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Education: Victorian values curriculum needs updating for 21st century

Posted on: Monday, 29 September 2003, 06:00 CDT

The school curriculum is dominated by out-of-date Victorian values and should be reformed to give children the skills they need in the 21st century, leading academics have claimed.

The old ways, such as rote-learning of facts in maths, science and history are not enough to prepare them for the demands of contemporary life, said a group of experts at the Institute of Education, University of London.

The national curriculum introduced by Margaret Thatcher's government in the late 1980s, and largely retained under Tony Blair, was essentially the same as the grammar school version introduced in 1904 for a middle-class elite, they said.

The academics have contributed to a new book entitled Rethinking the School Curriculum, edited by Professor John White.

They have called for radical reform of music, science, history, maths, religious education, art and PE lessons in response to the curriculum 'aims' that the Government introduced in 2000.

When Mrs Thatcher and former Education Secretary Kenneth Baker introduced the national curriculum, it had no stated purpose beyond 'bland' assertions such as the need for children to be turned into adults, said Prof White.

Now schools are supposed to teach what the Government, via the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, has laid down with broader social and cultural 'aims' in mind, he continued.

Among those goals were that children should enjoy learning, that school should contribute to their sense of identity and their knowledge and understanding of their spiritual, moral and cultural heritage, be enterprising, and be equipped to be responsible citizens in modern, multi-cultural Britain, he said.

But the delivery of subjects such as art, music, history and science had not kept pace with these aims, Prof White claimed.

On the contrary, a kind of what he dubbed 'school music' and 'school art' had developed, distinct from what was going on in the real world.

Prof White stressed he was not saying children did not need to learn facts and figures in any of these subjects, as traditionalists believed happened in the 1980s under the so-called 'child-centred learning' movement to which many teachers signed up.

This school of thought said children should be allowed to learn what they wanted at their own pace, free from having to compete with each other.

It was widely pilloried for leaving a generation of adults to struggle with the basics of literacy and numeracy.

'I'm not that kind of crazy child-centred person,' Prof White said. 'Obviously, it's important that people have an understanding of science and history but it depends on what kind.'

Nick Seaton, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, disagreed. He said: 'I think most parents and employers would think this is complete nonsense.

'The main purpose of school is to give youngsters a grounding in traditional subjects. Without that, they are unlikely to succeed in the world.'

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