Biodiversity and the education system
Sep 5, 2012
Bishop Hill in Education, Greens

My daughter started at high school a few weeks back and the prospect of doing proper lessons in specialised subjects has been a welcome prospect for her. However, her introduction to science has been interesting to say the least.

The Scottish curriculum is now entirely project-based so, where my first high-school science lesson took in atomic theory and the periodic table, first-years at our local high school will be learning about biodiversity.

This will be the focus for the whole of the first term.

The idea of the project-based curriculum is that different skills and techniques can be hung off the topic - so far they have made a trap for creepy-crawlies and they look as if they are going to look at sampling techniques in coming days. But from my admittedly somewhat distant perspective it looks as if systematic knowledge is going to be largely absent from the school day. Children will learn skills but will have less of a grasp of the science. It is perhaps a curriculum that will produce laboratory technicians rather than scientists.

What do readers here think?

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