n80,
"The public school system is the domain of the left. The left drives STEM. The right approves."
Unfortunately true of the UK schools curriculum too.
My 16 year old daughter said her history school curriculum has dictated that her class spent two whole terms learning about the African slave trade and one term each for the past two years on WW1 trench warfare.
Fair enough, but she said there has been nothing on ancient Greece or the history of the Roman empire.
Therefore the entire history of the Romans in Britain and the importance of the ancient Greeks for the development of western civilization has been totally omitted.
Her artwork seems to be centred around a few post WW2 artists and photographers.
Once again no mention of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Monet, Renoir, Picasso, Dali etc.
As for musical education, this seems hardly any better today than it was back in my school days.
Thankfully our music teacher, who never bothered teaching us anything about Bach, Mozart, Beethoven etc did bring in his collection of Beatles LPs. He was quite an eccentric, often dressed as John Lennon as on the Abbey Road sleeve, and would bring in his own record player to play his discs.
On one shocking occasion he threw the school’s turntable across the room, claiming it was rubbish! He said he had a better record player in his car.
We may not have learned anything about Beethoven or Mahler, but he did make us write out lyrics from various songs from Sgt Pepper. So thank you for that Mr R, if not for the seemingly endless recorder lessons.
Anyway, this neglect of an historical context does seem to be a strange way of delivering education; whereby most British children will leave state education at 16 with hardly any awareness of what has gone before.
History still matters, doesn’t it?
Things weren’t much better in my day but at least we got to learn about some of the prime ministers since Pitt the Younger (Gladstone, Disraeli etc) and some of the key events in history such as the repeal of the Corn Laws and the Boston Tea Party!
In the UK we also seem to have a particular blind spot when it comes to the influence of the various Roman invasions of Britain under Julius Caesar and the emperor Claudius and their subsequent importance and legacy.
Another key event that gets glossed over is the English civil war of 1651 which is up there with Henry the 8th and his break with the Catholic church in regards to British history.
Yet Cromwell, as far as our education system (?) goes, remains to this day a largely unknown figure (like Guy Fawkes) who is mainly there to be mocked from time to time but never explained or explored.
I guess, as Michelle Shocked once sang, "The Book of History has many missing pages."
Especially in the books of the ones who seem to be setting the schools curriculum nowadays.
I’d like to think that in the British 2 tier school system, free and paid for, the private schools (from where most of our political leaders emerge), are still bothering to teach their children something of classical education and the arts.
