Doing the Knowledge: or, I had that Mr Gove in my curriculum once

The following paper by Dr Mark Chater, Director of Culham St Gabriel’s (www.cstg.org.uk) was originally presented at the AULRE 2012 Conference.

Introduction

Thank you for your warm welcome, and my thanks to AULRE for this opportunity to share some thoughts on knowledge. It is very good to be here.

It is said of Gandhi that, on his return to India in 1915, he took to criss-crossing the country by train, because of his need to know India from the inside. In this country, and in this city, it is often to taxi drivers that we turn if we want a certain kind of knowledge. This has happened twice to me recently: once in Redbridge with a driver who told me that RE was a waste of time, and who raged against the liberal elite for our soft attitude to intolerant minorities; and then in south London, with a Nigerian driver who educated me on the religious politics of Boko Haram, the group terrorising northern Nigeria. I learnt that the name Boko Haram means ‘western education is sinful’, that they have no real religious agenda, but are the product of extremes of wealth and poverty, with no substantial middle class. The wealthy class in the north is exerting influence and using religion to manipulate the poor. ‘Instead of employing them to work, they employ them to die’, he said.

Knowledge – class – religion; all interwoven. What are we to make of this in the current context of the knowledge-based curriculum review and the REC’s decision to attempt a review reflecting it? I offer my thoughts on doing the knowledge.

The problem I wish to address with you is this: in the face of the Govean model of the curriculum, how should we position initial teacher education for RE? This question is created in the full knowledge that whatever happens to the curriculum in schools has a strong backwash effect on ITE and the content of initial programmes, and that university-based ITE in all subjects is under threat. How can we respond without simply reverting to sectional interest? How can we deal with the obvious overcrowding of PGCE programmes(1), and what sort of knowledge is needed in the beginning teacher of RE? How can we shape the RE teacher’s knowledge, skills and task anew, so that it survives this period?

My questions will be:

–       What is the Govean model of curriculum knowledge?

–       How is the relationship between knowledge and pedagogy shifting?

–       Is there an RE-led, values-led critique of knowledge curriculums?

–        Can RE shape a better knowledge?

All this needs to be explored in the context of the curriculum review, and the RE Council’s intention to conduct an independent RE review, which may involve creating a national RE document to sit alongside the new national curriculum, in the way that the 2004 Framework did, and its successors. Such a document, and its use, will have a profound influence on your work as trainers.

What is the Govean model of the curriculum knowledge?

Let us begin with a premise that the curriculum is always political, and also that curriculum design is a political issue, because it influences pedagogy and, therefore, the progress of pupils, in invisible ways. Public pressure groups often exert influence to have their cause included in the content of the curriculum, be it an aspect of child safety, an approach to language teaching, an outdoor experience or a particular skill or value, or in our case, a particular religion or belief. Curriculum writers can only agree at the cost of having very lengthy documents, considered too prescriptive. This is sometimes called the ‘Christmas tree effect’. On the other hand, reducing content to a bare minimum incurs the disappointment of many pressure groups and may lead to their cause disappearing from some or most schools.

The proposed programmes of study for the primary curriculum (DfE 2012) are indicators of the direction of travel, and they fall foul of both traps. They are based firmly on the known views of Messrs Gove and Gibb, with their knowledge-based approach to the curriculum. Michael Gove has endorsed the idea of a curriculum based on facts. (BBC, 2011). Justified as a desire to be less prescriptive, his apparent preference is for a curriculum that simply lists the knowledge to be taught: ‘I just think there should be facts’. (BBC, op cit) In the interview, Gove used the word ‘facts’ four times, and the words ‘understanding’ and ‘skills’ not at all. In the USA, the Hirsch-inspired core knowledge programme constructs a curriculum from the same basic building blocks (Hirsch 2012). The definition of learning as knowledge, and furthermore knowledge of the past, is reinforced by Nick Gibb: ‘I believe very strongly that education is about the transfer of knowledge from one generation to the next. Knowledge is the basic building block for a successful life.’ (Gibb, 2010).

Later in the speech, he does grudgingly use words such as concepts and understanding, and even skills, but they come a long way down.

The implication of this for training teachers is clear. All we need is teachers who know; the rest is craft, and can be picked up through observation and imitation.

