragmentation of understanding. Lawes criticises the dull instrumental approach that puts pupils off foreign languages and argues that, unless they are defended as giving access to high culture, their decline will continue. Patterson looks at the repetitious and incoherent subject that mathematics has become in the national curriculum, the structure of which precludes student understanding, and puts them off maths. Finally, Perks pulls to pieces the new science GCSEs and argues that, by approaching science through the contemporary academic prism of relativism, they make science uncertain rather than objectively true. He ends his paper with what is a six point manifesto for science education. It should be on every science teacher’s classroom wall.
This book does something different from the mass of works bemoaning the overwork and stress caused by an over-assessed and bureaucratised curriculum. It exposes the anti-intellectual political manipulation of the curriculum that is destroying education.
A young adult exposed to this new curriculum could have no idea who Milton is, be unable to speak standard English, point out important places on a map, know nothing of many major historical events, be unwilling to learn a foreign language, not understand basic mathematics, and see magic as an acceptable alternative to science. This disgraceful situation is not young people’s fault, but that of those who distort their education for political ends.
One general criticism of this book must be made. It is all well and good to describe the crisis of education and to assert that knowledge and the disciplines should be defended. It is another thing to provide a convincing case for what Furedi at one point calls a ‘faith in knowledge’. This book suggests that there is a need for another, In Defence of Knowledge, or the battle against the corruption of the curriculum will not be won.
Robert Whelan (Ed.) The Corruption of the Curriculum, London: CIVITAS: ISBN 978 1 903386 59 0. Price: £9.50. Published on 11 June 2007: www.civitas.org.uk
A summary appeared in the Daily Telegraph on 11 June.
Thursday, 17 May 2007
Dennis Hayes on a new book from the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL)
This book from Johnson et al puts forward one simple idea. Let’s get rid of curriculum subjects! Not merely develop cross-curriculum themes and such like, but replace them entirely with skills. Why be stuck in a ‘subject-based mould which was outdated in the nineteenth, never mind the twenty-first century’ (p8). Why support an intellectual education that was the property of the privileged? Why support a dreadful situation in which education was set out ‘in the form of subjects [and]…Although each subject had its own methods and skills, it was described predominately in terms of its knowledge. [and] Facts were considered non-problematic’ (pp24-25). How dreadful! An intellectual curriculum described predominately in terms of knowledge!
What do they want to put it its place of the ‘knowledge model’? It’s not just academic or work skills but something based on ‘an analysis of what school leavers in the twenty-first century need’ (p71). They admit they aren’t producing a ‘definitive list of skills’ (p96). But they do look at lots of lists that contain things like:
"basic skills, effective communication, thinking skills, team work, information literacy, learning habits, social skills, interpersonal (listening; body language; empathy) and intrapersonal skills (self-esteem; self management), competency in using and working with the physical world, and skills of creativity…"
There is even a chapter on a ‘do-it-yourself’ local curriculum, full of skills oddly described, given the themes of the book, in terms of local ‘knowledge’. All this is claimed to be so much more modern than the old universal curriculum subjects that developed over two thousand years; science, mathematics, history, literature and philosophy!
This ‘radical’ approach is claimed to be a way of motivating pupils and teachers trapped in the over assessed and regulated ‘subjects’ of the national curriculum. In a final moment of bathos, Johnson et al say that their book may be seen as ‘wishy-washy’ or ‘heralding the end of civilisation’ (p148).
The best thing about their book is that they push to the limit the arguments of the government and many educationalists about the importance of skills in a changing world. It is good to have a book that draws out the logic behind initiatives such as citizenship ‘education’, ICT training and the ubiquitous ‘outcomes’ of Every Child Matters.
But Johnson et al have really gone ‘skill crazy’. It is not skills based on what a child ‘needs’ that are modern, but subjects. Of course some school ‘subjects’ are not subjects, ‘citizenship’ being the obvious example. But the broad division of human knowledge in subjects is a way of initiating children into their very humanity. It is the intellectual that makes us human. At a time when scientific knowledge is expanding, and Bacon’s vision of knowing the ‘causes and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible’ is becoming real, Johnson et al want to deny future generations access to this knowledge.
