Education secretary, Michael Gove, has announced an over-haul of the school curriculum. But the majority of what he says beggars belief.
If you want to control a population one of the things you do, first, is control their knowledge of history; many years ago Kenneth Baker did it - ‘they should know kings and queens’ philosophy. Gove wraps it up as Britain’s ‘island history’.
He makes a great deal about students needing to understand and practise correct sentence structure, spelling, grammar. Not surprisingly he used this statement to bash ‘left wing idealogues’.
Now I don’t know where Gove has been . . . certainly not into any primary school I’ve been into recently. Primary children study history in broad sweeps, getting an understanding or feeling for different periods. And if he bothered to open a Level 3 SATS English paper, I think he might find his language skills challenged.
Gove then has a list (don’t these Tories love them?) - Keats, Dryden, Byron . . . I can think of ways I could teach these in a secondary school, but I don’t think they’re appropriate for all groups - I don’t see the point. It’s much better to work with some of the brilliant contemporary writers. I could pick one or two Year 9 or 10 classes that Gove might like to prepare a lesson plan for and teach it.
Gove isn’t, of course, really considering education, much more to the fore is his desire to re-establish his position within the Tory front bench. The education secretary has proved once again his credentials - he’s a pompous prat.
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