The proposed primary programmes of study (DfE op cit) are by year for years 1 and 2, and by 2-year band for years 3-4 and 5-6 (formerly key stage 2). English: It is 24 pages long, with a further 25 pages of spelling lists. Let’s take a look at a random couple of expectations – in year 1 pupils should be taught to:

–       Respond speedily with the correct sound to graphemes for all 40 + phonemes, including, where applicable, alternative sounds for graphemes. (ibid)

(In passing, we note that this is synthetic or, as it is now called, systematic phonics: barking at print. It is a demand that phonics should be used, because it works in all cases.)

–       Add prefixes and suffixes, using the spelling rule for adding ‘s’ and ‘es’ as the plural marker for nouns and the third person singular for verbs. (ibid)

There is progression in years 2, 3-4 and 5-6:

–       Year 2: add suffixes to spell longer words, eg -ment, -ness, -ful and -less.

–       Year 3-4: Use further prefixes and suffixes and understand how to add them.

–       Use further prefixes and suffixes and understand the guidelines for adding them; spell some words with ‘silent’ letters, eg knight, psalm, solemn. (ibid)

The trouble with examples is that they become the norm. The trouble with prescriptive lists is that they inevitably leave something out.

The 25 page list of spelling and grammar points takes prescription to new lengths. At some points, it rhymes rather beautifully: now, how, cow, down, town; at other points it seems to have hidden wisdom: toy, boy, annoy, enjoy. Examples of prefixes include disappear, disappoint, disobey. And at some points the expectations seem unrealistic: eg for year 3-4, spelling immature, immortal, impossible, impatient, imperfect, irregular, irrelevant, and irresponsible – nearly some apophatic theology in there.

There is a lot of it, it’s not all facts, but it is all knowledge of a very particular and contestable kind, and it is based on a doctrine of sequentialism – the logical order in which facts occur, as Mr Gove calls it. It falls foul of the Christmas tree effect because it is overloaded. It is bound to have left something out, and very soon a language specialist will discover what has been omitted. It also lays bare the other subjects, where prescription will be minimal or non-existent, and effectively leaves them out in the cold. Returning to our taxi theme, we can say that this curriculum is a satnav curriculum: it tells you exactly what to do, but it can still get you lost.

Finally, the PoS’ definition of progress: ‘By the end of the key stage, pupils are expected to have the knowledge, skills and understanding of the matters taught in the programme of study.’ (ibid)

Mary Bousted, writing in the TES, commented that ‘the weight of subject content and its sequencing can only lead to teachers … transmitting information’ (Bousted 2012, p44). So teachers’ professional choices about teaching and learning strategies will be severely reduced. Bousted also predicts that a broad and balanced curriculum is endangered, and will become a ‘forlorn memory’ for all primary teachers (op cit p45).

How is the relationship between knowledge and pedagogy shifting?

Now if Mr Gove were here, he would strenuously claim that he wishes to leave methodology to teachers, and he wants government to get out of the way – a trope that plays very well, I might add, with some teachers and most parents.  His political programme applies an absolute distinction between curriculum and pedagogy:

‘[The country requires] a national curriculum that sets out broad goals to be reached by the age of 16. The curriculum would set out a framework of the core subjects and would include no further instruction as to what aspects of those subjects should be taught or how subjects should be taught…’ (Gove 2009).

How strange, then, to read that Year 1 English teachers ‘must ensure that pupils practice their reading with books that are consistent with their developing phonic knowledge and that do not require them to use other strategies to work out words.’ (DfE 2012). So teachers cannot let pupils read a book containing the word ‘said’, even if they come to school already able to read and to recognise that word.

It should be acknowledged that all curriculums are forms of selection, elevating certain kinds of knowledge and repressing others (Alexander 2010: p248), and that all forms of officially approved speech or literature are ideological (Post 1998: p6). In this sense, some form of organised control of educational processes is inescapable.

The trouble is, of course, that between curriculum and pedagogy there is an invisible, but strong connection, one utterly denied (in public) by current ministers. I wish to propose this educational doctrine: every curriculum design casts a pedagogical shadow. Designing a curriculum around pupil outcomes – as in 2008 and 2010 – encourages pedagogy and planning that thinks about ECM, coherence and meaning in learning. Many people are worried that designing a curriculum around knowledge alone will tend to produce ‘delivery’ teachers whose pedagogical default style is invariant content coverage. It takes a rare teacher to transform such a curriculum – which is really a syllabus – into learning experiences that absorb the learner and vivify the subject. This is as difficult as turning flat cola into sparkling champagne. It will be even harder if/when most teachers are trained into a ‘craft’ in one school.

