{"id":7734,"date":"2020-08-30T22:13:44","date_gmt":"2020-08-30T22:13:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=7734"},"modified":"2020-09-02T09:01:56","modified_gmt":"2020-09-02T09:01:56","slug":"notes-for-new-curriculum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=7734","title":{"rendered":"Notes for a New Curriculum"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"410\" height=\"289\" src=\"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/studying.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-7736\" srcset=\"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/studying.jpg 410w, https:\/\/damesnet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/studying-300x211.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 410px) 100vw, 410px\" \/><figcaption>Studying\/Mikael Korhonen\/flickr<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>As children go back to school \u2013 or not \u2013 and we\u2019re all agreed that we weren\u2019t all in this together after all and that THINGS HAVE TO CHANGE, it\u2019s time for a radical reappraisal of the secondary school curriculum, to orient students towards a knowledge of how we have come to be where we are now, and what we could do about it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here are five strands (not subjects, because they parcel up the world into discrete topics that seem irrelevant to our lives and obscure underlying cause and effect) intended to equip school leavers with a profound understanding of their world and their rights and responsibilities within it \u2013 and the means to challenge whatever threatens it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li><strong>It\u2019s not history<\/strong><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>The Black Lives Matter has generated\nlong-overdue scrutiny of the oppression and exploitation of black people and of\nthe slave trade. It\u2019s time to reveal the real source of all that we take for\ngranted in the built environment, in our cultural holdings, and in our\nunexamined assumptions. Let\u2019s also look at what\u2019s behind so many refugees being\nforced to flee their countries and exactly why they want to come here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s also time, certainly in the UK, to\nquestion whether it\u2019s right that we should be endlessly replicating the outcome\nof arbitrary decisions taken centuries ago, such as William the Conqueror\u2019s grant\nof a third of Sussex to Roger de Montgomery over 900 years ago, meaning that\nthe Duke of Norfolk is still the premier duke in England, with all that that\nentails. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li><strong>Follow\nthe money<\/strong><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Why are the poor still with us, when\nwe\u2019re old enough to know better? Why is it that with the sixth largest economy\nin the world, we still have people who can\u2019t afford to buy enough to eat? &nbsp;How does money work? There\u2019s a wealth of\nmaterial to give us the answers but the mechanisms at work are rarely analysed.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Everyone needs to know the basics, like what\u2019s behind your bins being emptied and the roads maintained, but we also need to be aware of when we\u2019re being robbed, and by whom. For example, the radio documentary <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/b0931hl5\">Macquarie: The Tale of the River Bank<\/a> <\/em>should probably be a \u2018set text\u2019, with its unmasking of an asset-stripping exercise of epic proportions committed against a public utility, leading to disastrous consequences for water quality. You would then follow this up with scrutiny of tax evasion, trusts, the loss of social housing, and last but not least the potential for deregulation to degrade our environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li><strong>Media\nstudies<\/strong><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Much reviled as a non-subject with little intellectual content, media studies is needed now more than ever, so that everyone can interrogate the stream of information and misinformation that flows past us, distinguish the fake news from the real, find out exactly what the source is for any given item and why they might want to tell us this, challenge the climate change deniers, and unpick the suspect statistics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li><strong>Child\ncare<\/strong><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>I make no apology for banging in about this all the time, and I\u2019m doing it again. A species that doesn\u2019t know how to look after its young is doomed to extinction \u2013 and that includes ensuring that they have an uncontaminated and fertile environment in which to grow. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li><strong>Rhetoric,\ngrammar and logic<\/strong><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>These might have been absent from the\ncurriculum for over a hundred years now, surviving perhaps only in the optional\nactivity of the debating society, but being able to express yourself clearly\nand compellingly is a vital skill, underpinned by the clarity of thinking that\ngrammar and logic bring. It\u2019s still the case that those who can argue the hind legs\noff a donkey tend to thrive at the expense of those unable to articulate their\npredicament. If Johnson is serious about levelling up, this is one way he could\ndo it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019m waiting for my call, Gavin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>William the Conqueror granted a third of Sussex to Roger de Montgomery<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":7736,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,217,324,65,56,62,307],"tags":[319,104,320,322,318,323],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7734"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7734"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7749,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7734\/revisions\/7749"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}