Alright! Is it only me but doesn't feel that every time we turn round we found out that if the government can't gorge us one way they are trying to get at us by gorging our children?
I am refering to the new curriculum that is now being circulated around the UK parliment. Apparently climate charge has suddenly upped and disappeared so we no longer need to teach our children about it until after they are eleven years old. Eleven!?! Have they no idea that by that point children have already laid down the basic framework of how they are going to view the world? The human affect upon our world has to be discussed from the moment a child starts learning science so that cause and effect, the consquences of our actions can form part of that framework.
What is more they don't even bother to make up for lost time between the ages of eleven and fourteen in the proposed science and geography curriculum. No, climate change and the wild weather it is causing is something to be swept under the carpet and then maybe it will go away so the people will stop asking their government awkward questions, such as "What happened to your promise to be the greenest government ever?"
To cap it off sustainable developement and global citizenship has also been downgraded on the draft of the new curriculum.
It appears that the government would love to raise a generation of young people who will continue pillaging the world resources with no mind for how it poisons the very air that we breath and will not care that people in Africa, Central and Southen America and Asia starve because climate change has caused floods/droughts/the movement of disease ranges that has destroyed their crops for decades at a go. After all they are not in England so why should we care?
We should care because they are human beings!!! They bleed red the same as we do. We share ancestory, genetics and a common human community! A common human family! Climate change does not just affect animal species, it also affects us!
Not only does the proposed curriculum fly in the face of the sense of common human decency, it is also in complete denial of the, and I quote, "Expert Panel's clear recommendations". It appears to me that the current government only takes note of the recommendations of the expert panels it SETS UP ITSELF if those recommendations fit the governments preferred view of the world - i.e. the world resources will never run out so we will encourage the people and therefore businesses to continue pillaging them for all they are worth so we can keep taxing our wage pack out of them.
It seems that on top of all the other responsibilities a decent parent has the government is going to add teaching them how to be well rounded, considerate people who understand how they consuming habits affect people on the other side of the world, people like the workers in that factory that collasped in Bangladesh.
However, I would say that this new curriculum is just the unavoidable result of the past changes to the curriculum. Having gone through the education system within the last twenty years (and still struggling to recover from the scars that it left me with) I know for a fact that, not only has the standard dropped from the standard expected of my parent's generation who were learning algerbra when they were eleven years old (I didn't start until I was fourteen), but the whole purpose of education has drastically changed between my generation and theirs. When my parents where going through school the emphasis was not on what you knew but rather on how you learned it. For example, in the mathematics O-level you could have a totally different method for, say, calculating percentages from what the curriculum had proposed. However, if the examiner, who would be a mathematical professor, could see that your method was sound and accurate you would still receive full marks for that question. What is more the examiner was more than likely to start teaching your method as an alternative to the curriculum method to those students who could not grasp the curriculum method.
These days you must use the curriculum method, even if you cannot understand and therefore misscalculate the answer because if you use a different method from the curriculum state one, even if you calculate the answer correctly, the examiner, who might be a English teacher if you are lucky, will still not give you the marks that question was worth. Why? Because they compare your answer to what is written on the answer sheet and are not allowed to award points to method that devate from the curriculum method, even if the answer is correctly calculated.
These days the emphasis is on what you know, not how you learned it and heaven forbid a child being taught to work out how they can apply their knowledge to a field different from the one they were taught in. That simply will not do. Why, if we encourage children to actually be intelligent then they might be able to see the parellels between history and the current situation. Such as the fact that the first thing any tyrant does when they are building they power base is to constrict education because ignorant people are easy to drive. If people are left ignorant then they will believe whatever you wish to tell them through the medium of mass media. However, if people are educated in an education system that teaches them how to learn a new thing every day then they will ineverably start asking questions. Once the questions start then the tyrant cannot answer them. When the people realise that there is no answer forth coming they start looking for answers and when they find them that is when revolutions start.
And I beg to differ with the point of view that says that revolutions are violent, evil things. I propose a new revolution:-
1.We disagree with how our government is exploting the natural world - revolution = research the origins of the products you buy. If they come from unsustainable sources don't buy them.
2. We disagree with how our government is encouraging pollution - revolution = walk, bike, catch the bus, car share on every journey that we can.
3. We disagree with how much pesticide is sprayed on our food - revolution = dig for victory! Grow your own! As much of your own as you can manage and buy organic food that is grown in your own country.
4. We disagree with how the meat industry treats animals - revolution = if you don't want to go vegetarain then buy your meat from your local butcher. They can't afford to buy meat from animals that have been transported live over hundreds of miles. What is more, if you walk to the local butcher you save in fuel the slight, and I do mean slight, increase in price.
There are a hundred and one things we can do, each and every one of us, to revolutionize the way we live and the world we live in and more importantly, the world we leave for our children. However, to do that we have to be able to learn about them. Tell me, who does it benefit if we are unable to learn?
For more information about the propsed curriculum see:
www.wwf.org.uk/blog/campaigns/national-curriculum-shouldnt-hide-the-truth-about-climate
One final note:
"In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists." Eric Hoffer
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