There is a diminished idea of children and young people operating behind this ‘radical’ proposal. The authors give it away when they say: ‘We need a bit of honesty in this analysis. Most people are not intellectuals. Most people do not lead their lives predominately in the abstract. It is not clear that it would be preferable to do otherwise: the world cannot survive only through thought’ (p72). The message here is that ordinary people are basically only fit for training not education.
This is a profoundly anti-intellectual position which, by dressing itself up in criticism of ‘social elites’, masks the fact that this proposal actually takes away education from ordinary children. It is depressing but typical of our times. Politicians and policy wonks, often with Oxbridge backgrounds, have no faith in education for the masses.
How different it was ninety years ago, when policy makers saw that ‘elite’ education was should be for all children. H.A.L Fisher put it well in 1917 when introducing his Education Bill: ‘education is one of the good things in life’ he declared, and that the ‘principles upon which well-to-to parents proceed in the education of their families are valid; also mutatis mutandis for the families of the poor’.
The response to this radical book should be as bold and simple as its underlying thesis but should clearly state the counter thesis: stick to the subjects.
Subject to Change: New Thinking on the Curriculum was launched 9 May 2007. By Martin Johnson, with Nansi Ellis, Alan Gotch, Alison Ryan, Chris Foster, Julie Gillespie and Monique Lowe. ATL: London. £9.99.
http://www.atl.org.uk/atl_en/news/Media_office/releases/curriculum_launch.asp
What do they want to put it its place of the ‘knowledge model’? It’s not just academic or work skills but something based on ‘an analysis of what school leavers in the twenty-first century need’ (p71). They admit they aren’t producing a ‘definitive list of skills’ (p96). But they do look at lots of lists that contain things like:
"basic skills, effective communication, thinking skills, team work, information literacy, learning habits, social skills, interpersonal (listening; body language; empathy) and intrapersonal skills (self-esteem; self management), competency in using and working with the physical world, and skills of creativity…"
There is even a chapter on a ‘do-it-yourself’ local curriculum, full of skills oddly described, given the themes of the book, in terms of local ‘knowledge’. All this is claimed to be so much more modern than the old universal curriculum subjects that developed over two thousand years; science, mathematics, history, literature and philosophy!
This ‘radical’ approach is claimed to be a way of motivating pupils and teachers trapped in the over assessed and regulated ‘subjects’ of the national curriculum. In a final moment of bathos, Johnson et al say that their book may be seen as ‘wishy-washy’ or ‘heralding the end of civilisation’ (p148).
The best thing about their book is that they push to the limit the arguments of the government and many educationalists about the importance of skills in a changing world. It is good to have a book that draws out the logic behind initiatives such as citizenship ‘education’, ICT training and the ubiquitous ‘outcomes’ of Every Child Matters.
But Johnson et al have really gone ‘skill crazy’. It is not skills based on what a child ‘needs’ that are modern, but subjects. Of course some school ‘subjects’ are not subjects, ‘citizenship’ being the obvious example. But the broad division of human knowledge in subjects is a way of initiating children into their very humanity. It is the intellectual that makes us human. At a time when scientific knowledge is expanding, and Bacon’s vision of knowing the ‘causes and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible’ is becoming real, Johnson et al want to deny future generations access to this knowledge.
There is a diminished idea of children and young people operating behind this ‘radical’ proposal. The authors give it away when they say: ‘We need a bit of honesty in this analysis. Most people are not intellectuals. Most people do not lead their lives predominately in the abstract. It is not clear that it would be preferable to do otherwise: the world cannot survive only through thought’ (p72). The message here is that ordinary people are basically only fit for training not education.
