It's the end of Design and Technology as we know it...
... and I don't feel fine!
Read the full story below, or watch the video on YouTube here
Why are Pearson, one of the largest exam boards in the country, and a huge player in education globally, recommending that we transform Design and Technology from, a hands-on, skills-based workshop experience, into a curriculum that can be used primarily to push woke and net zero politics in classrooms?
For those of us outside the UK, Design and Technology is UK school subject where kids get to work with their materials and tools and do problem solving within the design framework. It does what it says on the tin.
The subject started out, many years ago as wood and metal work with textiles and cooking in girls’ school. But as the years past, we added new technologies, to make one of the most extraordinary places on the curriculum for kids to go.
We have kids making art deco furniture, which combined traditional woodworking with state-of-the-art laser cutters. Or a sensory mat for toddlers, that used microprocessors and wearable components. Kids might design and make their own electronic product, that make use of 3D printers.
And Design and Technology teachers were always striking the right balance between giving kids the skills they needed and giving them opportunities to be creative and problem solve. Not only did we have a great time, but the subject also laid the groundwork for careers in the creative engineering and trade sectors. To give some perspective, In the UK there are nearly 2 million people working in the design economy,
For many kids who don’t get the opportunity to do crafts and hobbies at home, Design and Technology is the one place where they could work with their hands, use tools, learn skills for the future.
Why then are Pearson recommending that we transform the subject away from this practical and technological basis. And what exactly do they want to do with it?
Design without Technology?
The title, of their proposal “Rethinking D&T - shifting design education towards social responsibility.” Let’s the cat out of the bag, that they’re maybe less interested in a hands-on technology based subject that gives kids skills they need to get on in the world, but more in setting up another channel for pushing woke and net-zero politics.
And that despite a performative consultation with teachers and experts, this outcome was always going to be foregone conclusion, the experts and teachers they consulted, just there to lend credibility, and create a false consensus.
Read on, and I will explain exactly why I think Pearson have cherry picked certain views and voices over others. I will also explain why the timing of this report is no accident, and why it is likely that it will be implemented in some form.
Because behind all of the blurb and pictures of happy kids is a proposal that would steal Design and Technology right from under our very noses.
Because once we push past the double speak, the true intentions become clear.
Instead of technology we are going to get, Ethics and inclusion, Carbon net zero or net positive, Frugal innovation, and social justice. (page 12)
For young people, DT has been an encounter with the unknown, where they have the opportunity to bring whatever they can imagine to life, using some of the most amazing school facilities in the world.
Instead of being rewarded for their creativity, skill and subject knowledge, the subject will become a never ending merry go round of social justice and environmentalist issues.
It is to this end, that the word Technology has been swapped out with responsible, which in essence means socially responsible, as we already include sustainability as part of our teaching in the form Recycle, Reclaim and Reuse.
Responsible Design,
“…develops the human capabilities needed to create solutions to the most important problems facing society now and in the future. This is achieved through the study of inclusive user and climate-centered design approaches which build empathic intelligence and responsibility.” (Report, page14)
This begs the question. What product could a young person design that would be net-zero compliant and socially responsible?
Answer: absolutely nothing. There is no product that you can make that doesn’t impact the environment or would not risk causing offence to someone or other.
And what happens if a kid’s design is not sufficiently “socially responsible”? If we have learnt anything over the last 10 years or so, it’s that there is no social justice with social punishment.
Because saying the wrong thing when it comes to Diversity Equity and inclusion, results in cancelation, mobbing, bullying, disciplinary action and even action by the police. This is a program to manage how and what kids are thinking, but somehow maintain the illusion of creativity:
Innovation and freedom
There is no way to predict the unforeseen consequences of what you are designing. Designing meets an immediate need, not generalised and sentimental values.
More importantly perhaps, in order to innovate and be creative, you have to be able to think and speak freely. Young people who are fearful of not meeting net zero or socially responsible targets are not free thinkers.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the writer who survived the communist gulag, makes this exact observation when observed that people are different, so you can equity or freedom, but you cannot have both.
If we learnt anything from that fearful period of history, it is that we cannot attempt to reprogram people’s thoughts and speech in order create a “more equitable and inclusive future” and then expect them to be innovative. It’s simply does not work like that.
It’s no accident that the most transformative innovations of the last few hundred years have emerged from liberal democracies, which placed a premium on individual freedom and free trade.
Instead of telling kids that they can, they should, they must! Responsible design tells them they can’t, they shouldn’t, they must not!
Carl Benz could not have invented the internal combustion engine if he was a being “responsible designer”. That invention has bought with it unparalleled benefits, it transports goods and services and expertise, from all around the world, but then, it also contributes to global warming.
