A-Level inanity

I came across another disturbing education story the other day; Education is critically important, everyone agrees on this but few (and I include myself in that) seem to be too concerned about the details. As an indirect education consumer I think I can understand why this is, like most complex endeavours education seems impenetrable to the uninitiated, unless you have huge quantities of time available it is neigh on impossible to do anything other than observe and comment after the event; we have an image of education that we don't really want to dispel, we live in hope that things will turn out OK.

Like most organisations engaged in delivering personal services (like medicine and government) we like to think of teaching as something that is independent, caring, tolerant, rational and focused on nurturing the individual to the best of their ability, this is a fantasy of course, teachers and schools are just like everyone else they have strengths, weaknesses and agendas of various kinds. Schools are focused on efficiency as much as any other business these days, the average is what is important not the specific needs of your beloved Johnny or Jenny even if you pay.

Religion of course has long recognised the importance of education although I suspect the motives for involvement are less than altruistic in most cases, there is no such thing as a free lunch! Most religious involvement with education seems to come with caveats, proselytising and indoctrination being the most common fee. People often argue that what religious people teach their kids is their own business and whilst I can see some logic to this from the point of view of passing on a tradition, I wholeheartedly disagree with the usual implementation of it, particularly when it comes to science education. Science is science, there is no such thing as Christian biology or Hindu physics, attempts to subvert it (i.e. the methods or the facts) in order to pander to ancient texts is tantamount to (intellectual) child abuse IMO because it censors or denies the child a basic freedom of information and speech in the same way that denying a child the ability to read would.

Here we have the ICCE or the International Certificate of Christian Education which is supposed to cover secondary subjects including science, as it says in their literature "ACE graduates need never return to state schools to gain college and university entrance qualifications". The story concerns the UK government organisation that has ruled this course as comparable to A-levels; however when we look at some of the science elements of it we find long discredited, fallacious fundamentalist nonsense. The same old canards are here, for example "there are no transitional fossils", God created everything, evolution is discredited etc. there are even some rather dubious political elements to it as well, for example that South Africa benefited from apartheid because segregated schools helped maintain the culture of the children.

Biology seems to be the main sticking point, it is interesting that the religious see it as the primary informational threat to their worldview; even in the state system evolution is not taught at primary levels to our children. This is scandalous in itself IMO, evolution is the core theory of a whole branch of science, nothing in Biology makes sense except in light of evolution and yet we don't teach it alongside all of the other foundational subjects. Would anyone attempt to make a justification for this other than because evolution is such a contentious issue for Abrahamic religious believers, I've never heard one.

I recently wrote to my MP expressing a desire for this subject to be included in the new primary curriculum for purely educational reasons, i.e. I didn't mention religion. He replied to my email stating that he would take it up with the appropriate minister; I am assuming this positive response means that he agrees with me, hopefully all rational people would.