This is a profoundly anti-intellectual position which, by dressing itself up in criticism of ‘social elites’, masks the fact that this proposal actually takes away education from ordinary children. It is depressing but typical of our times. Politicians and policy wonks, often with Oxbridge backgrounds, have no faith in education for the masses.
How different it was ninety years ago, when policy makers saw that ‘elite’ education was should be for all children. H.A.L Fisher put it well in 1917 when introducing his Education Bill: ‘education is one of the good things in life’ he declared, and that the ‘principles upon which well-to-to parents proceed in the education of their families are valid; also mutatis mutandis for the families of the poor’.
The response to this radical book should be as bold and simple as its underlying thesis but should clearly state the counter thesis: stick to the subjects.
Subject to Change: New Thinking on the Curriculum was launched 9 May 2007. By Martin Johnson, with Nansi Ellis, Alan Gotch, Alison Ryan, Chris Foster, Julie Gillespie and Monique Lowe. ATL: London. £9.99.
http://www.atl.org.uk/atl_en/news/Media_office/releases/curriculum_launch.asp
Tuesday, 20 March 2007
Joanna Williams on Raising Expectations
“If you don’t want to be here, there’s the door,” has been a much used phrase of mine when teaching unruly sixth-formers. In twelve years I’ve only ever had one person actually leave but the reminder of the voluntaristic nature of their presence settles even the most rowdy miscreants. However, new proposals outlined in the government’s Green Paper, Raising Expectations: staying in education and training post-16, look set to change all of this. No longer will youngsters be free to decide at sixteen whether to remain in education or training or to take their chances in the labour market. Raising Expectations sets out plans for “compulsory participation” (p.5) in a bid to ensure that even the 10% of seventeen year-olds not enticed by bribes of Educational Maintenance Allowance payments are forced to remain in education or training.
The main argument to emerge from Raising Expectations is that the economy of the future no longer needs such a large supply of unskilled labour as it has done in the past and so to ensure the employability of the nation’s youth, they must all gain qualifications. Indeed, the gaining of accredited qualifications is actually considered more important than any actual skills youngsters may gain: “in order to count as participating, young people would be required to work towards accredited qualifications,” (p. 6). Assuming the DfES is correct and the economy is changing, there are good arguments to suggest that compelling seventeen and eighteen year-olds to remain in the classroom will not make them remotely more employable.
Most importantly, this legislation will serve to infantilise older teenagers by denying them an initiation into the adult world and prolonging their childhood for an extra two years. At present, even youngsters staying on at school have somehow made a decision about the future direction of their lives. Those gaining even low level employment are forced to grow up and take on board more adult responsibilities. Flipping burgers requires you turn up on time, wear the correct uniform and follow health and safety procedures or you are out of a job and without a wage: a consequence far more real than any idle threats a teacher may come up with. Although clichés, there is undoubted truth in sayings such as ‘the best way to get a job is to have a job’ and that when it comes to gaining employment, ‘it’s not what you know but who you know’. Being cut off from entering the labour market prevents youngsters gaining experience or meeting the adults who may eventually help them find work.
In the classroom, youngsters already turned off by school, perhaps placed on Increased Flexibility Programmes or drilled by former-squaddies in basic skills since the age of fourteen, are not likely to greet a further two years with renewed enthusiasm. Young people are not daft: they will be fully aware that in the future, with everyone working towards gaining accredited qualifications until they are eighteen, those of them with low-level paper credentials will merely be seeking the same employment (and at the same wage) as previously sought by unqualified sixteen-year olds.
This infantilisation has damaging and dangerous consequences, not just for a young person’s employment prospects, not just for teachers forced to think of ever more ridiculous ways to entertain disillusioned youngsters but for education and for the whole of society. Education of older teenagers depends upon voluntarism, teachers assume youngsters are interested in what they have chosen to study. Remove the presumption of free will and what we are left with are dumbed-down containment programmes that certify participation. As a nation we are left with a youngsters prevented from reaching maturity, although physically adult and able to marry and have children, eighteen year olds will still be financially dependent and in a state of prolonged intellectual and emotional adolescence.
