Dangerous Current

 There is a dangerous new fad in education and for modern languages. But I don't think it is the Cognitive Science that we hear so much about.

The main points of Cognitive Science that we keep hearing at the moment are:

Don't study something in a big Unit only to then discard it and move on to something else. A useful reminder, and a helpful guide to planning a curriculum. And some nice jargon around spacing, massing, interleaving, curve of forgetting for anyone who likes to cling to some scientific sounding jargon.

Testing is really important as part of the learning process. Just think how you learn pupils' names at the beginning of term. You constantly test yourself. In seating plan order, in register order, as you meet them in the corridor, between lessons when you write their names in your planner. And you make mistakes and carry on, until you haven't "memorised" them; you know them.

Pitch the learning so that pupils are engaged and thinking, but not overwhelmed. This exhortation is hardly revolutionary and doesn't actually give any help in finding that sweet-spot, apart from making it clear it is absolutely crucial.

Use pictures to help conceptualise, not for decoration. With a big mantra about not distracting pupils, but also the need to make learning memorable and not too "samey". And Dual Coding, although as no-one agrees on what it means, it's not too useful.

So, important basic insights into learning which are uncontroversial in that they are fairly obvious, and in that while they direct us towards important considerations, they are vague about how to find the exact balance. That is down to the teacher in the specific individual circumstances of their classroom and their learners.

The problem is that Cognitive Science has been hijacked by the powerful fad of the "Knowledge Curriculum".

The Knowledge Curriculum is a right wing educational philosophy that hides behind the "scientific neutrality" and blandness of Cognitive Science just as it previously hid behind "Learning Styles". 

It uses the language of "standards" and "duty" to coerce us into accepting its diktats. Ian Cushing in this paper looks at how it is used to promote "standard" English as the morally correct variety of English to be teaching. It leads to a situation where the Runnymeade Trust reports on the shocking lack of diversity in the voices pupils hear and the literature they study. Even at a time when teachers are talking about "de-colonising" the curriculum. Because the moral imperative of doing their best for their pupils is presented as teaching them the "important knowledge of the elite" that allows pupils to be inserted into the status quo. Pupils memorise the "important knowledge" about books rather than actually reading them, thinking about them and critiquing them. Conformity is valued above creativity and expression.

This knowledge is presented as a shibboleth which pupils will require in order to pass the gatekeepers of success in our society. Rather than seeing education as a way to show pupils that they can make of themselves what they will and re-make society in the process. It is done in the name of social mobility but ultimately to rigidly maintain the status quo.

In languages, this is mirrored in a down-grading of the importance of learning to communicate with "foreigners". It comes with a view of languages as an intellectual system, rather than as a way of communicating. Dead languages are elevated to the same (if not higher) status as modern languages. And the word "foreign" is reinstated in the name of the subject.

The language pupils learn is to be a carefully selected medium for them to spot patterns and practise the grammar point being taught. Not for them to express themselves. The pupils are to make connections within the language as an abstract system, not to create meaning or communicate. Learning is defined as memorisation. Skills are declared defunct. And communication is a hurdle mistakenly placed in the way of learning.

If it was honest, then the Knowledge Curriculum would bring interesting ideas to the debate. How best to integrate memorisation, understanding, thinking, communication, creativity? How can skills be broken down into micro-skills? What is the balance between learning through engagement with exposure to the language and learning by explanation?

But because it hides its political nature behind the more neutral camouflage of Cognitive Science, and dresses up its elitism in the moral blackmail of "standards", and because it sees consistency as more important than agency, then it is dangerous to deal with. Let's see if it tries to bite back at me.