Johnson’s title, education secretary, is something of a misnomer. He seems to have no interest in education as such. His preoccupation is with using the classroom to transmit the latest and most fashionable prejudices.
He can’t even leave school sports alone, recently announcing that PE lessons will now stress the importance of a healthy lifestyle and will raise awareness about the problem of obesity. So after children have received instruction on how to behave as green consumers, learned crucial parenting skills and feel very British, they’ll be taught how and why to lose weight.
A curriculum devoted to a total makeover has little energy left for dealing with such secondary issues as how to gain children’s interest in real education.
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Wednesday, June 13, 2007
The hijacking of the school curriculum
Frank Furedi has a characteristically well-written and thought provoking essay up on the Spiked site:
Hmm...
ReplyDeleteI'm beginning to understand why a quarter of children leave school unable to read and write, another (probably the same) quarter can't handle simple arithmetic, and a third have no useful qualifications at all.
Yet the Times reports today that Johnson has all but begged Brown to let him keep his job.
Sorry kids. Nothing but the dole for you to look forward to!