Is it important what children are taught?

[seeker]

I've been thinking about this since I was on a very interesting thread about home education, and somebody said (I paraphrase) that it was up to parents what children were taught, and in the long run it didn't really matter so long as it didn't affect their day to day life.

I find this really interesting. If my school educated children were being taught something that was patently untrue and unscientific - for example that the world is 6000 years old - I would intervene and expect the "authorities" to intervene on behalf of my children and their peers. This may not affect their day to day lives, but it would definitely affect their critical faculties and their ability to look at the world in a rational way.

Do people think that parents should have the right to set up their own schools or home educate if what they are teaching their children is actually scientifically wrong? Or "wrong" in some other way - limiting girls'choices, denying access to good quality sex education,advocating Jihad - there are lots of examples to choose from. any thoughts?

I don't know, Riven - that's why I'm asking!

But I do know that I don't want my children to be taught crap! And I do object when they are.

And I THINK - not absolutely certain about this but I THINK - that there are things that I don't want any child to be taught. For example, that it's not HIV infection that causes AIDS.

It's hard isn't it. The Pluto example is different, I think, because everybody thought that Pluto was a planet, so children were being taught the best information that was known at the time. I think I worry about the rise of fundamentalism of all sorts, and the attack on rationalism that seems to be growing in the States, and I want there to be safeguards to prevent that happening here. I just don't know how to do that. Have you read a book called The Abstinence Teacher? It's a novel about a teacher in the States who suggests to her class that oral sex can be fun and what happens to her. Very thought provoking!

Did you see the thread about the terrible history teacher who is telling an MNers daughter and her class all sorts of rubbish?

Ds is at school. If they were teaching him rubbish, I'd be VERY pissed off. If it was minor, I'd just tell ds it was untrue and find a reference book/reputable internet site to prove it (he's five, he believes his teachers are perfect). If it was major, like the ignorant teacher in the history thread, I'd have to complain to the school.

When I was a teenager, I had friends who went to Catholic schools who were taught all sorts of propaganda. They were told about Henry VIII breaking with Rome but only that he wanted a divorce, didn't explain anything about Martin Luther or the Reformation or the actual reasons for the rise of Protestantism - the sale of indulgences was not mentioned at all, for instance. And Mary Queen of Scots was an unjustly persecuted saint - didn't cover her (constant) attempts to overthrow Elizabeth.

As for home education and jihad etc., I don't think you can legislate against extremist or ignorant parents who reckon the world is only 6,000 years old (I know not all HEers are nutters, but there are a few). Hopefully at some point their children will discover not everyone thinks the same way.

Hhow influenced are you by what your parents and teachers believed anyway? Don't we all end up making up our own minds about things later in life?

I don't think it's such a big deal really, people come through all sorts of bizarre and even adverse upbringings. I'm not even sure that science itself isn't a little unscientific sometimes.

Children are taught crap in school all the time! My brother was taught that the earth moves around the sun! .

Whatever our feeling about what we think children ought to be taught, it would be impossible to regulate it - the stupid national curriculum was an attempt to do so, but all its succeeded in doing is stifling education in schools and taking teachers away from the job they are trained and want to do!

What the OP you're referring to meant is different to what you're asking I think. I think she meant that it doesn't matter if things are a bit inaccurate or there are gaps in knowledge unless its in areas the children actually need to know a lot about...in which case the gaps etc. would get filled as and when necessary. Whereas I think you're talking about deliberately trying to teach children untrue things...?

Obviously some HE nutters might be HEing in order to do that, but I think it's extremely rare indeed!

It's not as if you even remember everything you were taught is it, or is that just me?

The public examination system sorts out what they are taught, with a heavy hand from the government. The Education Act, which affects all schools, is fairly broad in its requirements too (not that I could quote it).

The problem with insisting on truth is that it is hard to agree on what is truth. Just look at any given thread on Mumsnet

I am not in favour of home education as I feel that children need exposure to many different teachers throughout their schooling - not just one or two. I am certainly not in favour of home education which is done specificially to restrict the broadening of the mind, or to avoid exposure tto people with different value systems. Children need to learn to compare and contrast.

I don't think the freedom to home educate, or set up wacky schools, should be taken away though. The practice will still go on, only underground and may even drive people to opt out of society completely.

Look at countries with oppressive regimes - we don't want to be like them.

PLEASE don't let this become a good debate!! I've 450 words still left to do on my essay. By tonight. I REALLY can't be distracted. Stop posting

"the stupid national curriculum was an attempt to do so, but all its succeeded in doing is stifling education in schools and taking teachers away from the job they are trained and want to do!" Love it! Too true!

That may well be true but the national curriculum might have stopped my A-level history teacher banging on about how apartheid was right instead of covering 1603 to Waterloo...

Or my A-level English teacher doing 2 years of Billy Connolly impressions

Yes of course it matters what children are taught.

