Uh oh, it’s 11:50. That’s cutting it too fine.
The UK education secretary has decided to fuck up science education.
All children are to be taught a foreign language – which could include Mandarin, Latin or Greek – from the age of seven under reforms to the national curriculum being unveiled by the education secretary, Michael Gove.
In other reforms, children will be encouraged to learn science by studying nature, and schools will be expected to place less emphasis on teaching scientific method.
Less emphasis on teaching scientific method? What the hell? Why would they do that? They might as well say they’re going to place less emphasis on teaching children critical thinking and just stuff them with a Box o’ Facts.
The science curriculum is expected to emphasise using the natural habitat around schools – learning biology by studying the growth and development of trees, for example.
There will be less of a focus on doing experiments. Instead, children will be taught to observe their surroundings and learn how scientists have classified the natural world.
Seriously? Seriously? Forget experiments, just look at stuff and learn some lists?
That sounds like me at my teenage worst. “Uhhh, I like to look at stuff, that’s good enough.”
One of the first few comments captures it nicely.
Learning foreign languages from age 7 using songs and poetry and learning about science by spending time outside observing nature – that’s not news, my step-son did that at school 15 years ago. But then he did go to a Steiner school…
Precisely.
Whew – 11:58.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)