Education, according to ToL
Online xmas 2021 replies to Times columns #paywall
School
The concept of gravity appears merely once in all the copious official documents defining the curriculum for ages three to 14… inertia and momentum, don’t
Because toddlers, by about one year old, have already mastered the walking schema combining experiential knowledge of the above concepts to master gross & fine motor skills, with an incentive of getting from A to B.
At school my (now adult) kids studied WWII almost every other year. Thank God for Wikipedia that such is redundant. Tarting it up with a bit of “decolonisation” so that:
We have to learn that every country became independent in a distinctive way
seems part of an SNP campaign.
And as for Covid my mother told me “coughs and sneezes spread diseases”. This year’s excellent Royal Institution lectures mentioned this phrase once but illustrated how, with Blue Peter type resources, a schema should be taught. Scottish schools take note.
University
Re: Course Duration: “abandon standard three year full-time degree”
The core courses offered in the first two years are often the most valuable, both intellectually and vocationally.
As in Primary & Secondary school education the first year is one of levelling up. In my experience a third of this was carried out in large lecture theatres through standard courses from service departments. We were grouped with Engineering, and at the end of the first 2 lectures by the Maths department we were informed that the vagaries of the Exam Boards had been addressed and we all had a common knowledge base. Sir Arnold Wolfendale, from Physics, corrected a bold student, in the crowd, who had the temerity to ask “What about the Bohr atom ?” —with something along the lines of you’ll learn the truth now you are here. Popular option Psychology lectures seemed almost deliberately designed to discourage individuals progressing or transferring-in, so as to ensure student numbers matched resources actually available in that department.
In summary, the first year was designed to illustrate that University was hard work. There seemed little vocational experience from the long serving academic Service staff; this was reserved to Home department. As for intellectual stimulation this was a constant throughout the complete duration of the degree course, as the students grew.
I stayed for 6 years, at the same establishment, it would have been maybe seven if I’d gone elsewhere for my postgraduate work as an introductory Master’s course requirement was normal.
