Posted on 04/04/2012 10:26:59 AM PDT by Stoat
Teachers said lessons should put a greater emphasis on broad skills such as independent research, interpreting evidence and critical thinking rather than learning dates, facts and figures by rote.
The Association of Teachers and Lecturers warned that pupils risked being failed by a Coalition overhaul of the curriculum that will emphasise the core knowledge that pupils should acquire at each key stage.
It claimed that the move represented a throw-back to the 50s and would “kill children’s creativity”.
Jon Overton, a teacher from inner-London, said that smartphones – with full internet access – can by used by pupils to quickly search for facts.
Addressing the union’s annual conference in Manchester, he gave the example of Mozart’s birthday, saying phones took less than a second to find
“We are no longer in an age where a substantial ‘fact bank’ in our heads is required,” he said.
“What we need to equip our young people with are skills; interpersonal skills, enquiry skills, the ability to innovate. That is what universities are saying is lacking, that is what employers say is lacking; transferrable skills that ultimately will make a difference in the life of a young person.”
Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, has warned that too many children are finishing compulsory education lacking the most basic knowledge because existing syllabuses have been stripped of core content.
An expert panel has now been formed to review the curriculum, with new specifications in the core subjects to be introduced in 2014.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Indeed, and the information age brought along with it a monstrous load of bad information....which is shamelessly exploited toward manipulating the uninformed and the lazy, as we Yanks found to our dismay in our last Presidential election, among other examples. In depending entirely upon blind Google searches and Wikipedia posts, without a significant core foundation of time-tested and demonstrably-proven knowledge, we're all going to be headed down a very bad road indeed.
I'm also reminded of The Book People
Amazon.com- Fahrenheit 451- A Novel (9781451673319)- Ray Bradbury- Books
who each took as their solemn mission the lifelong focus of memorizing a book, word for word, so that the knowledge of the past could be one day reclaimed in a future era of enlightenment.
So often I encounter people, primarily Leftists, who are breathtakingly ignorant of basic facts and concepts yet so very sure and unshakably confident of their own intellectual superiority.
We seem to be moving toward needing a clan of "Book People" more and more every day.
At the moment, I frequently think about how much I object to being tethered via a pager and a phone, and how much they limit my freedoms. InfoGoggles like Google’s will multiply that feeling exponentially, and it will no longer be just a feeling.
Thanks for posting :-)
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