Splitting the atom can be used to make nuclear weapons, which are not very “socially responsible”. Conversely, we need that technology to make nuclear power, which is the only viable alternative to fossil fuels.
In fact, the same observation can be made of any innovation, using fire itself creates carbon emissions, but we need it for cooking, the most basic need that you have for human survival.
Net Zero. Or Should we say Year Zero?
Follow NetZero to its logical conclusion and you end up with No cooking, no food, no growth no families. Design is about making things better, but if your better is net zero, then the only way to meet that is not to make anything at all.
The Net Zero project is a year-zero project where all the fantasies of free energy and limitless social justice come together in a utopian singularity.
But if we take the Communist experiments of yesteryear out of the memory-hole for just a moment, we see that it wasn’t all torture, mass-executions, and prison camps. Millions also died as a result of dogmatic social and agricultural experiments.
Net zero, a program for we must lose our technology, how we de-industrialise our society, deskill our workforce, offshore our manufacturing, without regard to the human cost.
Farmers throughout Europe are protesting ill-conceived green policies that would make it impossible for them provide the food that we need to survive.
Thousands of jobs are set to be lost in British Steel making as plants are closed, as part of the drive to meet net-zero targets.
Or you might look at Sri-Lanka where millions were reduced to hunger, poverty, and political chaos, following a nationwide experiment in organic farming.
And report by the Institute For Community Studies, found that climate-change policies are likely to ‘make the poor poorer, and push struggling communities further into deprivation and exclusion’.
Put net zero and social justice together, you end up with a perspective where technology is seen as responsible for climate change, or products that are “not equitable in their outcomes”, or environmental degradation or social exclusion or whatever it is.
The director of design and innovation at the royal society for Arts, in contributing to this project writes:
“This will require a design paradigm shift, quite distinct from those that came before it: the product-centric paradigm during the industrial age with its focus on putting productivity and consumption first, or the human-centric paradigm of design during the post-industrial and information ages with its focus on putting people first.”
(Jo Choukier, Head of Design at the RSA)
I’m not saying I disagree with everything here, and we should think carefully about how we use resources. But design is a process for matching available resources to a given problem. Products are also the result of millions of spontaneous decisions, which reflect innumerable datapoints about supply demand resources. This is the point Milton Friedman is making when he observes that no one individual has all of the expertise needed to make a pencil.
The information in a modern product is and always will be far beyond any centralised doctrine.
Because the products of the “industrial age”, as referred to here, are not just pointless trinkets, that nefarious companies somehow induce demand for. The industrial age produces the goods and services that people need to survive. All 8 billion of us. It means access to high quality foods from around the world. It means the devices and products that make the information age possible. It means the healthcare that has turned what were once life-threatening diseases and into minor inconveniences. It means the being able to sustain the culture that bind our societies and communities together. The cheap and available energy the industrial age supplies, means that we get to live.
A post-industrial age is not going to be some utopian fairy-tale land of free energy and free production. Net zero is going to mean immiseration, poverty and starvation, the poorest in society bearing the brunt.
We need fossil fuels, not just for products, but for synthetic materials without which we cannot store and process food. We need them for fertilizers, without which half the world’s population would starve. We need them to power farming equipment, we need them to transport goods, services and specialists.
Would it be too generous to say that Net Zero types take the complexities of modern society for granted? It sounds like they want to replace it entirely, without knowing with what or how.
Somebody else has to work out the details.
The chief executive of the Design Council, in contributing to this project writes
“We need to re-design nearly every aspect of how we live our lives to tackle the climate emergency and so the Design Council welcomes a curriculum that equips young people to design for the planet.”
Yet no reasonable interpretation of the evidence would say that humanity is doomed by a changing climate, even if some climatic trends mean we change how we do things.
But, for some reason, it has become acceptable for those in positions of authority to spin narratives of doom. This is not consequence free. Evidence is now corroborating what many of us working with young people know already. That the relentless stream of inaccurate information that young people are being fed on climate change, is contributing to the increased anxiety and mental health problems. As a teacher, I don’t think the arguments about “raising awareness” are good enough to excuse this. As adults, it is up to us to respect the dignity of childhood. She also goes onto say
“We must inspire the next generation of designers if the UK is to become a thriving green economy.”
This is wishful thinking, green products and energy require substantial subsidies from other, wealth generating sectors of the economy. And running an economy into the ground, in the name of net-zero is hardly “responsible”. For all of the talk in the report about future proofing, it does not refer to those people who will be put out of work, or those who won’t be able to manage the increases on their food and fuel bills. Or can’t afford expensive heat pumps and electric vehicles, that they will be compelled to purchase. The authors of this report do not seem to have a handle on just how complex modern societies are to maintain and grow. Net Zero is a luxury belief, of an elite managerial class, increasingly disconnected from reality. It’s a bit rich for people in ivory towers to tell those who are already shopping for value baked beans, that they need to reduce their consumption.
