His legacy is clear to see: no room for creativity and critical thinking,plenty for exams and rote learningThe other week, my six-year-outmoded daughter had one of her school friends over for tea, and the two of them decided to have a read of Julia Donaldson’s The Snail and the Whale. For anyone who doesn’t know,its the story of a worldwide voyage jointly undertaken by the titular animals, with lovely subtexts about friendship and co-operation, and some brilliantly executed dramatic tension.
At our local state primary school,my daughter’s course do brilliant work inspired by it – building a enormous humpback whale out of household nonsense, learning about the same creature’s migration paths, or so on. But that afternoon,such things receded into the distance, as my daughter’s friend looked intently at the text, and tuned out of the actual story,and began to pick out the word types: “Noun … verb noun … verb.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com