Educational Anarchy in the UK

When someone thinks of middle or high school it makes sense to think in terms of subjects such as math, history, geography, and english. According to a British professor, subjects such as math, history, and geography should be eliminated from curriculum. Story from the Daily Mail.

Children should no longer be taught traditional subjects at school because they are "middle-class" creations, a Government adviser will claim today.

I'm surprised he didn't say "bourgeoisie education foisted upon the proletariat." He sounds quite Marxist to me. It shouldn't matter whether this education system was a "middle-class creation." If it works, who cares where it came from.

Professor John White, who contributed to a controversial shake-up of the secondary curriculum, believes lessons should instead cover a series of personal skills.

Pupils would no longer study history, geography and science but learn skills such as energy- saving and civic responsibility through projects and themes.

He will outline his theories at a conference today staged by London's Institute of Education - to which he is affiliated - to mark the 20th anniversary of the national curriculum.

[...]

Professor White will claim ministers are already "moving in the right direction" towards realising his vision of replacing subjects with a series of personal aims for pupils.

But he says they must go further because traditional subjects were invented by the middle classes and are "mere stepping stones to wealth".

He's sounding more Marxist by the second. I don't see why wealth is such a bad thing, unless of course you're a capitalist hating socialist. White looks like he is trying to push socialism through education reform. What better way to indoctrinate than by steering the education system away from a "stepping stone to wealth."

The professor believes the origins of our [British] subject-based education system can be traced back to 19th century middle-class values.

While public schools focused largely on the classics, and elementary schools for the working class concentrated on the three Rs, middle-class schools taught a range of academic subjects.

These included English, maths, history, geography, science and Latin or a modern language.

They "fed into the idea of academic learning as the mark of a well-heeled middle- class", he said last night.

The horror, the horror. Academic learning as a good thing, what a horrible idea.

The Tories then attempted to impose these middle-class values by introducing a traditional subject-based curriculum in 1988.

But this "alienated many youngsters, especially from disadvantaged backgrounds", he claimed.

The professor, who specialises in philosophy of education, was a member of a committee set up to advise Government curriculum authors on changes to secondary schooling for 11 to 14-year-olds.

I have a major problem with the professor's last statement. Education by subject matter is somehow unfair to "youngsters from disadvantaged backgrounds?" Is the esteemed professor trying to argue that only "middle-class" children are able to handle this type of education and disadvantaged children aren't. Sketchy.

Eliminating history, geography, and math is utterly ludicrous. You can't know where you're going if you don't know where you've been. You can't know where you're going if you don't know where you are. And in a digital age, it makes no sense to push math to the sidelines. Unless of course, you want to live in a socialist utopia that just happens to be educationally uncompetitive with the rest of the world. Your choice, professor.