Clause 1 - Duties in relation to high standards and the fulfilment of potential
Education and Inspections Bill
10:45 am
Nick Gibb (Shadow Minister (Schools), Education; Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, Conservative)
The hon. Lady is right. Young people are better equipped to deal with computers than our generation and older generations were, but that does not mean that we should not be teaching them the knowledge that previous generations have acquired. We let our children down by not giving them that information. The hon. Lady confirms many of the issues that I want to draw out in my remarks about amendment No. 3.
I remember visiting a school in Rotherham during the by-election there in 1994 when I was the candidate. The head teacher said that it was not her role to prepare children to do well at “Trivial Pursuit” quizzes. I believe that her comment shows a jaundiced view of education. Of course, it is not the role of schools to prepare children for a television quiz or board game, but what she said reflects a view that knowledge is not an important aspect of education, which, in the words of Melanie Phillips, in her excellent book, “All Must Have Prizes”, has led to the “de-education” of Britain. Chris Woodhead quotes Tim Brighouse in an article in The Times Educational Supplement and basically points out the same thing: such people need an alternative approach to education that does not involve the transfer of knowledge.
The essence of the issue is best summed up by Michele Paule, in her contribution to the Campaign for Learning, which is also quoted by Chris Woodhead. She says that
“the sheer weight of content in the curriculum model inhibits learning by restricting the range of creativity of classroom experiences, leaving too many students engaged in accumulating information which they cannot see the use of beyond school.”
She wants to discover
“a much more coherent approach to developing meta-cognitive processes.”
The Campaign for Learning says that the task of the teacher, or “learning manager”, in the 21st century is to “equip” young people with
“the basic skill of ‘learnacy’, or learning to learn”.
Pupils will learn how to learn if there is
“an explicit focus on the skill of learning to learn”,
so that they have
“structured opportunities to explore the cognitive processes involved in learning”
and are helped
“to understand their particular blend of intelligence and learning styles and how they should develop these.”
The learning-how-to-learn approach is one of the dogmas of the current education orthodoxy that lies at the root of our underperformance. Surely, the best way to learn how to learn is actually to learn and acquire knowledge—lots of it—while young and able to absorb it. Thinking is about processing information and knowledge. Creative thinking is about people discovering new thoughts and concepts from the knowledge that they have. Thinking in a vacuum is just vacuous. As one writer has said:
“We tell our children less and less and expect them to think more and more.”
Perhaps the hon. Lady’s approach to education is right, but let us debate these things in public, rather than among educationists in specialised conferences that rarely receive any media attention. Let us talk about it in public and, if there is a general dispute between one form of education and another, let us ultimately put it to the public to decide.
We might ask, “Who are we, mere elected MPs, with no track record on education”—I speak as a former chartered accountant—“to gainsay a whole industry of education experts who have created this orthodoxy? They are the experts. Surely they know best.” Like all expertocracies, it may be dominant, but that does not make it right, nor does it make it representative of the views of the profession as a whole. The problem with experts in a given field is that they are intolerant of opposing views. That is particularly so in education.
Over the past 40 years, those with an alternative approach have simply been driven out, with no promotion, job, research funding or tenure, but there are opposing views.