Gove says schools will not teach "bogus science" or "fake theories"

[UnquietDad]

here

Dangerous promise to make...
Does that include faith schools?

From the article:
"In response to fears that companies or faith groups could become sponsors to exploit pupils for their business interests or impose their religious ideas, Gove pledged to ensure that schools did not teach "bogus science" or "fake theories"."

Reading glasses on UQD.

Faith schools do not teach bogus science. Not state ones anyway. Not yet...

Yes, that is what I quoted.

i thought the standard curriculum was a pile of wank that had to be unlearned to progress in science (at degree level) too? will his be included?

Who decides what science is bogus? That's the issue. What if a school suddenly decided to start teaching homeopathy? Could the state intervene to prevent that? And wouldn't it be quite un-Tory to do so? (Intervene, that is?)

The quote does imply that religious groups should not being imposing their religious ideas. In other articles he says that Ofsted won't allow bogus science or fake theories. Ofsted will apply to all schools.

Is this about vardy accadamies?. He is an individual (not a faith group) who has funded several accadamies and then pushed creationism onto the science curiculum.

Bogus science? Like Brain Gym and Multiple Intelligences?

Vardy Academies are certainly one worrying trend.

I don't see what will be gained from this initiative. Why can't schools be allowed to control their own budgets without being "academies"?

Homeopathy was one of the topics under discussion on one of the OCR Science exam papers last year. And whether Wi Fi damages health was another. The whole point is to teach how Science works: what an experiment is, the difference between correlation and causation, the process of peer review...

It's not bogus Science. Nor is it wank.

Tsk. UQD - 'school' is such an old fashioned word, doncha know ...

Obviously there is a big difference between

"Explain how you would use rigorous scientific method to demonstrate that waving your hands over someone in random fashion will have no demonstrable beneficial effect on a patient with chronic back pain"

and

"Reiki - isn't it great?"

a - yes
b - not sure
c - could be
d - no

Can't see a Science teacher going for the latter...

I do wonder what happens in these schools in the US where they teach creationism in Science lessons. Who does that? I actually work with a creationist/anti-evolutionist Physics teacher, yet he seems to have no problem with teaching about the evidence for the Big Bang theory for example.

Yes, I don't understand why schools who opt out of Local Authority control have to be called acadamies. Why can't they still be called schools? It's all very strange.

But what about the ACE schools? Iz anything happening to stop ten>

TheFallenMadonna: Surely those questions are more general knowledge than actual science, aren't they? I could answer those questions but was dreadful at Physics and Chemistry when I was at school. How are there ever going to be proper scientists if the science exams taken are not hard and difficult

Um, no. They underpin Science. You can't do Science unless you understand that part of the course. It's one paper out of four. It explicitly addresses scientific thinking, as well as knowledge. The other papers have a greater emphasis on knowledge and understanding.

And for those who don't go on to be scientists, understandning the difference between correlation and cause is pretty key. Some of the threads on here make me think a lot of people could do with a recap.

I would have loved science lessons to have include that sort of thing!

I might have even passed my science 'O' levels then, instead of having to learn complicated chemistry and physics etc.

*included

Oh no. You have to learn the complicated stuff as well. Year 11 Physics comes as something of a shock it has to be said, after all the lovely debates and ethics and issues...

And do they then find it hard going from GCSE Physics to A level sometimes?

My DS got an A for Physics and Biology gcse.(which was laughable really) and then did Biology AS in which he got an E (deservedly so, as he did no work and isn't v g at Biology, prob about the same standard as I was c. 1975).

This tends to make me think GCSE sciences aren't very rigorous and there is going to be a real problem (I think there already is) with getting proper, clever people to teach science in the future. Whether this is down to the present curriculum is debateable but it's not looking v good.

UQD, we do teach about homeopathy. It is in the GCSE Chemistry specification.

LL, the big leap between GCSE and A-level is in the depth of the answers and the analysis. It takes a while for an A-level student to make this leap. They also have to bring in skills from English and Maths - if they struggle with writing or calculation, they are going to struggle with A-level. They do improve over the 2 years though, even if they have disastrous January AS modules.

The GCSE specifications are on the move again, and the drafts that I have seen look promising. There is a lot less repetition, and the assessment style is more like the A-level papers.