I think it is especially important that my children are taught things that I don't know or understand or have an interest in, or even agree with, which is why I would not choose to home educate unless the alternative is too dire to contemplate. I do know a family whose children who were home educated for several years, and they had a very narrow curriclum - clearly their father was very emphatic that it was important what they learnt, but not in a good way.

I think the actual things taught (whether in school or HE) are secondary to being taught/encouraged to think things through for yourself, to gather information from lots of sources and evaluate them - eg comparing tabloid and broadsheet newspaper versions of a story, looking at political bias, considering how to decide who to believe, how scientific method works, how to put forward your views in your own words, etc.

So, I don't think that the choice of subjects is terribly important, once you get past the basics of the "3 Rs".

But parents and teachers who either indoctrinate children with their views, or "teach to the test" and discourage them from asking awkward questions are a bad thing.

I was taught in school about plant chemicals called auxins, and how they control growth. The teacher knew at the time that what she was teaching was completely wrong, but it was in the syllabus so we were taught it. We were shown a video with clearly faked evidence for the now-proved-wrong theory, and had to learn abou it so we could parrot it out in the exam.

Next year, I was taught that it was wrong!

I don't get this thread.
Surely if a child is told rubbish (say, that HIV is result of malnutrition), that can be challenged, you can demand the LEA make the teacher retract.

Or am I wrong?

I have cousins who are being HE (in USA), and their heads are chock full of the most ignorant & intolerant bullsh*t about politics, society and religion. They are polite, clever and well-spoken -- but they are very stuck in the limited framework of how their parents want them to view the world. Heaven help them when they move away from home.

[ That's not a dig at HE, I also know people whose HE kids are wonderfully worldly. But with mainstream schooling I reckon there's a smaller risk of kids getting only one world view. ]

Oh, and science. My cousins are of course being taught Creationism as fact and Evolution as a discredited theory (alardi hangs her head in hands).

"So, I don't think that the choice of subjects is terribly important, once you get past the basics of the "3 Rs".

But parents and teachers who either indoctrinate children with their views, or "teach to the test" and discourage them from asking awkward questions are a bad thing."

I absolutely agree with this. I will consider that I've done a good job if my children grow up still curious and wanting to learn, and if they know how to do it. The rest will simply just follow if those two things are achieved.

The trouble is that some (although not many in the UK, I think) HEors HE in order to ensure their children learn only the things they want them to learn. I think that the vast majority in the UK, though, HE because they want their children to learn what they want to learn, and to be able to choose what they want to learn from a broader arena than school can allow.

HE'd children have far more time to visit museums and libraries, to travel around this country and others if their parents have the funds, to read, and read, and read, to watch tv programmes and use the internet than schooled children. They have more opporunity to stumble upon the things that spark their curiosity than schooled children. They won't have their curiosity dulled by being made to learn things they're not interested in.

And don't we all know how easy it is to learn and remember things we've learnt because we are truly interested in them and truly want to be able do them? And how motivated you are to find out the things you want to know - to find other people who know more about it than you do, to look things up on the internet or in books, to use the library etc. It's the same for children. HE'd children don't just have one teacher, they have far more than schooled children because they learn everything from living - from conversing with shop-keepers, librarians, police officers, other family members, the plumber/electrician/builder, the man in the cycle-repair shop.....

Of course schooled children learn like this too outside of school, but the point is that HE'd children have so much more time to learn like this than schooled children do so, unless you are hoping to HE in order to keep them locked up at home, which really does not happen, then your children just will not have huge gaps in their learning.

I think seeker is suggesting that HE should have more monitoring to ensure that children are not taught anything incorrect. But I don't know how that could be prevented, unless we went the French route of requiring HE families to follow a set syllabus with tests, and personally I would fight tooth and nail to prevent that!

alardi It doesn't work to compare homeschooling in the US with home educating in the UK - it really is a very different culture and a lot of US homeschoolers do it for religious reasons. It's a different picture in the UK where religion is actually a very rare reason for choosing to HE, so indoctrination is far less of a concern.

I thought this thread might be about the narrow strictures of the NC, and how although in Science for example there is a professed intention to move towards a 'how science works' approach, that is still confined to how it works in the proscribed range of content deemed important for children to know. But it isn't .

I'm not sure I am, AmuminScotland (that wasn't you on Radio 4 last week was it? Probably not -I realize you're not the only Scottish HEer in the world!)

I think I'm wondering whether there is a sort of base line list of stuff that all children should learn - and whether there should be some way of stopping children being exclusively exposed to completely bonkers/dangerous stuff. I know that I have set avenues of complaint if my children's school steps out of line, but children who are is schools set up by parents and HEed children don't have that sort of "protection" I know there aren't many children in this position, but I don't want ANY child taught that HIV isn't caused by the AIDS virus for example.