Pupil resistence increases in proportion to the teaching of Ohm’s law. Telegraph 7th May 2008

Pupil resistance increases in proportion to the teaching of Ohm’s law
By Dr James Le Fanu Telegraph website: date 7.05.07
Second Opinion

Teenagers, quite rightly, tend to steer clear of visiting the doctor unless they want a prescription for acne or the pill. But when they do drop by, they never seem particularly happy, and inquiry invariably reveals that they find school incredibly boring…..This might seem a far cry from the concerns of the family doctor, but the enforced tedium of the classroom must be responsible, at least in part, for the rising incidence of adolescent psychological and behavioural problems. The solution is simple: science should cease to be compulsory, thus freeing up time for pupils to learn about the real world. Read the whole article

PEN Comment: Dear James – why not go the whole way and make a real difference? Let’s make school invitational and open up a whole range of learning opportunities and settings. There is a world out there of fascinating learning episodes and journeys that will engage and excite learners in the authentic world! (See Roland Meighan, 2005. Comparing Learning Systems : the good, the bad, the ugly and the counter-productive ISBN 978-1-900219-28-x. Educational Heretics Press. http://edheretics.gn.apc.org

Read the whole article:

The standard view expressed last week by Prof Alan Smithers, of the University of Buckingham, is that schools have been turned into exam factories at the expense of cultivating the inquisitive mind. But the more substantial problem stretches back to the educational reforms of the 1980s, and particularly Kenneth Baker’s “core” curriculum,which introduced a major bias in favour of the sciences at the expense of the humanities.

The upshot now is that pupils spend a massively disproportionate amount of time learning (or supposedly so) about saturated fats and Ohm’s law but nothing of the great achievements of Western civilisation. Their glorious island history is an optional subject and the creative arts are marginalised to the point of non-existence.

The bias arises from the utterly mistaken idea that science is somehow more important, more relevant than the humanities, whereas it is difficult to imagine anything less important or more irrelevant to the educated mind than saturated fats. Meanwhile, science being compulsory, talented teachers are spread too thin teaching reluctant pupils, leading to a downward spiral with a collapse in the numbers taking science at university.

This might seem a far cry from the concerns of the family doctor, but the enforced tedium of the classroom must be responsible, at least in part, for the rising incidence of adolescent psychological and behavioural problems. The solution is simple:science should cease to be compulsory, thus freeing up time for pupils to learn about the real world.

 PEN Comment: Dear Dr James Le Fanu you appear to have got part of the answer