About the only thing that is futureproofed, as the report puts it, are the salaries of the people writing it!
Therefore, when the report poses the question, “is technology the issue?” we know that they expect us to answer “yes”!
Landfill
It is a mode of thinking gives us some insight as to why what we do as design and technology teachers has been, somewhat disparagingly, referred to as landfill:
There are a few things to understand from this statement. What’s missing to me, is the understanding that in making a product kids are learning by doing, and building technological skills in the process, Skills that they can take to the bank when they leave school.
And that a tangible product is a demonstration of a level of competency. If kids are taught well, and they pour their hearts and souls into their projects, they tend to keep hold of them.
To imply that the material impact of our subject is a problem, is something of a distortion, because we use very little material, especially when compared to say the manufacturing or construction industries. This underscores the view that products themselves are the problem, and that idea is to pull the plug on current specialisms, of wood, metals, plastics, systems and control and textiles.
That should concern us all. Design and Technology Labs are the family silver of the UK school system, representing decades of investment. You might have hot working areas for casting and forging, CNC routers, milling machines, PCB making facilities, CNC textiles machines, sewing machines and so on. Once the requirement for outcomes in specific material areas is removed, then so is the need to maintain and use expensive capital items. Schools will find themselves disincentivized to maintain, workshops, tools, equipment, if all that pupils are required to deliver is a poster.
Sorry “digital outcome” (I’m not sorry).
Claims of futureproofing simply don’t stack up because the only guide we have to the future is the past.
And the past tells us that individual prosperity and successful societies are predicated on the ability deliver complex, refined goods and services, with precision.
That’s the way it has always been, since people first started creating tools and using them to transform the environment around them,
I don’t see that goal of adding value to individual youngsters in this round table report. By contrast, the emphasis seems to be very much on adjusting the attitudes and values of children. Check out the following quote
“by celebrating greater innovation in materials and processes, enhancing a circular economy focus, design would help prepare students for a different way of consuming, problem solving and shaping the world around them, that ultimately will improve their prospects in their future careers.”
How will not teaching them technological mastery improve their prospects, exactly?
Need to know? Need to No!
The content we’ve been looking at now is something of a preamble to their curriculum proposal, which is basically divided into primary, middle, GCSE year and A’ Level, age groups. One of the first things we notice is that this curriculum proposal, confirms that there will not requirement for subject specialisms. And it looks like learning is based around the design project, the context of which will be framed around the UN sustainability goals. Pupils would choose how they want to realize the Project- which as they’ve said earlier could be digital or practical outcome. Learning of practical skills will theoretically happen on a will be on a need-to-know basis.
The justification for this would be that schools have different resources. This is circular reasoning, as we give kids options of what material areas they want to study. Without a need, there’s no knowing!
The lack of scope and sequence, focus on “big ideas” and emphasis is on project work over content, are strong indicators that Pearson are proposing an inquiry-based program. Or IBL as it is known. In IBL there isn’t specific scope and sequence of what you want kids to learn. The idea is to set an inquiry question within a context and learning that’s all supposed to take place on a need-to-know basis. It could be something as specific as “Which electronic components can be used to create a sensory circuit?” or something with lower resolution such “What are the different aspects of form?”
In both examples there is no need to achieve mastery. Where learning outcomes are subjective, the assumption is learning must be consequential is inevitable. Additionally, restricting contexts to the UN SDG, constrains both content and potential problem-solving contexts.
These gaping holes are considered worthwhile, as we are presented with the justification that IBL generates or engenders to higher order thinking, or critical thinking. Therefore, learning is seen as process orientated. The question becomes, what critical thinking and what process? In this case, it is to make sure kids and young people are thinking the right way, in terms of social justice, net zero, DEI and so on. IBL becomes little more than a very elaborate loaded question. An outcome by contrast, whether that’s a project or exam, under controlled conditions, allows progress to be tracked.
But the project here is not what and how the kids are learning, the project is the kids themselves. Formalizing it into a school syllabus, enables teachers to be co-opted, either willingly or unwillingly, into the political project. It is by tracking the process the teachers and pupils can be compelled to operate within the political parameters that that are framed by the contexts. or “big ideas” as they are often referred to.
But this creates a problem of infinite regression. At what point can you stop monitoring the process?
That’s the neat part, you don’t.
