Posted on 08/24/2006 8:35:13 AM PDT by JSedreporter
Are British parents prepared to be 24-7 role models for their children? They’d better be, since British schools have apparently decided to opt out of a large part of their previous responsibilities for educating students.
It all started when a re-wording of the national curriculum statement revealed that the education establishment was no longer bound by pesky moral absolutes like right and wrong.
Ostensibly created to “slim down” the rules and regs, the working draft’s new wording eliminated a previous statement saying that “the school curriculum should pass on enduring values. . .(and) develop principles for distinguishing between right and wrong.”
According to David Sapsted in The London Daily Telegraph, the new wording says that pupils should “have secure values and beliefs,” whatever that means.
Even the current goal of developing children’s “ability to relate to others and work for the common good” was too cut and dried for the Brits, whose new version struck out any mention of “the common good.”
And as for teaching the kids about Britain’s cultural heritage, that’s gone too.
Instead of imparting an “understanding of the spiritual, moral, social and cultural heritages of Britain’s diverse society,” the teachers’ new goals emphasize providing students with information about “different cultures and traditions” that will strengthen their “sense of place in the world.”
And that outdated goal of teaching “leadership” has been replaced by encouraging kids to become more “enterprising.”
How are parents, concerned citizens and educators reacting to the way that the public education establishment has sold out to trendy relativism?
Not well.
A Church of England spokesman said: "We would be very concerned to see any erosion of the fundamental principle of education to provide for the spiritual and moral development of pupils and of society."
A spokesperson for the National Union of Teachers responded by saying that "teachers always resented being told that one of the aims of...school was to teach the difference between right and wrong. That is inherent in the way teachers operate. Removing it from the national curriculum will make no difference to teachers…”
Deborah Lambert writes the “Squeaky Chalk” column for Accuracy in Academia’s monthly newsletter The Campus Report, available as a download at www.academia.org.
For Western Civ curriculum : The Well Trained Mind - "The Story of the World" - Susan Wise Bauer and Jessica Wise.
Interesting. Sounds like their curriculum was full of hogwash before, and now even the hogwash has been removed.
"Are British parents prepared to be 24-7 role models for their children?"
Well, I should hope so.
No competent and caring parent should expect schools (or any other institution) to instill values in their kids.
Schools taught my sons the 3Rs, I taught them right and wrong. In doing so, I not only reared good kids, I also contributed to the strength of their schools.
La-de-da parents (regardless of ethnic or economic class) are the Number 1 problem for public education, the underlying cause of societal ills that have invaded the classroom.
You are correct. However, I expect the schools to enforce common rules of civility which they don't.
I do, too, and they try. But its tough to enforce alien values.
Too many schools have hallways and campuses full of kids who have not known civility in the home or community and thus act boorishly at school. It's what they know.
It's a poor reflection on society when remedial values have to be taught in school because parents drop the ball. It's also mighty tough for a teacher to tell a kid he has to act better than his parents, especially when that teacher was hired to teach math or science or literature.
Then education is made more widely available. Soon it is evaluated and understood chiefly in terms of developing humans in terms of their economic potential rather than as free citizens. Then the liberals get a hold of it and the teacher unions wrest and courts wrest control away from the local community.
the result is a system which shires away from serious moral thought and seems increasingly unable to transmit the skills needed for wise or even usefully economically exploitable citizens.
Funny how things turn out ....
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