The green paper was published on 22 March 2007 and can be found at: http://www.dfes.gov.uk/publications/raisingexpectations/
The main argument to emerge from Raising Expectations is that the economy of the future no longer needs such a large supply of unskilled labour as it has done in the past and so to ensure the employability of the nation’s youth, they must all gain qualifications. Indeed, the gaining of accredited qualifications is actually considered more important than any actual skills youngsters may gain: “in order to count as participating, young people would be required to work towards accredited qualifications,” (p. 6). Assuming the DfES is correct and the economy is changing, there are good arguments to suggest that compelling seventeen and eighteen year-olds to remain in the classroom will not make them remotely more employable.
Most importantly, this legislation will serve to infantilise older teenagers by denying them an initiation into the adult world and prolonging their childhood for an extra two years. At present, even youngsters staying on at school have somehow made a decision about the future direction of their lives. Those gaining even low level employment are forced to grow up and take on board more adult responsibilities. Flipping burgers requires you turn up on time, wear the correct uniform and follow health and safety procedures or you are out of a job and without a wage: a consequence far more real than any idle threats a teacher may come up with. Although clichés, there is undoubted truth in sayings such as ‘the best way to get a job is to have a job’ and that when it comes to gaining employment, ‘it’s not what you know but who you know’. Being cut off from entering the labour market prevents youngsters gaining experience or meeting the adults who may eventually help them find work.
In the classroom, youngsters already turned off by school, perhaps placed on Increased Flexibility Programmes or drilled by former-squaddies in basic skills since the age of fourteen, are not likely to greet a further two years with renewed enthusiasm. Young people are not daft: they will be fully aware that in the future, with everyone working towards gaining accredited qualifications until they are eighteen, those of them with low-level paper credentials will merely be seeking the same employment (and at the same wage) as previously sought by unqualified sixteen-year olds.
This infantilisation has damaging and dangerous consequences, not just for a young person’s employment prospects, not just for teachers forced to think of ever more ridiculous ways to entertain disillusioned youngsters but for education and for the whole of society. Education of older teenagers depends upon voluntarism, teachers assume youngsters are interested in what they have chosen to study. Remove the presumption of free will and what we are left with are dumbed-down containment programmes that certify participation. As a nation we are left with a youngsters prevented from reaching maturity, although physically adult and able to marry and have children, eighteen year olds will still be financially dependent and in a state of prolonged intellectual and emotional adolescence.
The green paper was published on 22 March 2007 and can be found at: http://www.dfes.gov.uk/publications/raisingexpectations/
Shirley Lawes on ‘The Dearing Languages Review’
When it was first announced that Lord Dearing and Dr Lid King, National Director for Languages, had been appointed to investigate the crisis in foreign languages in schools, teachers and foreign language specialists welcomed the attention to be given to their beleaguered subject. It was no mean challenge to try to sort out the mess of government policy on foreign languages and to salvage their role as an essential element of the school curriculum.
Their recently published Languages Review is disappointing on both counts. The report seeks numerous ways of reinvigorating foreign languages, calling for ‘action to recover the situation’ and extra funding, as well as placing great emphasis on the importance of foreign language learning in the primary school. However, Dearing side-steps the real problem: in 2004 the government made foreign language learning optional at Key Stage 4 and since then numbers have fallen drastically. As a result of this policy decision, foreign language learning in English state secondary schools is in terminal decline. But, instead of proposing the reversal of the policy, Dearing prefers to recommend ‘incentives’ to schools to encourage greater participation. Only if schools don’t manage to halt the decline in numbers of pupils opting for continuing to learn a foreign language at Key Stage 4, does the report propose a return to statutory status. This is more than a missed opportunity, it is an evasion of the key issue which has the effect of legitimising the prevailing view that languages are too hard for most young people and they aren’t up to the challenge.
