Every now and then this comes up again on social media. Someone posts a complaint that schools are WASTING CHILDREN’S TIME teaching UNNECESSARY KNOWLEDGE!

In one version, the meme claims that we only need to know how to grow food, filter water, etc. to survive. And teachers (how dare they!) are teaching children about the beauty of literature, the lessons of history and the wonders of science. Because, of course, if you’re growing food, you’ll never need a working knowledge of genetics, or if you’re filtering water, you’ll never want to know what pathogens are and how they spread…

Another, similar, meme claims that teachers (oh, how dare they!) are introducing the next generation to algebra or geometry instead of teaching them to fill in tax forms. How terrible to think of children visualising the mathematical properties of the universe when they could be staring at a tax form! 

Scotland, late 2020. Covid-19 and the closure of schools had disrupted education and obliterated the yearly exam schedule. Uptake of online education had proved patchy at best. The government and the education authorities were worried about the effect on social inequalities: that children whose families lacked the technology at access online lessons, would suffer deepening disadvantages as a result.
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So, every child over about age 8 was given an iPad to use at home and at school. Teachers could set classroom tasks and homework digitally, and every child would have the tools to access online lessons if ever schools had to lock down again. The constant day-to-day use of iPads would extend everyone’s IT skills, and what with text-predicting note-taking apps, they would hardly need to write with pens on paper any more… 

It sounded amazing. Expensive, but oh so 21st-century, so technologically advanced, so sci-fi-utopian, pro-equality… for every child would have the same device in their hands. The same learning tool, the same opportunities. 

It was that day in August—the day before school begins. It wasn’t my school, because I’m only a supply teacher, but I went there for the morning to learn about the new Reading & Writing framework. There is always a new Reading & Writing framework, for educational leaders are always either throwing out what works best or berating teachers for not doing what works best.

I had sat on a chair and listened to the woman and I’d “got into groups” and talked with the people and I’d done something on big paper and scribbled in my notebook and I’d checked off my PRD target and now I was headed for the door. The permanent-contract teachers would stay and use the afternoon to arrange their classrooms.
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Ever nosy, I peeked into one classroom after another as I walked down the corridor.