Stories + Views
Why does Gove believe dead languages and Ancient History are more important to learn than the Arts, R.E, Sports and Technology?
It’s official. Finally, Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, has proclaimed that Ancient History is more important than a whole raft of subjects that might actually teach our teenagers something of value. If you look at the list of “approved GCSEs” for the English Baccalaureate, you’ll see that Ancient History sits proudly there as an approved Humanities GCSE, yet Religious Education, a fascinating GCSE that has turned many students onto philosophy and an appreciation of other cultures, is not there. Nor are key subjects like Physical Education, Art, Music, Design and Technology, Drama and Media Studies — to name a few GCSEs which are very popular with our children at the moment. Moreover, they are subjects that really help children learn about the modern world. But, of course, they are no good because they don’t teach us things that happened thousands of years ago. We couldn’t have our children learning anything about the contemporary world now, could we? That’s far too edgy. Instead, we’ll send them to sleep by speculating endlessly about what might or might not have occurred in Ancient Mesopotamia, much of which is basically unknowable anyway!
Naturally, vocational subjects don’t get a look in; anyone taking them is obviously “rubbish” and “stupid” in the eyes of this regime. But Classical Greek, Biblical Hebrew and Latin all get the official stamp of approval. These are “dead” languages, spoken out aloud by no one except dusty old professors in Oxbridge colleges when they’ve drunk a bit too much sherry. You can’t go on an exchange trip to Ancient Rome or Athens. I learnt Latin at school and can’t speak a word of a Modern Foreign Language as a consequence; I used to know a lot of useless archaic words and grammar which I’ve forgotten now. I wasted my time learning an utterly redundant language when I could have been learning something useful. Incidentally, most of my peers opted out of doing Latin for O Level; even at the highly selective private school I attended, most of the children found it very boring!
It just shows you how hopelessly out of touch the Department for Education are at the moment. Furthermore, I don’t think the Department has a good idea of what true learning is; the best learning is that which explores a living, breathing context. The living contexts for Latin, Biblical Hebrew and Classical Greek disappeared thousands of years ago; these subjects are as dead as dodos because these languages are no longer alive, no longer present on the lips of the living. While they are not worthless subjects to study — their vocabulary, grammar and values permeate our culture — they definitely should not be privileged above other living languages or living subjects. For example, a Drama student can go and see some theatre, a Music student attend a concert and so forth, while students of dead languages cannot participate in a living, vibrant embodiment of their discipline in this way.
I suspect though this is yet another way of undermining state schools and promoting the private sector. They are mostly taught in private schools as a dodge to get their thicker students into Oxbridge or the Russell Group Universities: they are generally much less competitive courses to get on than subjects like Medicine.
How can Michael Gove claim to represent the people by imposing such absurdly out-of-touch ideas upon our school children? The curriculum reads more like something you’d find in schools in 1910 than 2010.
I think quite soon millions of school children are going to wish this government was Ancient History!
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I think it’s safe to conclude what type of background Michael Gove’s advisors come from, obviously you should be there to provide some balance.
Just curious to know how Hindi as a 2nd language or Welsh as a 2nd language differs from plain Hindi or Welsh in terms of its contribution to ebacc?
I was always of the belief that iGCSEs were somehow more rigourous than GCSE and undertaken by the most able students in private schools. But according to this link, it appears not. Is Gove right to approve the iGCSE in the ebacc qualification?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article6987117.ece
Link not working above – see if this is better
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article6987117.ece
Link not working.
The article said leading public schools were dropping the iGCSE because it didn’t prepare them as well for A’level as GCSE.
I has also heard that a lot of private school parents don’t like the iGCSE because it doesn’t include coursework or modules so makes it harder for their children to keep re-taking and get the top grades.
Few GCSEs in the new syllabus include coursework now anyway. One of the issues any teacher faces when making syllabus choices is where to get support from. If you choose a well-established GCSE with a well-liked board, there will be more textbooks, resources and other teachers available all of which support you in creating the best possible lesson plans. iGCSEs, by being so ‘traditional’, don’t have a large resource base and it is tiresome and inefficient for teachers constantly to re-invent the wheel. Some find it invigorating (even myself occassionally) to do something new, but most people will stick with tried and tested because they know the students will benefit from solid teaching if they do this.
