The Guardian reports that the government is to introduce a GCSE in Natural History. It had previously said that the new qualification was in doubt because it was "seen as a Conservative Party initiative".
This led me to recall the George Orwell column that began:
Last time I mentioned flowers in this column an indignant lady wrote in to say that flowers are bourgeois.
But now, says the Guardian:
Announcing the new GCSE in parliament, the education minister Catherine McKinnell said it would equip young people "to understand and respect the natural world and contribute to the protection and conservation of the environment locally, nationally and internationally".
If you want to read more about the case for the qualification, see the guest post that Mary Colwell wrote for me:
It arose from a realisation that the world is unfamiliar to so many. Although we live here, breathe the air, eat what is grown in the earth and watch programmes that celebrate the natural world, many people know little about their surroundings.
This was not the case 50 years ago. There has been a steady erosion of the rock that kept us stable on the planet - our understanding of nature and our place in it.
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