Wednesday 12 March 2014

A Failure To Add Up

It's not often I can say something positive about the Coalition, so I would like to take a moment and congratulation on their new education idea. For far too long naysayers have gotten away with insisting that best teaching practice might somehow be tied to irrelevant factors such as "culture" and "school-day length" and "holiday times" and "language", but finally some brave soul has taken a stand and announced in a clear voice: Chinese teaching methods must work better in England than English teaching methods, because they work better in China!

I eagerly await further announcements that Australians will be flown in to teach our sportsmen how to play in the sun more often, Paraguay military officials will be brought over to demonstrate how to defend a country without any naval units at all, and cheetahs will be employed to teach children to run faster by eating only raw wildebeest.

(Actually, all snark aside, I'm all in favour of sharing best practice across national borders. The problem here isn't the initiative, it's the ridiculously grandiose claims being made about its aims.)

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