The new primary school curriculum has naturally attracted a lot of interest. One has to be impressed in particular with the effort to link subject areas so that they overlap and interact to form a "holistic learning experience for the child". The idea presumably is that young persons might unknowingly, or accidentally, absorb a little bit of some hated subjects, perhaps maths and geography, for example, while ostensibly being given, say, a history lesson (if actual "lessons" are still given in this new dawn).
The young students will then find that they inexplicably understand things they thought they never knew at all, which will make a welcome difference from thinking they understand things they know nothing about, such as life.
The fact that they won't know how exactly they learned certain things will be irrelevant. It will be a sort of intellectual osmosis, invisible and apparently miraculous. Gaps will be magically filled in throughout the connected world, and these fortunate young people should grow up to escape the dreary old Cartesian tyranny, and take a new metaphysical view of knowledge, its perception and accumulation.
They won't know themselves.
This holistic business is gaining ground elsewhere, too. For the first time this year, in Palm Beach County, Florida, every school-goer will study the Holocaust and African-American history, and will also have to take lessons in women's studies. But these curricula do not replace any others - they are designed to mesh with the curricula already in place. Many lessons will overlap, and students can read the work of Zora Neale Hurston, for example, in a literature class, and at the same time be fulfilling African/American and women's studies requirements.
It is a devilishly clever idea. People who might think of themselves as rabid anti-feminists, for example, will accidentally find themselves so expert in the subject-matter that they can nimbly move to either side of the fence, depending on the company and its intimidation levels.
A bored guest listening to a mathematician droning on at a party will no longer have to wait for his own subject to come up, but can interrupt expertly by dipping into the stock of inadvertently-acquired knowledge and casually remark (for example) that Einstein used to read and collect girls' school magazines, and wore black underwear as a mark of support for the world's non-white peoples.
The specialist will disappear as a species, everyone will know a little about everything, a plumber will be able to pop in and help out a surgeon, and vice versa.
Whatever about the holistic approach, there is likely, however, to be some controversy over the proposed new history curriculum, wherein children will learn by "recalling personal experiences and elements of family history". In this way, it seems, "the child will, in simple ways, become familiar with the process of collecting a wide range of evidence, examining and exploring it, and drawing conclusions from it".
Yes. Well, it might depend on the family history, and indeed whether or not parents can feel entirely happy with the prospect of seven-year-old Nathan, for example, recalling personal experiences and elements of family history for the delectation, and education, of his classmates. Skeletons and closets come to mind - and (inadvertently, in a holistic way) the reply of the late Alan Clark when asked if he had any such bony specimens in his own closet: "Dear boy, can't close the door."
At least we do not appear to be going down the perilous road recently marked out in Britain where, under the Government's new proposals, history will no longer have to be taught in chronological order. The outraged History Curriculum Association said last month that every king, queen, hero, heroine, battle and historical date has been effectively eliminated from the national curriculum studied by children from five to 14. The association launched an alternative manifesto in "a final attempt to restore to the children of this country their birthright - a sense of identity".
Meanwhile in Canada, things have come to an even sorrier pass, with Prime Minister Jean Chretien himself criticising the teaching of history, and saying that Canadians would get a lot further in the world "if they had a better sense of where they've been". He was echoing the views of respected Canadian historian Jack Granatstein, who has noted that in four of Canada's provinces, there are now no compulsory Canadian history courses at all: "We're becoming a nation without a memory, every bit as adrift as amnesiacs wandering the streets."
Times Square will resume on September 30th
