More flying mud (now with added pigs!)
A quick follow up to yesterday’s post. Opening Minds was cited in a further two articles, one positive, one not so much negative as apoplectic.
The Guardian’s Jenni Russell gives us a breath of fresh air, by bemoaning the Today programme’s tendency to avoid looking at what is interesting about the Rose Review, and continue to look ‘through the tired old lens of progressive versus traditional teaching’. It was really gratifying that to make her case she could turn to an example of practice in an Opening Minds primary school to illustrate what is really at stake – ‘[unleashing pupils'] enthusiasm and…desire to learn’.
And then we saw this fiery response in the Yorkshire Post which cites a separate example of such practice. In doing so, it manages to attack an apparently successful school using an integrated curriculum at Key Stage 3 based on Opening Minds. According to the article, this school gets good results at GCSE, and yet it is asserted that pigs will fly before kids get a good education from such a school…
Growing numbers of schools are innovating with their curriculum, and the government are responding too. While the service students get from schools is changing, the service the public get from the media is all too often stuck in the past.
The Rose Review (beware flying mud)
In my experience, the longer an argument goes on the messier and more confusing it will get. Arguments about education seem messier than most. We warm to our themes and suddenly mud is flying all over the place.
Traditional subject based curricula versus relevance and skills, as it’s often (mis)presented, is a long running debate, but there has been a recent spate of comment worth noting.
Today, we have Sir Jim Rose’s review of the primary curriculum getting a lot of play, notably his advocacy of a curriculum content organised around six themes. Melanie Philips doesn’t like it much. Lessons in well-being, happiness and health represent ‘the way a society tears up its own future’.
In Friday’s TES was a comment piece which built on an article about the decline in membership of subject associations by fretting that ‘recent developments in education have emphasised skills and social concerns at the expense of knowledge and understanding’ (Time Education Supplement, 5th December 2008). *
I’m tempted to point out that this didn’t seem to be what the subject associations themselves were particularly concerned about. As Mick Waters has often said, ‘excellent subject teaching will always make links within and between subjects’. Planning an Opening Minds curriculum with its topics and themes requires real subject expertise.
Critics of the Rose Review who present ’skills vs knowledge’ as a zero-sum game need to say why they feel justified in doing so? Where is the evidence that this has to be the case? It isn’t offered by the Tim Birkhead’s article quoted in the TES, however strong his arguments about the importance teachers’ subject knowledge and good quality assessment might be.
Not only do those who argue that Rose is sacrificing knowledge and truth on the altar of skills or of social/political ends need to demonstrate their case, they need to do so in the face of a compelling argument for relevance in the curriculum.
Our world faces huge challenges. Young people will need knowledge, but growing up into a complex world with an uncertain, unformed future, knowledge is not enough. The acid test of a good education will be not just what people know, but how they are able to act, individually and collectively. How are they able to take that unformed future, and understand and realise the common good?
All those arguments about the world changing…and then it really did
Yesterday I attended an excellent round-table event held by the education folks at Oxfam GB.
All too often I get a pang of guilt when attending these kinds of events, thinking about what I could be doing back at the office that would be more beneficial to the RSA. That certainly didn’t apply in this case.
The substance of the meeting began with a short, sharp discussion about the policy climate, and the possible ramifications of the recent meltdown in the markets for public services and schools.
It was grim but fascinating stuff.
It seems clear that the pain for public services is going to be felt for a long time. And limited cash brings with it tough choices. The centre-ground consensus of investment in public services we’ve experienced in recent years is under threat (for example, we have seen the Conservatives withdrawing from their commitment to match Labour’s public spending plans).
What follows are my thoughts from the meeting.
Those of us who have sought to challenge the status quo and who have pushed for an ‘alternative’ education system, however that may be defined, have been riding the back of a (unsustainably) strong economy. As have everyone, of course.
In this resource rich environment, two things were allowed to happen:
- in opposition to the status quo, a fragmented discourse flourished about what change was required, even amongst progressives who basically agree with each other
- the basic assumptions of the education system went unchallenged – there was enough in the system for schools to do interesting work based on alternative value systems
This has lead to lots of interesting innovation starting in schools but with little coherence or scale, and consequently little sense of critical mass around change. Frankly, we can’t go on this way.
We need an agreement to invest what we have in an education for young people that will deliver more value for our communities, and which will ultimately develop the citizens of the future. I think this means three responses:
- We need a far more coherent and accessible discourse about change in education
- That discourse must argue for a new settlement between those with a stake in education – that is to say, those with an alternative vision must demonstrate to young people, government, employers, parents and civil society why they should invest in an alternative vision for schools
- We need to convince practitioners, parents and students that practical change is possible today even with constrained resources. To do that we need to celebrate the practices that are a reality now in ordinary schools up and down the country, and that point the way forward
I hope the Charter for Education in the 21st Century is a start in the right direction, and that the good work of organisations like Oxfam will bear fruit.
- Ian McGimpsey
We’re in the news!
Well aren’t we just the bells belles of the ball? It’s been really nice to see that the press attention surrounding the opening of the RSA Academy at the beginning of November has been followed up with interest in Opening Minds more broadly – there were two articles in the TES last week, one news item and one feature, and even a passing reference in the Independent.
The media coverage of Opening Minds has placed us squarely in the debate about skills vs. knowledge which is a conversation that we’re really pleased to be having (see previous posts by Ian here and here and here).
More work is being done at our end – but we welcome contributions and thoughts to move the debate forward!
Louise Thomas
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