Object lesson: Anne Watson on education post-Covid

‘This so-called knowledge-rich curriculum is wisdom-poor.’

Last month I contributed to a Quaker Values in Education webinar on the recovery of the education system post-Covid. I have written in these pages before about how our particular view of truth – something we seek together rather than something we accept, finished and polished, from others – is our contribution to education. Our view of childhood also matters: Children are not born in original sin as unshaped beings into whom knowledge, culture and morals have to be inserted, but are born in grace as people of equal value, deserving equal respect.

The language being used about recovery is, however, not about knowledge as truth and children as people, but is about measurement and control. Phrases such as ‘catch-up’ and ‘loss of learning’ indicate a race to access a canon of knowledge decided by the state. The state has already sought to govern access to this canon, which is described as giving equal access to a ‘knowledge-rich’ curriculum. I agree that there is a deep need for ‘equality of opportunity’. Weaknesses in society have to be treated with compensation for the disadvantaged. But recent policies have turned the need for equality into recipes for fitting in, without critique of the knowledge into which children are supposed to ‘fit’.

The state-sanctioning of the history curriculum warps children’s knowledge of Britain’s place in the world. As Ursula Franklin, a Canadian Friend, has said: ‘If within society there are failures in compassion, knowledge or tolerance, it is not the job of schools to produce students who can comfortably fit in… schools ought to draw attention to these failures and stress that they require correction.’
Covid has further exposed the difficulties of ‘fitting in’. Home schooling for some means empty-bellied children clustering round mum’s smartphone. For others it means freedom from the constraints of curriculum. Either way, mental health suffers and too many children lose their foothold on the sanctioned educational pathway. This so-called knowledge-rich curriculum is wisdom-poor. Rushing to push more of it into children is not healthy.

In Faith and Experience in Education, several UK Friends write about how they live out their testimony in their educational work. Kathy Bickmore points out that our Meetings are valuable reminders of the infinite possibilities of human flourishing: ‘Our eventual goal is for learners to guide themselves, to contribute their Light to the remaking of the world.’ Greta Thunberg, Malala Yousafzai and the Quaker children who kept Reading Meeting in 1663 are all examples of what young people can be capable of.

Quakers can think about our roles and responsibilities as adults, teachers, parents, governors, citizens, and owners of buildings. But do we also have something important to say about curriculum: the importance of seeking truth together, the authority of some truths and the arbitrariness of others, the selection of truth by government, and the ladders of achievement enshrined in the current discourse? Or is this the wrong moment to think about that, when so many children have ‘fallen behind’ on the current pathway?

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