A brief history of dates

Until the media start to change the way they portray education it’s going to be hard to start to shift the popular belief that learning facts is still what matters the most. Take this item, which appeared recently in the Guardian online:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/quiz/2012/mar/06/history-dates-quiz?CMP=twt_gu

So how well do you know your British History?

I don’t think it matters to the general population whether children know for a fact that Richard III was killed in 1054, 1301 or 1485*, or if the Battle of Trafalgar was in 1799, 1805 or 1815. And anyway if they really want or need to know it, now it only takes a matter of seconds searching on the Internet to find out. What would perhaps be more helpful is to understand more about why these things happened and what the consequences were, alongside knowing roughly what order they happened in. Meanwhile more emphasis on the changes of lives of ordinary people tends to have more relevance and interest for ‘ordinary’ students than the lives of the Kings and Queens, politicians of their day, and the great battles of their age. Reference to the achievements of more women would not go astray either.

The Guardian item was derived from this report in the Daily Mail on the proposed new National Curriculum History. The content of the curriculum, and the essay as the means for assessment, appears to serve one key purpose – to prepare students more effectively for studying history at Oxbridge. To put it another way, around 99.999% of the population are going to be required to follow a course quite inappropriate for their needs in order that that the 00.0001% will be more successful on entry to university.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting history isn’t important. It’s essential we all learn to understand how to find out about the past to understand the present and anticipate the future. Indeed I suggest history should be embedded in all ‘subjects’, from maths to geography and science to d&t. I also have a theory that the best way to approach history is to study it backwards from the present – so that instead of starting with the Romans (or whoever), the curriculum should start with the relevance of today and deal first with how and why things are the way they currently are, and so on back over the decades and centuries.

“History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present, and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history that we make today.” (Henry Ford, Chicago Tribune, 1916)

* And anyway, as every schoolchild from the early 1980s knows, the most important fact to remember about Richard III is that he was unintentionally killed (in 1485) by Edmund, “Blackadder”, when Edmund thought he is trying to steal his horse.

O.M.G! (Oh. My. Gove…!)

King Gove the 1st of England

Well it seems that every state school in England is to receive a new copy of  a special edition of the King James Bible from the government – with a brief foreword by Michael Gove…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/nov/25/michael-gove-king-james-bible?CMP=twt_fd

“In a speech at Cambridge promoting the virtues of a classical education, he [Gove] called for a deeper study of literature – “Austen’s understanding of personal morality, Dickens’ righteous indignation, Hardy’s stern pagan virtue” – scientific reasoning, history and foreign languages.

Gove said that society should be more demanding of teachers and students. “We should recover something of that Victorian earnestness which believed that an audience would be gripped more profoundly by a passionate, hour-long lecture from a gifted thinker which ranged over poetry and politics than by cheap sensation and easy pleasures.”

Not content with dragging schools back to the 1950s, it now seems he is setting his sights even further – back to the 1850s.

Meanwhile in the Daily Mail… well, need I say any more?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2066317/Can-Michael-Gove-save-Britains-schools-education-Tory-leader.html

“Michael God now faces an almighty fight to impose his vision of a high-quality education on our country. Everyone who believes in education must support him.”

The Daily Mail doesn’t quite conclude.

However, this is all really just an opportunity to provide a link to this excellent post:

http://mattpearson.org/2011/11/25/the-myriad-confusions-of-the-godly-mr-gove/

Making maths and English a more funky shade of pinker

What do you mean, you don’t know who this is?

Now for what is All Change Please’s 100th post, here are a few things that irritated me during the week.

First was the headline: Young unemployed ‘need maths and English at GCSE’

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-15863830

“The report raises concerns that over the last few years, schools have been encouraging pupils to study for qualifications that are seen as easier to achieve to boost their position in league tables.

A government source said: “Under Labour millions of children were pushed into non-academic qualifications that were of little value”.

“The government is raising standards by allowing only the best qualifications to count in the league tables and increasing the number of children doing the academic subjects that businesses, parents and universities value most.”

This is, of course, complete nonsense. Virtually all pupils study maths and English to GCSE, so the issue of studying so-called ‘soft-subjects’ instead is irrelevant. And, while universities value academic subjects, the majority of businesses and parents don’t.

Employers are looking for a range of basic skills – such as how to write clearly and concisely using reasonably correct grammar and spelling, to work as part of a team, how to add up, take away, multiply and divide, and calculate percentages, be punctual, polite and reliable and have a good work ethic, etc. But this is a very small part of what the current ‘academic’ GCSEs in maths and English are essentially measuring. For those learners not destined for academia – and that’s at least 50% – far too much time is being spent trying to teach them high-level theoretical concepts at the expense of ensuring they are proficient at a basic level.

Meanwhile I’ve always been amused by the title ‘Functional skills’ (better known as ‘Funky skills’), which are defined as:

‘those core elements of English, mathematics and ICT that provide individuals with the skills and abilities they need to operate confidently, effectively and independently in life, their communities and work’. (QCDA, deceased)

I always want to ask what ‘non-functional’ skills are? My answer is of course ‘academic skills’, i.e. those that are of no practical use whatsoever…

What we really need is a qualification that is accepted and valued by potential employers as a recognition that a school-leaver has achieved basic standards in real-life applications of maths, English and IT. It could be taken at any time, during, say Key Stage 3 or 4, whenever the learner is ready, and sat more than once if necessary.

