What Should Schools Teach?: Disciplines, Subjects and the Pursuit of Truth(Knowledge and the Curriculum)

About the Book

A robust rationale on what schools should teach and how.

The design of school curricula involves deep thought about the nature of knowledge and its value to learners and society. Such a serious responsibility raises a number of questions: What is knowledge for? What knowledge is important for children to learn? How do we decide what knowledge matters in each school subject? The blurring of distinctions between pedagogy and curriculum, as well as that between experience and knowledge, has resulted in a confusing message for teachers about the part that each plays in the education of children. This book aims to dispel confusion through a robust rationale for what schools should teach, offering key understanding to teachers of the relationship between knowledge and their own pedagogy. This second edition includes new chapters on chemistry, drama, music, and religious education, as well as an updated chapter on biology. A revised introduction reflects on the emerging discourse around decolonizing the curriculum and on the relationship between the knowledge that children encounter at school and in their homes.
 

Table of Contents:

List of figures
List of abbreviations
Notes on contributors
Foreword
Tim Oates

Introduction to the second edition
Alex Standish and Alka Sehgal Cuthbert
1 Disciplinary knowledge and its role in the school curriculum
Alka Sehgal Cuthbert
2 School subjects
Alex Standish
3 English literature
Alka Sehgal Cuthbert
4 Art
Dido Powell
5 Drama
Martin Robinson
6 Music
Simon Toyne
7 Foreign languages
Shirley Lawes
8 Geography
Alex Standish
9 History
Christine Counsell
10 Religious education
Rania Hafez
11 Biology
Fredrik Berglund and Michael J Reiss
12 Chemistry
Gareth Bates
13 Physics
Gareth Sturdy
14 Mathematics
Cosette Crisan
Conclusion
Alka Sehgal Cuthbert and Alex Standish
Index

About the Author :
Alka Sehgal Cuthbert has spent more than 20 years as an English teacher at secondary level and lecturer in Cultural Studies in higher education. She currently works part-time as an English teacher for the educational charity, Civitas. She writes on educational issues for academic and public audiences, and has a particular interest in social realist epistemology, aesthetics and the pedagogy of reading and English Literature. She has contributed to the Standing Committee for the Education and Training of Teachers’ publication, ‘The Role of the Teacher Today’, and published articles on English in The Curriculum Journal and English in Education. Alka is a school governor and sits on Ofsted’s advisory panel for the new inspection framework for English. She is a committee member of the Cambridge Symposium of Knowledge in Education and member of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain. Alex Standish is Associate Professor of Geography Education at the UCL Institute of Education and Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He works in teacher training and supervises students at Master’s and doctoral level. He completed his doctoral degree in geography at Rutgers University New Jersey and then taught at Western Connecticut State University for six years. Alex has provided curriculum guidance for the Department for Education, the Department for International Trade, the London Mayor’s office, examination boards and schools. Other books: The False Promise of Global Learning and Global Perspectives in the Geography Curriculum.

Review :
"An important book. . . . should be mandatory reading for educational policymakers throughout the Anglophone world." "If you want an in-depth analysis of the curriculum by subject, UCL’s What Should Schools Teach? is superb." “This book brings profound questions about what children need to know back to the center of educational enquiry where they belong. The additional chapters in this second edition are excellent. We all need to read it.” “I am afraid that what we actually teach is so often forgotten in debates about schools. Subjects—the way that most people choose to divide up human knowledge—are too rarely the focus of our interest. Yet the subjects we offer and the syllabus content of each is arguably the most important single element of the school system. This book bucks the trend and should be of great importance to all teachers.”