Ads are provided by Google and are not selected or endorsed by Eagle Forum
| |
Just months after a majority of British teenagers revealed in a survey that they believed Robin Hood, Sherlock Holmes, and King Arthur were real people, the United Kingdom's largest teachers union called for a new curriculum that would emphasize "life skills" rather than "rote learning."
Dr. Mary Bousted, the union's general secretary, named teamwork and the ability to research as skills the new curriculum would teach. These are the skills that employers need their future workers to have, said Bousted. "Is the world going to collapse if they don't know 'To be, or not to be?'? Our national curriculum should be far more focused on the development of life skills and ways of working than whether or not we teach the Battle of Hastings. The skills of historical understanding are far more important than whether or not we teach a particular battle."
Bousted also criticized the UK's national exams, currently administered to students ages seven, eleven, and 14. According to Bousted, this amount of testing is one of the highest in the world, and causes mental illness in English schoolchildren. "Children suffer stress and anxiety as the test looms, and the rise in children's mental health problems cannot be divorced from their status as the most tested in the world," she said. (The Telegraph, 3-22-08)
|
Eagle Forum