As we will see later, assessment becomes interminable. There is no “right answer”. There is no conclusion. Just a never-ending procession of Sustainable Development Goals and global contexts, each framed as a crisis or emergency. When the kids finish one, they simply go onto another. The satisfaction that arises when making quality piece, work and overcoming obstacles is regarded as irrelevant.
Under this proposal, a pupil could create a beautiful piece of woodwork, have made tremendous strides in terms of knowledge understanding, tool use, etcetera, and carried out tremendous problem solving. But unless they have shown correct political thinking in their processes, they would not be eligible for credit. They will be told that they “haven’t understood the issues” or something along those lines.
An alternative pupil in the same class could make a model of a solar-powered recycling center for a minority group, made out of a cardboard box and receive maximum credit. Whatever learning cannot not to be tied up to Net zero, Social Justice or SDGs will simply be seen as ineligible.
This round table report does not care if a child learns Ohms law, or how to hold a plane, or design a Printed circuit board, or understand the triangulation of forces, or when to use an overlocker, or operate a CNC milling machine.
Therefore, there is not much scope and sequence in the curriculum proposal of what you would want young people to actually learn. Content the GCSE curriculum proposal, is restricted to an outline of materials and processes.
Considering how much Pearson have committed this project, this absence of scope and sequence can hardly be accidental. The details have been kicked into the long grass:
The tremendous complexity and depth of the Design and Technology, as the application of science, is not reflected. Are the references to engineering that are made throughout the report, merely window dressing, to lend credibility? Design is a structured, knowledge informed problem-solving activity. We carry out research and practice new techniques to inform how we can authentically solve the problems. But at whatever stage, it is a knowledge informed process.
The road to hell is paved with IBL
To understand the answer why this proposal will the end of Design and Technology. We have to look more closely at IBL, its relationship to knowledge, and why loosing subject specialisms will be a disaster for practical and empirical learning.
The theory of IBL is the inquiry question, the solving of which encourages children to guide their own learning, and in so doing they “take ownership of their learning” the assumption being that they gain a deeper understanding of whatever it is that they are trying to do. Somehow they are able to identify the knowledge they need.
The role of teachers in IBL is not to teach but to provide the right conditions, wafting around the classroom “facilitating learning”. If you think behaviour in classrooms is a problem now, wait until every kid told to “take ownership of their learning”. And any respect and authority that might stem from your role as an expert will evaporate, because teachers are “partners in learning” or “agents of change”. Underpinning this, is a blank-slate conceptualization of the human mind. IBL is dependent on the assumption that kids’ minds are miniaturized versions of the adult mind. I recall an English teacher convince me (and I think herself) that kids minds are like blank computer chips or hard-drives, just waiting to be written or re-written.
She went onto explain why kids would learn in the same way as a postgraduate researchers, if we would just “facilitate” the learning environment in the correctly.
A miasma swirls around IBL. It really works, but only if teachers change their thinking, or subject themselves to more “training”. The more IBL fails to deliver, the denser the smoke. It’s always somebody else’s fault, usually the teachers. We’re just not facilitating hard enough.
And fail it does. IBL has a long history of not delivering, which is why I think it ends up being repackaged every time, in the past it might have been known as “discovery learning” today, it can be referred to as “skills based” learning, a highly deceptive term, because kids don’t acquire any actual skills, or more accurately the learning that goes on is incidental or happens off-stage entirely. In Scotland it is known as the “curriculum for excellence”, another Orwellian euphemism. Anyway, it’s the same idea.
The evidence speaks for itself. The smoking gun comes from the 2015 research conducted by PISA, which is the OECD branch which conducts educational research between nations. Their research demonstrated that IBL has a worse impact on pupil outcomes, than poor leadership, missing homework, or even classroom attendance.
This might not mean that IBL can’t be a useful tool in the within the paradigm of the knowledge-based classroom, but when it is used as the modus operandi, i.e. the curriculum, it is absolutely catastrophic for learning.
Scotland is 12 years into its own “skills based” disaster with the “curriculum for excellence”. It also has a focus is on “big ideas” and “skills”, not actual skills, but what they conceive to be higher order thinking skills. However PISA 2022 research found it has not delivered the excellence it promised.
The educationalist, ED Hirsch, in his excellent and thorough book, “Why knowledge matters”, drills into the evidence as to why “Skills based” learning causes education standards to tank. He uses the French and US education systems as case studies. It’s a great read if you get hold of it.
It’s the relationship to that IBL has with knowledge, where everything unravels. In the landscape of this report, knowledge is manifested as technology, which as we were looking at earlier, is considered to be the problem.
