Corruption of the Curriculum [Paperback]

'Learning 'ruined by political meddling' in schools. In history, pupils use bin Laden speeches. In science, debates on abortion replace lab work. The Curriculum in state schools has been stripped of its content and corrupted by political interference, according to a damning report today by an influential independent think-tank. It warns of an educational apartheid opening up between the experience of pupils in the state sector and those at independent schools.'Front Page splash, Daily Telegraph, June 11th'A devastating study by the think tank Civitas shows that it is possible to leave school with almost no knowledge of English literature and only the merest acquaintance with British history.' Leader column, Daily Telegraph, June 11th'Education today is a form of child abuse - Yesterday's report on British education from the independent think-tank Civitas represents a dispatch from the battlefield describing a national catastrophe. It is no surprise that pupils learn so little because so much curriculum time has been hijacked for the peddling of propaganda about racism, gender awareness, environmentalism and suchlike.' Max Hastings, Daily Mail, June 12th

A devastating study by the think tank Civitas shows that it is
possible to leave school with almost no knowledge of English literature and
only the merest acquaintance with British history.

Education today is a form of child abuse - Yesterday's report on
British education from the independent think-tank Civitas represents a
dispatch from the battlefield describing a national catastrophe. It is no
surprise that pupils learn so little because so much curriculum time has
been hijacked for the peddling of propaganda about racism, gender
awareness, environmentalism and suchlike.

The school curriculum has been "hijacked" to promote fashionable
causes, such as gender awareness, with too little focus on the acquisition
of knowledge, a report suggests (Alexandra Frean writes). Instead of giving
pupils a factual grounding, teachers are expected to help to achieve
government goals, according to the right-of-centre think-tank Civitas.

If I'd sat down and written a spoof exam paper which used the
speeches of Osama Bin Laden as a basis for a history lesson, plenty of you
would have written to me and said: 'I think you've gone a bit far this
time, Rich.' But this is exactly what's happening in Britain's schools.

The authors of this book examine the British National Curriculum from several different perspectives and concentrate on various subject areas. The uniting theme between these essays is the argument that the subjects in the school curriculum used to be regarded as discrete areas of knowledge which would be imparted to pupils by teachers motivated by a love of learning, but that this has not been enough for recent governments who see schools as a means of promoting social and political goals that may or may not relate to traditional academic disciplines.The contributors to this book argue that we need to return to the traditional view of education as a means of transmitting a body of knowledge from one generation to the next, and that academic rigour and respect for the professionalism of teachers should take precedence over political manipulation of the curriculum.

The subjects in the school curriculum used to be regarded as
discrete areas
of knowledge which would be imparted to pupils by teachers motivated
by a love of learning.
This has not been enough for recent governments, who see schools as a
means of promoting social and political goals that may or may not relate
to
traditional academic disciplines. This has given us geography as a vehicle
for environmentalism; history that neglects major events and
personalities;
science classes in which pupils discuss global warming without having
the knowledge base on which to make an informed judgment; language
classes that are supposed to boost international competitiveness but leave
the literature and cultures of other countries unexamined; English classes
in which the love of language is trumped by the ethnicity and gender of
authors; and maths in which basic concepts like fractions are repeated
year after year without ever having enough time to sink in.
The contributors to this book argue that we need to return to the
traditional
view of education as a means of transmitting a body of knowledge from
one generation to the next, and that academic rigour and respect for
the professionalism of teachers should take precedence over political
manipulation of the curriculum.

Authors Frank Furedi is Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent in Canterbury. His research is oriented towards the study of the impact of precautionary culture and risk aversion on Western societies. In his books he has explored controversies and panics over issues such as health, children, food and cultural life. His writings express a concern with the prevailing regime of cultural confusion towards valuing intellectual and artistic pursuits and with the difficulty that society has in providing a challenging education for children and young people. His books include: Politics of Fear: Beyond Left and Right (2005); Where Have All the Intellectuals Gone: Confronting 21st Century Philistinism (2005); Therapeutic Culture: Cultivating Vulnerability in an Anxious Age (2004); Culture of Fear (2002); and Paranoid Parenting (2001); His new book Invitation to Terror is to be published in October 2007. Shirley Lawes is currently Subject Leader for Modern Foreign Languages at the Institute of Education, University of London. Before moving into higher education, she worked for many years as a teacher of French in secondary schools, further and adult education and industry. Shirley is editor of the journal Francophonie and has published widely on modern languages teaching and learning, and initial teacher training. Michele Ledda teaches English at secondary level and has also taught French and Latin. He has an Italian degree in English Language and Literature and holds an MA by research in English from Leeds University, with a dissertation on James Joyce's Ulysses and Petronius's Satyricon. He collaborates with the education section of the Manifesto Club (www.manifestoclub.com) which campaigns for an elitist education for all, and has written various articles on education both for academic journals and for online magazines. Chris McGovern has 32 years of teaching experience, at all ages from 5 to 18 and in both the maintained and the independent sectors. He has been head of history in two large comprehensive schools and is currently headmaster of an independent preparatory school in North London. He is a qualified Ofsted and ISI inspector. In the 1980s he helped to found the History Curriculum Association and remains a director. During the 1990s he served on two government advisory bodies: the School Examinations and Assessment Council and the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority. As a member of the group that revised the National Curriculum for history in the mid-1990s he published a critical minority report. He has been an education adviser to the Policy Unit at 10 Downing Street under two prime ministers and a member of the TUC local government committee. He is a regular contributor to press, TV and radio discussion of educational matters at home and abroad. Simon Patterson has 30 years of teaching experience at degree level, in philosophy and related subjects, but his critique of the national curriculum in mathematics is based on his exposure to it as a trainee teacher on the Graduate Teacher Programme in 2001/2. He came to feel that the syllabus he and his colleagues were attempting to teach sought to cover too many disparate topics and that the practice of returning to the same topic year after year, and the rigid constraints on time this imposed, tended to de-motivate students and contributed to a culture of under achievement. David Perks is head of physics at Graveney School, London. After completing his PGCE at Oxford he went straight into teaching and now has 20 years of teaching experience in state schools. He campaigns for the teaching of science through separate academic disciplines and writes regularly on education issues, with a focus on defending academic science education in schools. Alex Standish is Assistant Professor of Geography, Department of Social Studies, Western Connecticut State University. Dr Standish recently received a doctorate in geography from Rutgers University in New Jersey. His thesis looked at the changing relationship between geography education and citizenship in schools. Previously, he completed a master's degree in education at Canterbury Christ Church University College in the UK. He has also taught in both primary and secondary schools in the southeast of England. Alex Standish has emerged as one of the few critics of new directions in geography education. He has debated the future of geography at the Geographical Association's annual conference and on BBC radio's Today programme. He also writes for spiked-online and the Times Educational Supplement. Robert Whelan is Deputy Director of Civitas. His books include The Corrosion of Charity; Involuntary Action: How Voluntary is the 'Voluntary' Sector?; Helping the Poor: Friendly visiting, dole charities and dole queues; and Octavia Hill's Letters to Fellow-Workers 1871-1911 (ed.). He is a director of the New Model School Company, set up under the auspices of Civitas, which aims to bring independent schooling within the reach of more parents, and he teaches English to Bengali students at a Saturday school in Bethnal Green.