One of my biggest sadnesses with the EBacc is the speed it will be implemented. It will inevitably mean current Yr 9 students are forced into doing History or Geography next year when a school will not have enough H/G teachers available. Teachers from other subjects will be expected to ‘pick up the slack’ quickly but they will inevitably need a lead-in period to learn the new material and plan it properly. So the current Year 9 will end up with lower quality teaching of a subject that they (and the teacher) may have no interest in, merely because Michael Gove has decreed that History & Geography are ‘more valuable’ than other subjects. Absolutely no justification has been given for this choice. *At the very least* RE should have been included in the Humanities block.
I would LOVE to hear a defence of this policy, but so far it’s radio silence.
This is the email I’ve sent to the department. The address to send queries to is: mailbox.performancedatateam@education.gsi.gov.uk (doesn’t sound like an address which is given much priority!)
Dear sir/madam,
More detail is required about the subjects and qualifications that will count towards the English Baccalaureate.
Will community languages such as Bengali, Somali, Turkish be included in the English Bacc?
How many teachers are there in the state sector qualified to teach Biblical Hebrew, Classical Greek and Latin? If there are very few, how can you expect state schools to offer this on the curriculum?
Why is Religious Studies not included in the Humanities’ subjects?
What is the rationale for including Humanities and not the Arts, Sports, Technology?
There’s considerable concern about this amongst the public. Please see: http://www.localschoolsnetwork.org.uk/2010/12/gove-thinks-its-more-important-to-learn-ancient-history-than-any-subjects-that-might-actually-interest-our-teenagers/
You could post your answers directly there if you wish.
Perhaps you should be more concerned about the English in your email to the DfE than about the absence of ‘community’ languages in the English Bacc.
Unfortunately I have a different take on why Gove is doing this, one which is actually much more sinister.
This is another Stalinist-type centralisation on the part of the Tories, the party which 8 months ago was proclaiming that it would return power to the people.
It is about dictating what our children learn, it is about a centralised curriculum, even more centrally-controlled than that of China or Cuba, but the purpose of this centralised control is prevent the masses from being educated at all.
When this is looked at in the light of other elements of their education policies a definite pattern emerges.
There are;
- the removal of the EMA; one of the most successful policies for improving the educational opportunities of the poorest young people in our society;
- the closing of some universities and heavy-handed discouragement of students from poorer/middle-income backgrounds from goimng to university;
- the removal of teacher training from universities, so that teachers will be trained on the job and given no theoretical knowledge at all;
- the removal of the requirement for teachers in “free” schools to have teaching qualifications at all; and
- the (already in place) removal the need for people working in nurseries or other early years settings to have proper qualifications.
- the privatisation of education by having “free” schools and academies controlled by large, profit-making multinational corporations.
- a return to John Major’s failed ‘back-to-basics’
The agenda here is clearly the dismantling education as an effective and functioning element in our society. The last thing the Tories want is a well-educated population. As such pretty much everything they are doing is done with the clear, but obviously not clearly espressed, intention of making education less effective.
A dumbed-down population which believes what it reads in the papers, which is content to know its place and do what it is told, is the ultimate aim of their policies. You have been warned.
I certainly think there is a not very subtle sub-text in the White Paper and associated public pronouncements which is to dismantle what Gove and Cameron in opposition described as the ‘education establishment’, this so called establishment has several centres, including the teaching unions, university based teacher training, local authorities and those working in, supporting or advocating comprehensives. By attempting to break up these centres of influence/discussion/power, Gove and co clearly hope to weaken opposition to privatisation and further fragmentation of the system. That’s why it’s so important that all these different groups and networks now work together to resist any damaging reforms.
I agree with Laura’s comments above. The two big questions for me are: why the rush? And why so narrow?
Schools are inevitably going to feel pressured into trying to deliver the EBacc – brave will be the head or leadership team that resists, but resist some must.
As for the qualifying subjects, if the EBacc is supposed to be about breadth, why only 2 humanities subjects? If you compare the EBacc with the IBacc, this seems overly rigid.
Fiona: you assert (along with Mr Gove) that a disadvantage of the iGCSE – and indeed all modular exams – is that it allows pupils “to keep re-taking and get the top grades”: shouldn’t we actively encourage our students to re-learn material and re-attempt academic challenges in order to better their outcomes?
I think the point of the iGCSE is that it isn’t a modular programme which is why some people believe it to be ‘harder’. I am not advocating it at all and see nothing wrong with a modular approach , at the expense of a final exam, for the reasons you give.
Surely part of Gove’s plan in introducing a retrospective bacc, with such an odd range of subjects is that it’s an easy win. Firstly he can demonstrate that standards are ‘low’ (against his narrow definition) and then in a couple of years’ time, when schools have been forced to engineer their curriculum to meet his criteria he’ll be able to crow about he’s raised standards. While all he’ll actually achieve is another move of the goalposts!
