'Schools should teach skills not subjects'

[Marcus Marulus]

'Schools should teach skills not subjects'

By Graeme Paton

03/06/2008

Traditional school timetables broken down by subject should be scrapped because they favour middle-class pupils, a former government adviser says.

The national curriculum should be more focused on the teaching of skills such as team building, public speaking and problem solving, rather than "an encyclopaedic knowledge" of the world, he believes.

Prof John White, from the Institute of Education, part of London University, says subject-based lessons discriminate against pupils from poor homes who struggle to adjust to a "highly academic school culture".
He also says control of the curriculum should be taken out of the Government's hands and run by an independent body to ensure lessons are not too politicised.

The comments are to be made in a speech today to mark the 20th anniversary of the National Curriculum, which was introduced by the Conservatives to regulate the teaching of subjects in state schools.

Prof White, who was on a committee that led the Government's recent overhaul of the curriculum for 11- to 14-year-olds, says distinct lessons in English, maths, history, geography, science and foreign languages have traditionally been used to equip children with the skills needed to become a member of the middle classes.

They have become a vehicle for entry to university, but this harmed poor pupils unable to get the top grades, he suggests.

On Tuesday night, the Tories attacked the remarks. Nick Gibb, the shadow schools secretary, said: "This anti-knowledge, anti-subject ideology is deeply damaging to our education system.

"It is this sort of thinking that has led to the promotion of discredited reading methods, the erosion of three separate sciences and the decline of mathematics skills."

[source]

[Sergius]

skills such as team building, public speaking and problem solving

Wait a minute, those aren't skills. Those are buzzwords used by those who have no skills.

[Kernunnos]

Originally Posted by Sergius

Wait a minute, those aren't skills. Those are buzzwords used by those who have no skills.

They are real skills, only they are not easy to determine in a standardized manner. This is why this approach is very dangerous and not new at all: it is the old egalitarian marxist assault to burgeois knowledge based on what are deemed non-necessary notions.

It is a tattered old banner that represented only a spectacular failure when applied.

It is just a way to give left leaning professors the power to discriminate against pupils of non proletarian background and a weapon of indoctrination.

This was actually one of the core tenets of the 1968 upheaval.