Are we nearly there yet?
Anastasia De Waal, 14 March 2010
Meet eight-year-old Rosie: Rosie’s favourite subject at school is philosophy. Rosie enjoys starting the day with a series of ‘mind stretching games’. Rosie also finds the seven times table the hardest. In addition, Rosie struggles to write in full sentences, differentiate between ‘your’ and ‘you’re’ and rarely achieves above seven out of 10 in weekly spelling tests.
Whilst I’m in favour of encouraging the curiosity of our budding de Beauvoirs and Burkes, surely, as time is of the essence in the these precious primary school years, this syllabus is best left at the school gates? What’s more, could the inclusion of softer, skills subjects – philosophy, critical thinking, sociology and the like – exacerbate a problem that is beginning to reverberate through more traditional subjects: the impatience of internet-savvy, quick-fix kids?
Expressing concern at the annual Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) conference for a “celebrity-dominated society” in which “success appears to come instantly and without any real effort,” retiring head, Dr Dunford, evaded the real problem entirely. Not only are children spending increasing amounts of time online, but, a seemingly common culture of bypassing strong subject content en route to endless outcomes, offers children the slimmest opportunity to develop a comprehensive understanding of the core curriculum, let alone anything they can later build on. And the rate at which children are expected to fly through their three Ts (tests, targets and (league) tables), no wonder they’re getting irritable.
What’s worse, it’s deceptive. Philosophy at five, and even at fifteen, probably doesn’t mean you can tell your Heidegger from your Hegel, but an end-of-term test and a certificate covered in sticky stars might suggest otherwise. Rather surprisingly then, Michael Gove’s plan to recreate a traditional curriculum based on an established core body of knowledge was received with a degree of skepticism-apparently traditional teaching methods don’t make
for easy teaching experiences. We are yet to hear of how these plans will be practically implemented, and of course the proof will be in the pudding, but I’m pleased to hear that the Conservative rhetoric is reversing the
restrictive maxim ‘it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.’ The current ‘progressive’ approach doesn’t appear to be working, so let’s try something different and see if real progress can be made.
By Annaliese Briggs
Child centred learning philosophies are embedded within parts of the educational establishment, as are all sorts of politically correct policies, to such an extent that teachers will fail interviews unless they spout specific buzzwords and phrases which reflect such an appreciation.
Poor interpretation of some of Piaget’s theories also has to take some blame. In ‘Science Teaching: The Role of History and Philosophy of Science’ by Michael Matthews, the epistemology of empirical deductions and so-called child-centered ‘discovery learning’ are compared against philosophical realism by looking at the history of scientific understanding (often misquoted as ‘discoveries’). For example many science textbooks state, in their introductory statements, phrases along the lines of, ‘science involves making observations about the world in which we live and producing or constructing logical theories to explain them’. This book then makes the point that there are countless logical empirical deductions made from observations in the history of scientific achievement that all turned out to be totally wrong, and that a proper understanding of the role of the history and philosophy of scientific achievement is crucial for science teachers so that pupils can appreciate this.
Leaving the child to make, and value as equally valid, his or her interpretation of observations and not to teach the skills needed in order to evaluate properly their theories (especially mathematics) has left generations of people, and especially senior civil servants in the Treasury and DECC, ignorant of basic science to such an extent that very soon the lights will go out and the UK will be relegated to a third world economy.
Child centered learning has evolved from an over emphasis on empiricism which emphasizes the role of experience, evidence and ideas (a ‘safety case?’) at the expense of fundamental real explanations. For example much school level biology starts with this methodology, but it soon transpires that alone it will not explain fully what is required. A school physics teacher will be more appreciative of these issues as there are many examples which are fully explained by relatively simple applied mathematics (which would not have resulted from pure empirical deductions).
A learner cannot hope to acquire all this by ‘discovery’. Essential to successful learning is a full rigorous explanation of what is right and wrong, correct and incorrect first, as building blocks of knowedge, before trying to make empirical deductions (but don’t confuse this with ‘constructivism’!).
As a hint of where some of the problems originated in schools, a couple of senior civil servants from the DSFC gave up on a friend of mine over dinner on this issue and asked him ‘well go on then – you explain to me the difference between what’s right and wrong!’.