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Technorati21st Century science - dumbed down?
Arguments continue over science education in the UK.
Twenty First Century Science is a suite of new GCSE science courses for 14- to 16-year-olds and all schools in the UK can start the courses from September 2006. Schools can continue to offer separate Chemistry, Physics, and Biology courses.
Critics such as Sir Richard Sykes (rector of Imperial College London) is among many attack the new qualification. He warned a "dumbed down syllabus" may stop those who did not study chemistry, physics and biology individually from getting into good universities. Sir Richard Sykes stated on BBC News: "If you wish to have a dumbed-down syllabus for the general population that's fine. But for those who really want to go on and study a subject in depth, and particularly go to a good university like Imperial, then they'll never get there unless they study the individual subjects and take A-levels in these individual subjects." He wrote in a report from the Institute of Ideas think tank that: "A science curriculum based on encouraging pupils to debate science in the news is taking a back-to-front approach... Science should inform the news agenda, not the other way round."
David Perks who is head of physics at Graveney School in London, describes the changes as a "dumbing down" of the subject in a critical essay published by the Institute of Ideas (it is this essay that triggered the argument).
Baroness Mary Warnock said: "What counts as an issue to be debated in class is largely, as David Perks points out, dictated by the press. Far too much teaching at school has already degenerated into this kind of debate, more suitable for the pub than the school room."
However, not unexpectedly, the UK Department for Education and Skills said the qualification would be academically rigorous while encouraging more young people to consider studying science post-16. The British Association for the Advancement of Science and the Royal Societyseem to support the new course.
This project began because the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) was asked by the government to explore ways to modernise the science curriculum which was criticised in some quarters. Pilot course started in September 2003 at about 80 pilot schools.
The BBC article on this site has some interesting reader responses!
References
- Twenty First Century Science
- Institute of Ideas
- Nuffield Curriculum Centre
- The story as told by the BBC
As a pupil whose school (a
As a pupil whose school (a specialist science college no less) has adopted 21st Century Science this year I have mixed views on this subject. I am very keen on science and wish to make medicine my career, hopefully focusing on neuroscience. I am also in the National Academy of Gifted and Talented Youth and attended a medical summer school this summer. It was fascinating and I learnt a lot. However as is made clear by this I am in the top stream of the population. I am doing the triple award as otherwise I feel I may not get into a good university or college as the course is being rubbished.
I do not deny it is a different approach to science - it focuses quite a lot on the ethics behind medical practices in biology. However it also teaches the practices themselves, for example how vaccinations work, about evolution and the inheritance of dominant and recessive diseases, their cures and how scientists might find a cure.
Please do not say it is dumbed down hugely. In the time when people did O levels there was no coursework. They may not understand that pupils today are put under constant pressure from their GCSEs for two years. 21st Century Science has modular exams so you have to know everything, and the exam pressure is kept up for two years solid. You have to hand in coursework after coursework, each meticulously researched, filling huge lists of criteria, each perfectly Harvard referenced.. If you do not get an A* you 'could still do better'. All they do is turn the school system into a huge A* machine, fulling exam results to push them up the league tables. If the syllabus are dumbed down, then it is like whittling a person to a perfect point with a blunt knife - it hurts more than if the knife were sharp.
It is hugely demoralising if people whose exam days are long since past make derogatory comments about students of today. It is unfair enough that teenagers are sterotyped as juvenile delinquents, but if you get students who really want to learn and do well, but then have their hard work said to be pointlessly easy - how would you feel?
Hi. You make some fair
Hi. You make some fair points. However, I don't think I was criticising students of today: if that is what you thought then sorry. What I was trying to do here was present the comments that had been made by both sides.
Those going through courses can only do what is asked of them and I'm not even sure that the critics are saying pupils don't work hard. It is what work they are asked to that seems to be the subject of criticism.
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