I don't think there's much point for eg in a student aiming for a grade 4 in science learning large chunks of the course. Like, why should they care about giant ionic lattices?
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Although an old article, it still holds true.
Vocational education is valuable but there is a risk of it being pushed to a certain demographic and the University experience pushed to a different group - often based on income/background rather than ability/aptitude.
Does this apply also for Foundation GCSE? Gove et al deliberately made GCSE History more demanding for the top end, making it virtually impossible (imv) for a student aiming for a 3 or 4 to access the course meaningfully.
I'll defer to you on the content of the Science curriculum. I don't know what giant ionic lattices are myself. But it seems to me that it still comes down to whether the curriculum is doing a good of building students' understanding of chemistry as an academic discipline.
You could have a good debate with fellow subject specialists about whether you should keep or ditch your ionic lattices on that basis, but if you start saying it's on the basis of what they need to get a job then you'll be chucking out a whole lot more and calling whole subjects into question.
What is the value of teaching someone things from which the concept of "chemistry as academic discipline" might emerge if they don't care, struggle with the content, will never need ever again and will forget within six weeks?
Because if we say there is no value in it for some then we set ourselves up to judge who there is no value in it for. We both know where that ends and I'm not ok with it. As for forgetting stuff, I think that's a blind alley because they'll forget most of the specifics we teach after leaving school.
I don't think we're removing a student's entitlement to an academic grounding in a wide range of subjects though. At least I don't think we should. Post-16 is a bit different because that's well-established as the point where core schooling ends.
@mrmountstevens.bsky.social This was an interesting thread to follow. Jonathan's "think in academic disciplines" is certainly the most parsiominious answer, but the choice of which disciplines and content are truly enabling (of future growth, productivity and happiness) does seem very arbitrary.
I think that's a good point. In terms of which disciplines/subjects if we were designing an education system from scratch it might look different. A lot of the rationale for the status quo is practical not idealistic i.e. we have established curricula and (some sort of) supply of qualified teachers.
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Vocational education is valuable but there is a risk of it being pushed to a certain demographic and the University experience pushed to a different group - often based on income/background rather than ability/aptitude.
(Sounds better in aramaic)