Real History

The exciting `real history' syllabus begins seven thousand years ago (or even earlier, like 9,500 yrs ago), at Çatalhöyük, along with the partly lost knowledge of Indus Valley, and earliest China, then the known civilizations of Sumer & Babylon, along with Egypt, re-born India, and China, then Persia and Greece, Rome and Phoenicia, then greater Arabian Empire, also the Olmec - Maya - Inca - Aztec; all followed by Carl the Great (Charlemagne), then Genghis Khan, then Tamerlane; subsequently the recent emergence of modern 'States'.

Contrast that richness of known world-history with the pathetically biased scraps British schoolkids have to learn by rote. What are our UK recollections of school 'history'?

- Julius Caesar, William the Conquerer, a dreary list of `English Kings'nQueens' (actually mostly French, Dutch, and now German) and that was it!

UPDATE May 2007 - UK Education Not Fit For Purpose - "limitations of our target-driven, exam-dominated, box-ticking system".

UPDATE Nov. 2007 - UK's kids `less aware' than even the USA's - "British children lack global awareness".

The Reason?
We can speculate that our `rulers' are rightly ashamed and covering-up.

The cure?
Real and exciting `History' (as outlined above) should be combined with `Geography' - a combo guaranteed to inspire kids' interest in both subjects.

UPDATE Jan 2008 - Geography teaching is in decline, with schoolchildren claiming it is "boring and irrelevant".

more UK education failure

Figuring-out

To build things and to pay for the building you need `useful' mathematics, which has always been about understanding shapes and angles (geometry), and proportions (ratios & percentages).

That's what the Egyptians, the Greeks and the Romans used, and that's what we still use, for all construction, for all civil administration and for all business dealings.

Anything more mathematical can get boring, tedious and, more importantly, is only ever going to be used by specialists.

[But we need to add basic Boolean logic - how a digital brain thinks. It's graspable in a day or three and it's necessary for clear thought, and for just coping, in a techno age.]

So why do kids get tormented by hours & years of non-useful algebra and calculus and worse - but aren't properly taught how to figure out angles, simple percentages and basic logic?

The most basic and essential tools that kids and all of us need for daily life are actually being withheld - not properly taught - in school!

Do our politicos actually want a dumbo population? Maybe so we don't realize how much we're being conned and robbed by the lying averages ^ref-14 of corrupt politicians and civil-servants? ^ref-15

UPDATE 2007 - UK Education Not Fit For Purpose - "half those questioned thought their basic maths and English skills let them down".

UPDATE 2008 - Public education sub-standard - "47% of those polled wished they had learnt more maths at school"

What if you'd been born about a hundred years ago?

The situation of ordinary working-class kids in the UK doesn't seem to have changed much - except by a matter of degree - from the 19^th Cent.
Under the Church of England rules, ordinary children (i.e. non-rich) were not allowed to learn to write or to learn any mathematics.
The UK Gov't - speaking through the Church of England - was quite frank, and brutal, about its reasons - `It was to prevent ordinary people "thinking above their station".
That is, to make sure we were stuck as slave labor.

more UK education failure

Languages

Children can easily learn several languages - if sympathetic imitation starts early enough.

Personal note - while having a quick departure breakfast near Monte Rosa, on Italy / Swiss border, was bombarded by questions, in hopeful English & French & German, from four, five, six & seven year old local children who, of course, also spoke pretty good Italian. It transpired the glass fronted hotel / restaurant - (maybe just entering Biella?) - was home to some and was the others' school-bus stop in snowy weather. They were all curious about NATO ^ref-16 license plates and the Welsh nationality sticker on the sports-car outside; maybe dragons are popular there also.

That's impossible to imagine happening in UK, where only a tiny few with multi-lingual parents get any useful language training.

UPDATE MAR 2007 - Finally - UK Gov't claims plan to (nearly) teach languages usefully.
"Every child in England will start learning a modern foreign language in primary school from the age of seven, the government announced today."
However, UK's incompetent bureaucrats & teachers immediately (same day) claimed that's `too difficult'!
Ha! How `difficult' is it to switch on a language training video? Children learn languages by imitation.
Using recorded lessons they would pick up `real' accents and speech patterns, which they can't ever do from average UK teacher.

more UK education failure

Music

Virtually all young children have huge potential musical abilities - perfect pitch etc. - which are lost after a certain age.

Those same children will then be totally alienated by unsympathetic - mindlessly snobbish - music teaching at a later stage.

Are UK schools purposely suppressing children's music and language abilities?

UPDATE 2007 The Guardian - "UK 'shamed' by music's elitist label".

more UK education failure

Physical Reality

We don't even learn real Physics: the syllabus is mostly stuff we already know to be incomplete or even untrue. ^ref-17

Why? Are the politicos scared someone might get a clearer view of reality? ^ref-18

Well, the answer depends on your viewpoint. Suggest an unbiased look on the web - maybe starting at `search perceptions' and follow your instincts.

You can see the UK curriculum seems purposely arranged to suppress our abiltities.

Why? Do UK's politicos actually want ^ref-19 a nation of ignorant, racist, talentless chauvinists, incapable of rational thought and unable to communicate with thinking fellow humans around the world? Like the politicos themselves?

UPDATE Sept. 2007
`Crap system intended to only advantage the elite'. (paraphrased)
"Boring lessons blamed for rise in truancy"

UPDATE Dec. 2007
"Shamefully, Britain remains stuck at the bottom of the international league tables."
Report - "School results still depend heavily on class"

Estimate:-

junking 33% of the curriculum - so removing misinformation and ending 'curriculum rush';

reintroducing valuable non-classroom subjects - music, sport, PE, drama, swimming, private reading / private study etc - to the school day;

scrapping homework completely - to prevent damaging class-bias and discrimination;

would substantially improve characters and academic outcomes!

UK's MULTI-EXAM SYSTEM

Why do UK politicians seem always to choose, initially anyway, the most harmful and inefficient methods and systems?

By 2006 - UK's intensive multiple exam system has had the effect of making `valuable' - so far as selfish teachers and heads are concerned - only those students pretty well guaranteed to achieve good `passes'.

At all stages the others are deemed `worthless' - by selfish teachers and heads - because the league tables are biased toward pre-selection.

So, at all stages they tend to be abandoned - by selfish teachers and heads - whilst in reality they are most important students of all. They are our future - both as work-force and voters!

[I suspect politicians make those `wrong' choices because they are guided by a civil-service ruled by elitists, who need to preserve privilege and corruption for their own advantage.
Which is why we see this faked `incompetence' in all matters:- of taxation, education, law, policing and of the electoral system itself.]