We can’t do it all: we can’t teach our children everything. British education systems have responded to the demands of every age by adding to school curricula. It has been much harder to purposefully take things away. Just like the nice jacket that doesn’t quite fit, we’d better save that little bit of trigonometry in case we need it later. The cluttered curriculum is fueling the great post-GCSE exodus from science: to enthuse young people about the beauty and utility of science, we need to decide what to take away.
Ever-burgeoning curricula sometimes create a temporary fix for their own problems, when they push entire subjects off school timetables by accident. The passing of subjects such as Latin is occasionally lamented, the threat to drama or music is sometimes recognised, but science curricula continues to protuberate. The accumulation of curricular items has created a particular crisis in science: we don’t spend lesson time on what is most important-we can’t try out, think about, play with scientific ideas-because there’s too much stuff to learn in the first place.
We get taught about things at school. In science, this usually involves new words. We learn about osmosis and electrolysis and elastic potential energy. We learn facts about these new things: the role of a selectively permeable membrane; which way the ions travel; how to calculate elastic potential energy. Facts matter, of course: factual knowledge connects us to the world and changes who we are. It can make us wiser, kinder, more tolerant, more charitable. It can help us to view our own lives in perspective, to escape our surroundings, or even ignite passions that imbue our lives with meaning or bring us to action. Facts are a good thing, but it’s what we do with those facts that is what really matters: how we critique them, apply them, use them to solve problems, analyse and evaluate beyond them. Students shouldn’t just learn facts.
Education bodies worldwide agree: even if students could soak up the facts perfectly, the world doesn’t need walking mini-encyclopedias. That’s why the PISA tests strive to test the application of knowledge. The national curriculum for England emphases that there’s more to learning science than the subject content, students need to master that content in many ways, including applying mathematical techniques and understanding what it takes to work scientifically. Thus, in its specification for its GCSE physics qualification, AQA uses 6 pages to describe how it will assess the “working scientifically” aspect of the course. In contrast, it takes 60 pages to describe the subject content to be assessed.
If we want students to evaluate and analyse and critique scientific data, if we want them to think about the ethical and social consequences of science, if we want to relate science to their experience of the world, if we want them to plan their own projects and follow their own investigations, in short, to think about science, we shouldn’t have to wait until we’ve got through 60 pages of ‘subject content’ first. But that is what we do, we trudge through the content, we’ve got to get to the end of the specification, first. You can suppose that, because science teachers are incredible (and many of them are), that they can help kids to get their heads around scientific concepts and digest the facts, at the same time as practising a multitude of other skills. But there are factors which are pushing science teachers out of school, and this is one of them. There’s so much stuff to get through that the subject suffers… the thinking about science and the trying out science and the connecting science with the world, where you find its relevance, its utility, its beauty.
No wonder that Andreas Schleicher, director of education and skills at the OECD in Paris told the Guardian that we need to choose things to get rid of from the curriculum. The curriculum is cluttered: it’s easy to see the benefit of learning a new topic or skill and to argue for its inclusion in school lessons. There’s something good to be said for learning about elastic potential energy and electrolysis and osmosis. It is a braver thing is to argue for an item’s removal. But that’s what we need to do, and there are three things for a start.
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