The Languages Review notes that the fall in numbers of pupils taking foreign languages at Key Stage 4 is closely linked to social class. He is right, since 2004 schools with higher levels of pupils from relatively deprived backgrounds were first in the queue to abandon compulsory status in 2004. The message went out to schools and young people: that foreign language learning was not for the working class, and as a result they opted out.
Dearing’s attempts to address this issue will only make the problem worse. Instead of defending foreign language learning as part of what should be a good education for all, he recommends that in order to encourage pupils to continue with languages after Year 9, schools should be looking at alternative accreditation to GCSE. He suggests a curriculum development that reflects what has already been introduced in science, that is, ‘alternatives which suit the different requirements of young people depending on their aspirations and aptitude (for science)’. For foreign languages, this means the abandonment of any meaningful learning that sees foreign language as a gateway to universal culture, in favour of formalising a ‘get by’ curriculum for the majority. It will be left to the independent sector, where the study of languages continues to be compulsory to GCSE level, to take foreign language study seriously. Already 30% of undergraduates come from outside the state sector. Foreign language learning is once again becoming an 'elitist' subject area.
The Dearing Languages Review as a whole reflects the prevailing preoccupation with the functional foreign language learning for vocational reasons. Despite a number of individual recommendations that one wouldn’t argue with, like funded immersion courses, trips abroad, and a review of the GCSE exam syllabus, the report offers an impoverished view of what foreign languages could contribute throughout every young person’s education.
The Dearing Languages Review, published on 12 March 2007, is available at: http://www.teachernet.gov.uk/teachingandlearning/subjects/languages/languagesreview/
Their recently published Languages Review is disappointing on both counts. The report seeks numerous ways of reinvigorating foreign languages, calling for ‘action to recover the situation’ and extra funding, as well as placing great emphasis on the importance of foreign language learning in the primary school. However, Dearing side-steps the real problem: in 2004 the government made foreign language learning optional at Key Stage 4 and since then numbers have fallen drastically. As a result of this policy decision, foreign language learning in English state secondary schools is in terminal decline. But, instead of proposing the reversal of the policy, Dearing prefers to recommend ‘incentives’ to schools to encourage greater participation. Only if schools don’t manage to halt the decline in numbers of pupils opting for continuing to learn a foreign language at Key Stage 4, does the report propose a return to statutory status. This is more than a missed opportunity, it is an evasion of the key issue which has the effect of legitimising the prevailing view that languages are too hard for most young people and they aren’t up to the challenge.
The Languages Review notes that the fall in numbers of pupils taking foreign languages at Key Stage 4 is closely linked to social class. He is right, since 2004 schools with higher levels of pupils from relatively deprived backgrounds were first in the queue to abandon compulsory status in 2004. The message went out to schools and young people: that foreign language learning was not for the working class, and as a result they opted out.
Dearing’s attempts to address this issue will only make the problem worse. Instead of defending foreign language learning as part of what should be a good education for all, he recommends that in order to encourage pupils to continue with languages after Year 9, schools should be looking at alternative accreditation to GCSE. He suggests a curriculum development that reflects what has already been introduced in science, that is, ‘alternatives which suit the different requirements of young people depending on their aspirations and aptitude (for science)’. For foreign languages, this means the abandonment of any meaningful learning that sees foreign language as a gateway to universal culture, in favour of formalising a ‘get by’ curriculum for the majority. It will be left to the independent sector, where the study of languages continues to be compulsory to GCSE level, to take foreign language study seriously. Already 30% of undergraduates come from outside the state sector. Foreign language learning is once again becoming an 'elitist' subject area.
The Dearing Languages Review as a whole reflects the prevailing preoccupation with the functional foreign language learning for vocational reasons. Despite a number of individual recommendations that one wouldn’t argue with, like funded immersion courses, trips abroad, and a review of the GCSE exam syllabus, the report offers an impoverished view of what foreign languages could contribute throughout every young person’s education.
The Dearing Languages Review, published on 12 March 2007, is available at: http://www.teachernet.gov.uk/teachingandlearning/subjects/languages/languagesreview/
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