3) The Magic Roundabout

A recent survey in the Times Education Supplement (TES) showed that ‘four out of five primary schools are abandoning traditional subject teaching and introducing theme based lessons’ http://www.tes.co.uk/search/story/?story_id=2394568 This finding was developed and discussed in 2 further articles in the same issue of the paper http://www.tes.co.uk/search/story/?story_id=2394589 http://www.tes.co.uk/search/story/?story_id=2394568
I find it surprising that despite vicious periodic attacks and a continuous wall of sound and prejudice about what they call progressive education, theme based teaching and learning has continued to thrive (see for example the likes of the Daily Mail, this article by Max Hastings ‘education today is a form of child abuse’ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/newscomment.html?in_page_id=1787&in_article_id=461356 ). This is all the more surprising as this opposition has been continuously supported by politicians, beginning with Prime Minister Jim Callaghan in 1979, continuing through the Thatcher years and then through the Major and Blair years.
It has been convenient for opponents of modern teaching methods to counterpoise ‘progressive education’ to ‘rigorous subject based education’. It doesn’t seem to matter that this is a largely pointless debate, as teachers have always done both. In my opinion, allowing this question to dominate educational and schooling discussions has been very misleading and unhelpful. As the TES articles above make clear, teachers are very careful to mix theme development with structured learning in ways that they feel appropriate.
Are we destined to go round and round for ever in a sterile and often puerile debate opposing rigorous teaching to learning by exploration? No matter that anyone who has spent 5 minutes in a classroom knows that these two things go together and that developing enthusiasm is the precursor for engaging children in learning. This is especially so in primary school. What’s more, we need the imaginative combination of both and will only achieve this by giving teachers permission, time and resources to be creative. Unless they are allowed to stimulate a fascination with education in their students then the much vaunted life-long-learning that is said to be essential to the country’s future prosperity will not happen. Remember: the old style school system used to turn most people off education for the rest of their lives.