What to learn, when #2
Further to my recent post, a couple of points I have been thinking about stretching further back into the secondary & primary system:
- choice is killing the notion of a curriculum. Even primary schools now offer electives – I was told recently that in at least some states music is not compulsory – students just have to do a creative subject (so art or music). I can’t see any benefit in limiting scope so young. The result of this is students hit the next stage of their education with less breadth, less scope and, ironically, less choice.
- schools need to be better at teaching the social and economic worlds. Sciences are important but over-emphasised; over-emphasised because they can be readily defined and taught. My secondary education finished without significant mention of Islam, economics, politics or psychology. We did, however, make honeycomb confectionery in science.
Lifetime value needs to be the driving rationale here. Schools need to provide rigorous breadth to equip students for the future.
“choice is killing the notion of a curriculum”
Yeah. I should have mentioned the worst tertiary system I’ve ever heard of: at UQ for a while (not any more, I think) departments were not allowed to set prerequisites! I hope the problems with that are obvious.