This is the 3rd in our series of posts about the review of the national curriculum – the Francis Review. Previous posts can be found here and here. As ever with NAEE blogs, the views expressed are not necessarily those of the Association.
Are we ready for the Curriculum Review? On the opening page of ‘L’Homme et La Terre’, the great 19th century geographer Elisée Reclus declared that “l’homme est la nature prenant conscience d’elle-même.” This roughly translates as “human beings are nature becoming conscious of itself.” I have been wrestling with the meaning of this startling declaration. Two things strike me: (1) it clearly locates humanity as inseparable from nature; and (2) it has something in common with Socrates’s famous dictum that “the unexamined life is not worth living.”
These wonderful statements are a million miles away from the narrow ways in which the education system in England has come to understand its intentions, let alone its curriculum. So how can we approach such hifalutin’ aspirations from the starting point of a National Curriculum which is based on Michael Gove’s deliberately narrow understanding of what E.G. Hirsch meant by ‘core knowledge’, via the even-narrower ways in which the 2019 Ofsted framework has been interpreted by too many schools and MATs? (that is, as a relentless stream of Gradgrindian ‘facts’, to be crammed into the ‘empty vessels’ of children and then micro-tested constantly in order to superglue those ‘facts’ to their memories).
Well, we do have a curriculum review under way. And the government has already made some welcome steps towards restoring the place of the arts and design technology in secondary schools. After all, cognitive science (so beloved by exponents of the current fad for enforced memorisation) also tells us that people tend to process new information emotionally before they do so cognitively: we are ‘nature feeling’ as well as ‘nature thinking’. Meanwhile, the new Education Minister has also made some promising noises about a new National Curriculum featuring ‘critical thinking’ (framed in part as a response to the misinformation campaigns that led to recent riots.
So, yes please, Francis Review, to creating space for enquiry, criticality, questioning, the testing of ideas, for exploring story, to space for creativity, innovation and self-development, to more space for teachers to exercise their professional judgement. And yes please to a paradigm shift from ‘empty vessels’ to something more humanistic, sociable and exploratory: to more time and space for learners to explore and go deeper into their consciousness of (and conscience about) the nature of their lives and their world.
However, all this is true of good education in general without addressing the need to be explicit about the environment, sustainability and the climate and biodiversity crises. If these things are not stated, will they really be in there? That is where the Review’s Working Principles offer sobering words. “The Review will seek evolution, not revolution”, they state, and the Review “cannot address every issue facing children and young people, or wider society.” This is surely aimed in part at cooling the ardour of environmentalists. On the other hand, a Review “that ensures children and young people leave school ready for life and ready for work” must surely tip its hat towards the learning required in a push for a greener economy.
If what is really needed is a new National Curriculum with sustainability at its heart, It looks like we may well be facing a long road ahead. Yet surely, we all need something that goes even further than a restoration of the 2006 Sustainable Schools Framework or the various Global Learning Programmes? DERC and the Global Learning Network have already begun to make their case, while the Global Action Plan’s call for evidence is clearly going to be of great value. Meanwhile, we are waiting to see what will happen about the Natural History GCSE, originally scheduled for 2025.
Actually, I wonder if the teaching profession really does have an appetite for a completely new curriculum. Even if a revolution is genuinely needed. My partner, a special needs teacher, is up for it. I am less sure. And anyway, are we – as the loosely-constituted environmental/global/sustainability education sector – anything like ready for such a thing? I suspect not.
What would certainly be helpful right now is a clear message from the new government that ‘giving ourselves permission’ is welcome. There has been a growing concern that real engagement with the environment and sustainability was becoming ‘off limits’ for many schools. Prominent top-down ‘permission’ may not be quite what that old revolutionary Reclus had in mind, but it would surely be a start.
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Ben Ballin is a freelance educator and a former NAEE Fellow. He can be contacted at: benballin@hotmail.com