Jayne Dowle: Experiment with school science which could backfire

IF your children have signed up as members of the environmental lobby, then you will probably be giving three silent cheers this week.

New plans for the school curriculum suggest that climate change might be off the educational agenda, in favour of going back to basics in science lessons.

Too much emphasis has been placed on “pseudo-science”, says a government advisor, with the result that core knowledge and understanding of fundamental scientific principles has ended up on the back (Bunsen) burner.

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My own son, who is eight, is so disinterested in the environment that when they did it as a project, he told the teaching assistant he couldn’t cut out pictures of trees because he had never learned to use scissors. But I have heard some pretty scary tales of children who have been earnestly informed that the world is overheating and it is killing polar bears.

They come home and lecture the family about cardboard, stand guard over the green bin, turn off the central heating in January, and announce at Sunday dinner that they are “going vegetarian to save the bears”. Sometimes I’m glad that Jack prefers to kick his football round the playground than sit in an overheated classroom and agonise about the planet.

If he is anything like his mother, I’m not sure how he will get on with this proposed new fundamentalism in science either. But we shall see. It can’t be any worse than when I was at school.

When I heard the plans discussed by government advisor Tim Oates on the radio the other morning, and a few examples of “basic science” were mentioned, I had to struggle to remember what “oxidation” was. I thought it might be something to do with rust. I’ve just looked it up on Wikipedia, and now I’m even more confused.

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Anyway, science was boring and my adult life has suffered for it. I won’t waste words going into the dusty labs, the rote-learning, the experiments that seemed to have no point and never worked. Let’s just say that, like countless other kids, I didn’t engage with science at school. And when I think of all the practical applications for physics, chemistry and biology that I now use every day, from driving a car to cooking a meal and tending to the kids’ cuts and bruises, I wonder how I could have found it all so irrelevant.

So, while I agree with Tim Oates, and therefore with the Education Secretary Michael Gove, that we need to get back to basics with our curriculum, I do sound a note of caution. These plans for pure science are all very admirable if you have a class full of committed, highly-concentrating, clever kids.

I’m sure there are one or two classes in the country like that, but the typical rabble you find in your typical primary school will struggle to sit quietly for half-an-hour whilst the teacher battles valiantly to explain Newton’s Law of Gravitation in words of one syllable suitable for a wide range of learning abilities, styles and approaches.

I think the word I am looking for is “context”. I understand that in Gove’s brave new world of education, teachers will be given a free rein to teach how they like. I only hope that this gives them enough scope to come up with interesting ideas for how to make what can be difficult and dry scientific subjects come alive. Dropping dastardly little Daniel out of a second-floor window to demonstrate gravity might be going a bit far, but you get my meaning. And much as I am grateful that my own offspring have yet to turn into junior eco-warriors, I am a little confused, and even, concerned. I just wonder, if trendy subjects such as climate change are going to be eased from the curriculum to make room for these fundamentals, when are our children going to learn about the environmental challenges which face the planet?

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I’m not abnegating my responsibility as a parent here, but I don’t have all the answers. Kids are desperately curious about what the future could be like. Surely it is useful to introduce this in school, and give them the opportunity to debate it with their peers?

Also, I wonder how this shunting off of climate change squares with David Cameron’s pledge to “become the greenest government ever”? At what point will his youngest citizens be informed of this, and become empowered to contribute? Or, like the debacle over the weekly bin collections, was this just another prize example of electioneering hype that has got lost in the hazy smog of government?

I don’t actually care about political point-scoring. But I do care that when my kids are in that classroom, they are getting the education they need, whether it’s in science, maths, English, geography, or anything else whichwill equip them for the future.

I just hope that this particular fundamental principle is not forgotten in the heat of debate.