Letter From the UK (About Education)

Plain Speaking

Education Secretary, Michael Gove has been trying to shake up the education system in the UK.  Naturally there has been plenty of pushback.  However, we cannot help but applaud his no-nonsense confrontation with the "experts" over infantile approaches now being recommended for the teaching of history.  It is salutary that the one ultimately responsible for education in the UK is not afraid to denounce the emperor as having no clothes.  This from The Telegraph:

Michael Gove: pupils taught about Hitler using Mr Men characters

Secondary school pupils are being encouraged to learn about Nazi Germany using Mr Men characters as part of “infantilised” history lessons in schools, Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, has warned. 

By Graeme Paton, Education Editor

2:12PM BST 09 May 2013

Proper history teaching is being “crushed” by a rise in the number of education resources that attempt to dumb down the subject using figures from popular culture, Mr Gove said.  In a speech, he also told how lesson plans for primary school pupils had been produced encouraging the study of the Middle Ages through Disney films such as Robin Hood. The drive to make history more accessible was part of a “culture of low aspirations” that held children back across the curriculum, Mr Gove said.

He claimed the shift had also spread to English literature where the vast majority of pupils shun books written prior to the 20th century as part of GCSEs and often focus on texts fit for primary-age pupils such as Lord of the Flies, he said.  The comments – in a speech to an education conference staged by fee-paying Brighton College – come amid major criticism over a Coalition shake-up of the National Curriculum.

Teaching unions and education professors have led the attack on the reforms, which set out the key knowledge that pupils should master at each age, saying it will reduce lessons to little more than a “pub quiz”.
But addressing independent school leaders, Mr Gove hit back at a “culture of excuses and low aspirations which some in the education establishment still defend”.

He told how the Historical Association – a group of academics and teachers – had distributed lesson plans to primary schools suggesting pupils “learn about the early Middle Ages by studying the depiction of King John as a cowardly lion in Disney's Robin Hood”.  “If that proves too taxing then they are asked to organise a fashion parade or make plasticine models,” he said. “Alternatively, students can help create ‘an interactive Powerpoint based on well known animated aquatic characters: for example, Nemo.”

Mr Gove also quoted some resources from the Active History website – written by a history teacher based at an international school in France – which are focused on pupils taking the IGCSE, the alternative version of conventional GCSEs. He said it would “bad enough if this approach were restricted to primary schools, but even at GCSE level this infantilisation continues”.

One set of history teaching resources for secondary pupils suggests “spending classroom time depicting the rise of Hitler as a Mr Men story”, said Mr Gove.  It apparently asks pupils to “brainstorm the key people involved” such as Hitler, Hindenburg, Goering, Van der Lubbe and Rohm, adding: “Bring up a picture of the Mr Men characters on the board. Discuss which characters are the best match.” It is not known how many schools in this country use the resources.

Mr Gove said: “I am familiar with the superb historical account Richard J Evans gives of the rise, rule and ruin of the Third Reich and I cannot believe he could possibly be happy with reducing the history of Germany's darkest years to a falling out between Mr Tickle and Mr Topsy-Turvy.”

In further comments, Mr Gove criticised how “relatively low expectations have been set in our existing national examinations”, including English literature.  Almost 280,000 students taking a GCSE through Britain’s biggest exam board studied just one novel, he said, with the vast majority reading Of Mice and Men.

He said the “overwhelming” number of remaining pupils studied other 20th century texts such as Lord of the Flies, which is “considered appropriate for primary children in the best schools”. Mr Gove quoted figures showing how less than one per cent studied a book written prior to 1900 – mainly Pride and Prejudice, Far From The Madding Crowd and Wuthering Heights.

The situation was “even worse” in drama, Mr Gove said, with the majority of students choosing An Inspector Calls, Pygmalion and Hobson's Choice, which were all written in the 20th century.  The comments follow the publication of a letter in the Telegraph and the Independent from 100 academics who criticised the new National Curriculum – due to be introduced from 2014 – for pushing pupils “too far, too soon”.

“The assumption lying behind the letter was that the level of aspiration embodied in the current curriculum, its associated teaching methods and our national examinations was already high enough,” Mr Gove said.  “I have a different starting premise from those 100 academics who are so heavily invested in the regime of low expectations and narrow horizons which they have created.

“I believe we need to ask more – much more – of our education system.”