Not of course that it will make much difference, as there will still not be any jobs available for them, however well qualified they are.

Moving on, the Quote of the Week award goes to that nice elite Mr Gove, last seen on some yet-to-be-discovered, far, far away galaxy (if only…):

‘We can all marvel at the genius of Pythagoras, or Wagner, share in the brilliance of Shakespeare or Newton, delve deeper into the mysteries of human nature through Balzac or Pinker,’ he said.

‘I believe that denying any child access to that amazing legacy, that treasure-house of wonder, delight, stimulation and enchantment by failing to educate them to the utmost of their abilities is as great a crime as raiding their parents’ bank accounts – you are stealing from their rightful inheritance, condemning them to a future poorer than they deserve.

‘And I am unapologetic in arguing that all children have a right to the best. Yes, I am romantic in one sense, I suppose. I believe man is born with a thirst for free inquiry and is nearly everywhere held back by chains of low expectation.’

Read more, if you dare: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2065907/Michael-Goves-rallying-return-traditional-teaching-values.html#ixzz1ei2zIdoc

All Change Please! can just imagine the following conversation:

Human Resources Officer: So, we’re an innovative global  software engineering company. We need creative staff with a passion for emerging infrastructure nano-technologies and who are confident working with Perl, C++ and Python in an agile inter-disciplinary environment. So what have you got to offer us?

Job seeker: Well, err, to be honest I’ve not the faintest what you’re talking about, but if you like we could have a jolly interesting discussion about the brilliance of Shakespeare or Newton, or perhaps delve deeper into the mysteries of human nature through Balzac or Pinker*…

HR: Hmm. Have you considered working in a call centre?

* Just in case you’re wonder who Pinker is, according to Wikipedia:

Pinker is known within psychology for his theory of language acquisition, his research on the syntax, morphology, and meaning of verbs, and his criticism of connectionist (neural network) models of language. In The Language Instinct (1994) he popularized Noam Chomsky’s work on language as an innate faculty of mind, with the twist that this faculty evolved by natural selection as a Darwinian adaptation for communication, although both ideas remain controversial (see below). He also defends the idea of a complex human nature which comprises many mental faculties that are adaptive (and is an ally of Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins in many evolutionary disputes). Another major theme in Pinker’s theories is that human cognition works, in part, by combinatorial symbol-manipulation, not just associations among sensory features, as in many connectionist models.

Try telling that to Year 11 on a Friday afternoon.

And if you don’t know what this great man Pinker looks like, just go back to the top of this post.

Wait! There’s more…   O.M.G!

Why I’m voting for Mickey…

Will the proposed half-GCSE Vocational Qualifications become known as Minnie-Mouse courses?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2016995/Michael-Gove-4-500-Mickey-Mouse-courses-face-axe.html

As usual the Daily Mail can be relied upon to trivialise any story about education. Although the recommendations of the recent Wolf report are clear, it is thin on explanation and exemplification of what is unsatisfactory with current vocational education courses. Simply saying some are excellent and others aren’t is not terribly helpful. And seeking the views of employers and moving towards more external assessment is something we’ve heard many times before. Reducing the number of GCSE equivalents for each course might be seen as having some merit, but mainly for reducing the validity of vocational courses within academically-based school league tables, rather than putting the needs of students first – some of whom might actually have had a better chance of finding employment at the age of 16. Now all they will end up with is a string of F and G GCSE grades which are less likely to impress potential employers than evidence of real, on-the-job experience.

And while it is true that some courses have become little more than an exercise in completing politically-correct tick-boxes, what the Daily Mail article actually reveals that much of the course content is highly relevant to working life. For example, here is a proposed list of 50 things everyone should know how to do – precious few of which are covered in the eBacc.

Meanwhile I can’t help wondering why poor old Mickey Mouse is continually associated with vocational courses? Mickey was created by Disney in 1928 as a ‘pleasant, cheerful character always trying to do the best he could’, which  sounds to me a most positive attitude towards education.  The more negative association probably started when entering the name ‘Mickey Mouse’ on a ballot paper became a way of expressing dissatisfaction with the available election candidates, i.e. that Mickey Mouse could do a better job. Around the same time the phrase ‘Taking the Mickey’ – meaning to mock or ridicule – came into usage, and although not a reference to Mickey Mouse, the two seem to have become associated.

As a result ‘Mickey Mouse’ has over time come to mean ‘small-time’ or ‘trivial’, which is curious really, because in reality Mickey Mouse is an iconic, multi-million dollar, best-selling trademark – and as such exactly the sort of approach to business we should all be striving for if we are to revive the nation’s economy. So yet again it seems to be another example of the politicians and media perpetuating the old-school myth that only high-brow academic studies are of any value, and anything vocationally or commercially orientated, or relating to popular culture, is entirely worthless.

And finally…. for those readers still without a Twitter account:  Man goes to the doctors: “Doctor I’m addicted to twitter and I don’t know what to do”….Doctor: “Sorry I don’t follow you”…