Environmentalists see it as responsible for big oil and wasteful products that drive climate change. And the neo-Marxist types, see it as a way that dominant groups maintain and allocate power, the fallacy critical pedagogy rest upon.
Critical Pedagogues view the acquisition of knowledge as something potentially negative. If you’re interested in teaching, that would been viewed as potentially harmful, the relationship between teacher and pupil being regarded as a power dynamic of sorts. To even engage in teaching (in the wrong way) is considered as an act of oppression. It is through this reasoning that critical pedagogues view teaching not as teaching but as IBL. For them, the so-called “banking theory” of critical pedagogy renders the committing of knowledge to memory an act of sustaining dominant structures. It relegates knowledge to “content” and reference, or suitable only for “problematizing”. Certainly not to be committed to memory.
This is immensely harmful to young minds, as human growth and survival rests on the ability to recall skills, knowledge and understanding quickly and accurately.
In operating withing IBL, children end up with snippets of information, that they may or may not be able to reliably recall. In essence, the IBL classroom operates out of short-term memory. Yet short term memory is evolved to handle information about the immediate environment, and also perhaps sort term social interactions. Long term memory is far larger and evolved to retain information over a long period. The ability to be able use tools and develop an extensive vocabulary, for example. We don’t forget how to ride a bike or swim, even if it is more difficult to learn new skills from scratch, as you get older.
Crucial to learning is the transfer from working to long term memory, that is accomplished through practice, repetition and rehearsal. And in addition to initial the instruction from experts, we also need ensure that errors do not become hardwired, taking more work to correct in the long run.
Perhaps that is one of the reasons that kids have such an innate regard for expertise, and teachers who demonstrate competence. There’s a survival dimension to it. The process of repletion and getting it right, and listening to expert feedback, is also referred to as deliberate practice.
"Deliberate practice (DP) occurs when an individual intentionally repeats an activity in order to improve performance. The claim of the DP framework is that such behavior is necessary to achieve high levels of expert performance."
That’s hard enough to do as an adult, so how difficult must it for child to know when they’re making a mistake!
As we go forward with this process, our brains strengthen specific connections and create new ones to establish the neural network needed to sustain learning, a process called synaptogenesis. This is what allows us to accomplish extraordinary achievements like, playing the piano, climbing a mountain, or tying our shoelaces.
And when we repeatedly practice something, the pathways involved in that task become more efficient, allowing us to perform with greater skill and ease and then move onto something new. This is what I think Bloom means when he talked about mastery learning. His famous taxonomy is a structure of learning, with knowledge as its base. It’s a system of dependency. To function at the highest level of Bloom's cognitive taxonomy-evaluation—a learner would need to have necessary knowledge, be able to understand and apply it and be capable of analysis and synthesis in using it. The sum of the parts become greater than the whole. The more we learn the more we able to learn. Learning to learn.
Kids have greater brain plasticity; motor network connectivity is more active. To imagine that they are going to operate in the same manner as post-graduate learners, who have undergone years of specialisation (as my IBL teacher friend posited), is detached from reality. It is illustrative the The International Baccalaureate (IB) guidance for implementing the Middle Years Program (and IBL program for the ages 11-16) “Principles into practice” makes one use of the word child (in the context of being offspring) and dozens of the word “student”. In one IB school I had even heard 4-year-olds referred to as “students” ! It’s bloody ridiculous.
Tool be or not tool be…
The earliest creation of tools by humans dates from over 3 million years ago, known as the Oldowan tools. That’s a long time before humans had even started to create and use symbols, and before we had language in the way that we do now. Such discoveries are illustrative of tool adaptation being a part of our subconscious. I would go further, and to say that there is critical phase in child development where they assimilate hand skills at speed.
Just think for a moment about keenly kids pay attention when you’re teaching them new practical skills. There is a neurobiological process at work in deep satisfaction that comes to teachers during that process. There isn’t a classroom in the world where this isn’t true. In my you can teach a DT lesson or share a skill even when you’re not speaking the same language. I think this is a human universal in the need to learn practical skills and apply them to problem-solving, genetically encoded into our psychology.
The first question that kids ask when they into the DT lab is “are we doing practical today” But the imagine for a moment that you answer, “nope, were going to do 3 weeks of ‘critiquing’ products to see how net zero compliant or socially responsible they are”. Groan.
This is what irritates me so much about what this proposal - and more broadly programs of critical pedagogy - represent. It that takes that innate anticipation and curiosity that youngsters have, and then uses it for political goals. Net Zero and Social Justice are political goals with a capital P.
It’s doubly cruel, because Critical Pedagogy presents the illusion to the children that they have worked it out for themselves, but in reality, have been given loaded questions. As educators, we don’t consider that to be intensely sinister, are we even thinking? Are we even in the business of education anymore?
