“BY cutting waste and duplication in the curriculum, I am giving teachers time to concentrate on what is really vital,” says Ed Balls, Gordon Brown’s Schools Secretary.

These are the Mirror’s “five-minute classes for video-clip kids”.

Good then that the children will be given what they want: shorter classes with more range. Teachers will be free to introduce more topic-based lessons to the core curriculum.

As the Independent says, teachers could teach global warming, a discipline that has so far straddled geography and science and, as Live Earth showed, music, marketing and religion.

The emphasis is less on teaching and more on learning, so goes the Government’s text book. The slower children can go at a slower pace. The brighter children can march on. And the teachers can cater for one and all, helping the individual and ensuring everyone reaches their full potential.

Education is not, says Dr Ken Boston, chief executive of the Curriculum Authority, a “winnowing device to sort out the wheat form the chaff – a game of winners and losers”. Education is not about filling the bucket but lighting the fire.

The Field Of Education 

It is what the Sun calls “TWO FINGERS TO CHURCHILL”. And: “Schools axe Winnie from history lessons.” There is talk of “fury” as Sir Winston Churchill is “axed” from school history lessons.

It’s “total madness” says MPs Nicholas Soames. “Sir Winston out, drugs lessons in,” says the Sun. No longer will the nippers have to learn about Churchill, Hitler, Gandhi, Stalin, Martin Luther King, the Wars of the Roses, Elizabeth I or Henry VIII. Instead the kidz will learn more about “relevant” issues, “like sex, drugs, climate chance and GM goods”.

“Fight them,” orders the Sun. Never in the field of school lessons has so much damage been down to so many by so few (Harry Potter). “When the war with the giants is over, the wars of the pygmies will begin,” says Madonna holding up a map of a cattle ranch in Borneo.

“The madness of Brown,” says the Express. “Now he brings in 5-minute lessons, writes Churchill out of history and orders schools to teach Urdu.”

It’s the “politically correct onslaught”. It’s joined-up teaching. It’s classes in money management, cookery and “understanding racial differences”.

It’s what Hitler would have called Revolution in Education. Of what Stalin would have said: “Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.” “Education, education, education,” says Tony Blair.

Dismissed.

Posted: 13th, July 2007 | In: Uncategorized. Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0