In response to Alex, I would add that Gove was an enthusiast of iGCSEs because they were meant to provide more rigour than GCSEs but there is a poetic justice that recently the public schools seem to have abandoned them and reverted back to GCSEs.
On a wider point and the fact that the ebacc is so restrictive when it comes to humanities and foreign languages, one argument is to widen it’s scope, another might be to get rid of it altogether.
Even if you believe that learning a foreign language should be compulsory to 16, why invent this ebacc which doesn’t seem to have much intrinsic worth? It’s just a name for someone who’s got x number of GCSE passes including English, Maths, Science, a foreign language and a Humanities subject.
If there needs to be an additional benchmark besides 5 GCSE passes including English and Maths (and personally I don’t it’s needed) why not have another benchmark of 8 passes including the subjects listed above. Why does it have to be called an “English Baccalaureate?”
Yes, I don’t entirely agree about Latin as I do think that this can be the basis for Western languages but the narrow focus not on community languages and the definition of humanities as Hi and Gg rather give away that MG thinks that schooling school return to a 1950 public school idyll where most people left at 15 and went off to t’pit – out of touch doesn’t even begin to explain it. Most of the jobs that will be created for the school leavers over the next 20 years will be in areas such as the creative arts that MG seemingly want to eliminate and in a multi-cultural, pluralistic, multi-religious society that he seemingly want to deny.
Back to the future? Forward to the past!!
As a parent of two children being brought up on the edge of a multi cultural city I believe that RS is an essential subject including as it does textual study, philosophical thinking, ethics, social understanding and the skills of analysis and reasoning. I am concerned that those putting together these rules have little understanding of what these subjects really include and offer to children today. Who is advising them? It is important they listen to the governors, parents, pupils and teachers that these decisions will affect. RS must be in the English BACC.
Whilst I completely agree that Gove’s plan is ill-thought out in its practicalities and lacking in merit in theory, I’m not really comfortable with Francis’s argument here.
It is no more necessarily the case that Latin or Ancient History will be boring or irrelevant to children’s lives than French or Drama: I can provide plenty of anecdotes of how tedious I found modern languages at school and how ill-prepared they left me for communicating in French (I have never yet needed to book a French hotel room with a jacuzzi).
Equally, I’m sure those who wished to support the elevation of Classical Greek to the status of Core Subject could provide plenty of examples of how fascinating and helpful they have found it. Anecdotal arguments are inevitably unenlightening.
Defending subjects on the grounds of their “relevance” is very dangerous ground to walk on – when I trained as a History teacher, lots of people thought it was very important that we be “relevant” to the needs of the students in what we taught, and as a consequence spent a lot of time teaching the Ottoman Empire to Bangladeshi girls on the basis that they were Muslims. The rationale was crude and ineffective (the subsequent teaching likewise), and, the greater sin, avoided the real question which was how to create a History curriculum which actually engaged students whatever their backgrounds and made them better at critiquing the historical narratives they were presented with. There is no necessary formula for which subjects will engage students, although I would have thought an engaged and enthusiastic teacher is far, far higher up the list than the name of the subject on the student’s timetable.
Given the logic of Francis’s post, someone might equally say “Well, I’ve never had to quote Shakespeare to anyone for a job, so why did I bother with him?” I presume most people on here would expect to see Shakespeare in the curriculum of our local schools for a whole variety of reasons unrelated to the wishes of students, so the argument cannot hold up.
Surely, the point to be made about Gove’s plans is not a trashing of the subjects he had chosen to privilege (I’ve no doubt they could all be taught engagingly and well to any children given the right teacher and resources) but that central government making the decision to privilege any specific subjects at all is trampling on the necessary freedom of schools to match their teaching and qualifications routes to the needs of their learners?
Gove’s plan is a particular (and particularly conservative) intervention in the discussion about what students *need* to know at the end of their school careers. It should be challenged and discussed as such, but it doesn’t follow that simply because Gove likes a subject, students in schools today would not.
I think you’ve made some strong points here John. Yes, subjects don’t necessarily have to be relevant. My point though is slightly different; my point is that Latin and Ancient Greek have no “living context”, they are not languages which alive today. I agree that a good teacher can make any subject come alive, but they can’t create a world for a dead language to be spoken in.
I can’t quite fathom how Humanities GCSE that combines aspects of both History, Geography and other Humanities subjects cannot be classed as a Humanities subject. The title of the Option and the title of the GCSE is a bit of a clue to why it maybe should be in there along with RE (which can make a very strong case too).