Using schools and even children to promote social goals, - social engineering- let’s call a spade a spade, is not a new idea despite all the gloss and spin that’s given to it.
John Dewey in the 20s unrealistically stated
“‘Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations and race of his ancestors.’”
Totalitarian and authoritarian systems of the 20th century took advantage of education to manipulate young minds. Today, under our contemporary compassionate tyranny, this idea is repackaged as “raising awareness”. After all, who could argue with the need to “raise awareness”??
Make Your Poster (MYP).
Pearson’s proposal are, in no small way, close to an existing IBL program, that has been up and running for years. This is the International Baccalaureates Middle Years program or MYP. The report hints they are thinking along these lines, in their “key observations”
Given the similarities between Pearson’s Curriculum proposals and the MYP, it is worth examining the later, to see how the proposal might pan out in reality. And It is not a pretty picture. First up, are the “big ideas”. Pearson want to teach the subject to the SDGs and MYP has these overarching global contexts that railroad students learning.
Here, the project is the child, to break him or her down and then reconstruct them into what they consider to be ideal global citizens. More on that later. For example, with identities and relationships, the program expects you to assault the specific values that make up the child’s identity. That the child is guilty of having the wrong values, that need correction, is taken for granted.
In the MYP the process of learning is monitored closely. But monitoring processes and not outcomes, creates a problem of infinite regression. In MYP, there are 4 assessment criteria per subject. Each Assessment criteria is assessed twice per year.
Once as a formative and once as a summative. So (4*2)*2. Which is 16 per year. There are 8 subjects as part of the MYP, so that works out as be 128 assessments per year, per child. Oof. That’s hard enough on kids. For the teachers, this represents a managerial burden of enormous proportions, especially if you have lots of Key stage three type classes.
This isn’t assessment, it’s surveillance. The surveillance necessary to make sure kids are thinking the “correct” way about global, political and social issues. And almost every teacher caught up in the MYP, I spoke with, said the same thing. It’s boring. Boring, boring, boring. Pages of copy-pasting. Instead of teaching swimming, kids make presentation on swimming. Instead of learning dance, kids make presentations on the “impact of dance on behaviour”. MYP is meta-learning out of control, the infinite regression of critical thinking.
The MYP covers five years (which is age 7 to 11), but the assessment objectives don’t change that much. Example:
You have year 1 “explain and justify the need for a solution to a problem” and then in year 5 you have “explain and justify the need for a solution to a problem for a specified client/target audience”
That’s 5 years progress according to MYP. The other objectives follow a similar pattern. In the making part of the assessment, it’s identical:
What are those technical skills? What does “excellent” mean? That’s the problem with relativizing everything. Nobody knows what progress actually looks like, in a classroom, let alone between schools. Yes, An 11 year old can make an excellent product but then, so can a 16 year old or a 7 year old. An assessment program that assesses everything assesses nothing. There’s more than a passing similarity here, with how Pearson would want to approach the subject.
For example, the proposed GCSE materials section, is identical to the KS3 materials section with some added details.
To be clear, I don’t say any of this to disparage the hard work of pupils and staff who work under the MYP.
There is no reason to believe, that if learning is framed within an IBL paradigm, that kids will somehow spontaneously respond with high level learning. Schools are not going to invest in or maintain expensive equipment on the off chance that a subject specialist might use for their teaching or on the off chance that a kid might need it for their project. We’re more likely to end up with a race to the bottom, as schools divest themselves of what they see as un-needed capital items.
While researching this I spoke, in hushed tones, to an MYP Design examiner who was able to tell me that for every 10 outcomes that she sees for MYP Design final projects only 1 were resistant materials based. She had never seen a Systems or electronics outcome. I am not buying the idea that kids will get the breadth and depth they need along the way.
I recall an email I received from a Grade Coordinator, when I was working in an MYP school. We were discussing about how to drive pupil progress.
“Students exercise voice and choice by evaluating their work and identifying areas of strength and weakness and opportunities for self-development, students become true partners in learning, and teachers provide encouragement and praise. They ask probing questions, help students look realistically at their own work, facilitating deeper self-reflection and agency”.
This covers up the fact that teachers are not driving seat of progress anymore. How can teaching be evidenced? IBL shifts the burden of proof, back onto the children. Let’s say that’s very useful if schools want to “mark their own homework” when it comes to pupil progress.
Kids don’t make progress under IBL. The acquisition of knowledge that you need to function as a learner, happens somewhere else, something the IB are prepared to admit.
It might be that kids who can afford to supplement their schooling with tuition, or you might have to teach knowledge first and make sure it is understood.
The caveat of IBL is self-direction, kids are left to work at their own pace. FOFO is how one teacher referred to it (F**k off and find out). Follow that through and you end up with a situation and kids never get challenged, only validated, (or “affirmed” to use the jargon of the day). If you’re a kid from a poorer background or you have learning needs, forget it, you sink without a trace. If kids are expected to work at their own pace, which they are under IBL, how can you quantify if a child is being successful, if there’s no scope and sequence? Where’s the inclusion?
The hot air surrounding IBL, such as “taking ownership of learning”, “agency” and so on covers up realities IBL. One is that it is the preferred method of politicization of education. A psychological operation that exploits children for radical-left politics. Subsequently, children do not make consistent progress - if at all.
As Friedrich Nietzsche put it "They muddy the water, to make it seem deep."
The mysterious world of gLoBaL CiTizEnShiP.
Talk of global citizenship crops up in organizations such as the IB, to prioritize radical-lefts obsessions, those of social-constructivism, cultural influences, diversity, open borders, social justice, gender, inclusion and so on. These themes are explicit in the IB position Paper, Learners without borders: A curriculum for global citizenship.
The global citizenship agenda contrasts very starkly with the United Nations Convention of the rights of the child,
This legally binding treaty, to which most nations are signatories, recognizes that it is the right and responsibility of parents to be raise the child, within the context of their culture and religion and nation. It also talks about the child’s right to information, freedom of thought and conscience, and so on.
The Global Citizenship agenda takes that away. Children are handed conclusions about who they are going to be, what attitudes are acceptable and how they are expected fit in. That they must global citizens first, their families, national identity secondary to the free movement of people.
“Diversity” is considered an untrammeled moral good. And who would be so bold as to place a limit on a moral good? As such diversity is considered boundless. What better way to achieve boundless diversity, than with the ideal and practice of the free movement of peoples? And as if by some extraordinary coincidence, a boundless, equitable state is the aim of communism.
The right of children to stable communities and cultural legacy vanishes with the global citizenship agenda.
Whether teachers are in a fee-paying school or government funded school, they are there to deliver literacy and numeracy. It is what we promise parents and children. If children are being used for political ends of any kinds, isn’t that exploitation?
When the roundtable report, reiterate the need for global citizenship, what do they have in mind, given their commitment to the ideological priorities of net zero and social justice?
If you are a teacher, who loves their subject and wants to share you passion for it with the next generation, forget it, you are going to be fish out of water. Will teachers be rewarded and celebrated for excellence in what they do, or will it be a case of saying the right things in terms of Net Zero and DEI in order to achieve recognition?
Classrooms will become places for teachers to join kids in exploring what are believed to be climate and social injustices. Part of this will be to deconstruct the values of child holds, which, under social justice doctrine, are always assumed to be harmful and regressive. To go from something structured and organized, which the society, culture, religion, family, things that keep the child grounded and safe, into something chaotic.
Progressive schools and classrooms are chaotic by nature. That’s the intention.
Kevin Kumashiro, the former dean of the School of Education at the University of San Francisco, writes
“Once in a crisis, a student can go in many directions, some that may lead to anti-oppressive change, others that may lead to more entrenched resistance. Therefore, educators have a responsibility not only to draw students into a possible crisis, but also to structure experiences that can help them work through their crises productively.”
If this were guidance for adult relationships, it would be considered toxic and manipulative. Coming as it does, from within the educational establishment makes it all the more reprehensible.
There is a dogmatic presumption of guilt made on behalf of young people. the social crime of having the wrong values is assumed, contrary to evidence. This the axiom of contemporary critical pedagogy, that education is a zero-sum game, of winners and losers. In reality, every teacher knows that learning and schools are wealth generating, and transformative, in the most meaningful sense. To the individual child.
The bitter irony is of course that chaotic schools and classrooms are bad for everybody, especially so for children from low-income backgrounds. Parents from low-income backgrounds cannot subsidies their child’s schooling with private tuition, or have spare time to work at home filling the gaping holes left by IBL and other progressive doctrines. As often is the case, the ideologues behind bad ideas, never have to face the consequences of them.
The purpose of all this is illustrate the contrast IBL with the design process, which is an informed problem-solving process, that happens in knowledge rich, physically safe environment. The design process is a journey from chaos into order.
Why now?
It is for democratically elected representatives to decide what values our school systems will hold, not ideologues. What concerns me, is that UK governments are increasingly technocratic, relying on pressure groups and quangos for policy guidance. Labour, in Scotland and Wales have supported the implementation “skills based” curriculum. and at time of writing, it looks likely that they will form the next UK government. I think it is very possible that they would implement this proposal, especially as it has such a strong focus on “progressive” ideas obsessions.
The timing of this report seems far from coincidental. My understanding is that Pearson do not have the largest share of the exam board market, so perhaps this is a “first to market” tactic.
Then why are Pearson doing all this? And why have certain voices in this process seem to have been amplified over others? According to them it is to reverse the decline of the subject, The uptake of the subject, they observe, is in decline.
This is true, up to a point, but they omit to fully elaborate, a very curious omission. They fail to mention anywhere that the drop in was a consequence of DT being inexplicably excluded from something called the English Baccalaureate, which is a set of subjects, kids are required to choose from at GCSE.
And over the years, I think it has suffered from a bit of a status problem, it’s been seen at times as a place for “non-academic” children, let’s say, to go. “DT is for thickos”, is a slur I’ve heard more than once in public schools. But I fail to see how degrading the subject into “Blue-Peter” modelling will make it more attractive or raise its status.
Or maybe it’s because they believe in Net-Zero, Inclusion, social justice, diversity and equity. When you hear about the Corporate Equality Index, you might think differently about why companies are being so forward with their ideology.
Pearson have currently attained a 100%CEI score,
This score is administered by the Human Rights Campaign who are the largest LGBTQ+ lobbying organization in the States.
Companies are evaluated on a scorecard of several factors, including workforce protections, inclusive benefits and inclusive culture. But the most significant factor is Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). To achieve a high CSR score, companies must demonstrate their commitment to LGBTQ+ causes and activism. A high CEI score will reassure investment firms such as Blackrock that control trillions of dollars, and who are the second largest shareholder in Pearson, that your company is a relatively safe bet for investment.
Conversely, if a company does not achieve a high CSR score, then the Human Rights Campaign can exert pressure on these investors.
The powerful billionaires who control investment companies, do not necessarily share the values of the public that these companies are supposed to be serving. Larry Fink the CEO of Blackrock is infamous for stating that one of the aims of his company is to “force behaviour” in individuals. Pearson’s’ largest investor, Cevian Capital, include ESG targets as part of how they operate.
Pearson provide a public service. Are they acting in the best interest of schools and young people, or trying to get a higher ESG score to look good for investors?
Do they want kids to submit digital outcomes in Design, because they are concerned about futureproofing and landfill, or are they trying to meet their own targets for digital growth and net zero by 2030 (p26)?
Pearson are also one of Stonewalls 100 top employers.
The largest LGBTQ organization in the UK has become mired in free-speech issues. Academics are being coerced by Stonewall to share neo-pronouns and commit to “allyship”. One of the founders of that organization, Simon Fanshaw, was interviewed by the Standard.
His issue is with the “no debate” attitude adopted by Stonewall and other activist organizations, or what he terms “acceptance without exception”. “If you said a few years ago that you didn’t support Black Lives Matter because you had disagreements with it as a political organization, you’d be labelled a racist,” he says. “The debate now is: if you don’t agree with me, you are a bigot.”
Labelling people as bigots, ‘phobes or racist is the rule and not the exception for critical social justice. You don’t discuss, The wrong type of discussion is “harmful”.
What kind of lesson is that for our children!
Critical Pedagogy and progressive ideas have been the dominant doctrine of educational faculty for years, if not decades, and schools are downstream of universities, in terms of teacher training, resources, thinking and so on. Where are all these critical thinkers that we were promised? What we are seeing are young people chanting “from the river to the sea” without knowing which river or what sea, or the terrible implications of that slogan. Or activists who are throwing soup over works of art or slashing paintings. Who can’t distinguish between petroleum oil and cooking oil.
As children develop into young people it dawns on them that world is more complex than they imagined. They look to their mentors to help them make sense of it all.
Wokery, as do other totalizing ideologies, presents them with black and white answers. Privileged versus exploited. Oppressed vs. oppressor. Colonizer vs. de-colonizer. Capitalism vs. equity.
If we are all to have a future, we need informed, knowledge, technologically literate, brave young people to meet the challenges of tomorrow.
There is no future for anyone, if some of us insist that young people be fearful, anxious, resentful, and be told that they have no chance of a happy ending, only never-ending activism in the social justice machine.
I see a curriculum proposal less devoted to unleashing children’s potential, and more to taming wrong attitudes, that are assumed to exist.
Design and Technology is lightening in a bottle. If we lose it to woke technocrats, we may never get it back.
For young people who may never get the chance to be in a workshop again, what we do as Design and Technology teachers is too meaningful, transformative, and life changing, to landfill for the sake of a Pearsons ESG score.