There is also a class factor. Content-led teaching favours teachers and learners in privileged environments, where less skill and effort are required to interest and motivate learners. Correspondingly, in more challenging schools a flat, content-led design will either create more planning challenges for teachers, or become a deficit that is passed on to the learners, whose progress suffers as a result. In RE, it has long been known that a content-led approach simply induces boredom, apathy or hostility; distressingly however, many local RE syllabuses, and therefore many lessons and units repeat this pattern (Ofsted 2010: p29). And we have to acknowledge that we in RE have a knowledge problem, and a vulnerability in standards, that is becoming evident in inspection results (Ofsted, 2010) and in emerging perceptions about GCSE short course. Somehow, we need to address the knowledge challenge without falling into the factual trap.

Alternative designs have offered aims-led, concept-led, competence-led or experience-led models of curriculum planning, which leave decisions on detailed content, beyond what is illustrated, to schools operating in their local communities. Key concepts can be understood as major, archetypal ideas that exist in each subject and can be linked to several different forms of content.

Is there an RE-led, values-led critique of knowledge curriculums? The monkey in the museum: the tyranny of facts and opinions

By Mr Gove’s way of thinking, learning is reduced to knowledge, and knowledge to facts. There are no forms of knowledge that are not facts: anything that cannot be a fact must be a ‘mere’ opinion, relegated to a less important field. As an assumption, this creates epistemological conditions inimical to critical learning. In Pierre Bourdieu’s phrase, ‘the very structure of the field in which the discourse is produced and circulates’ (Bourdieu, 1991: p137) makes some discourses possible and others illegitimate, and this is a form of censorship.

Jerome Bruner, reflecting on this problem in the context of his doctrine of learning as a personal act of meaning, argues that reflection leads individuals to new concepts of the self, and that this is the most prized knowledge: personhood authored by the learner (Bruner, 1990: pp99-140). Bruner warns against the failure to make the attempt at this self-authoring. To fail to invest in the conceptual self is to reduce teaching to mere information-giving, which ‘cannot deal with anything beyond the well-defined and arbitrary’ (Bruner, op cit p5) and – by implication, in RE terms – is highly unfitted for dealing with ambiguity, layered meanings, metaphors and complexity. A pedagogy that restricts itself to information-giving is ‘a monkey in the British Museum, beating out the problem by a bone-crushing algorithm or taking a flyer on a risky heuristic.’ (Ibid). This brilliantly Simian image is a nice statement of the problem. Here we can imagine ministers as monkeys let loose in the museum of the curriculum, alternately thumping themselves and others with a fact, then leaping into the air on a wild opinion. That behaviour, the reduction of all questions of human existence to matters of measurement alternating with ill-informed, undisciplined personal interpretation, characterises the lives of those individuals who have not dared to go beyond knowledge.

Can we imagine what a curriculum for RE would look like if it were composed of facts? Can we construct a pedagogy based on the communication of religious facts, and would such a pedagogy have integrity? Statements of ‘fact’, iterations and reiterations of ‘knowledge’ can become timelessly self-evident, self-replicating and unquestionable, turning them into truths (Derrida, 1974). If we were to apply this to teaching, for example, about the resurrection as a ‘fact’ for Christians, or nirvana as a ‘fact’ for Buddhists, we could see the problem developing. The problem is further compounded by Mr Gove’s sequentialist assumption that a curriculum should arrange facts in order – ‘a logical sequence by which facts accumulate’ (BBC, ibid). Would the sequence in RE be shaped by a young learner’s growing ability to hold and wield ideas, or – more likely – by the supposed internal order of the discipline? For example, would RE first cover the Old Testament, then the New? Would it take the Gospels before Acts, Hinduism before Buddhism? In doing so, it would already have set the epistemological locks on learners’ minds, pre-determining the way the subject is gradually constructed in their understanding.

Any religion or ideology that divides the world of ideas starkly into truth and falsehood – as, for example, most fundamentalisms do – has set an epistemological lock on information about itself, and has thereby controlled discourses about itself and its opponents, in ways which are anti-educational. Discourses proposing that either Jesus was the son of God or he was a fraud, that either Muhammad is the seal of the prophets or there is nothing but relativism and polytheism, are all too prevalent in religious communities, and they create dispositions towards particular kinds of teaching. The discourses are designed to drive hearers ineluctably to set conclusions, and even if treated by a teacher who takes care to attempt objectivity, these discourses skew the discussion and exploration. They create, in the minds of some learners, a binary distinction between knowability and unknowability, between fact and opinion – a distinction which need not exist, and which subverts a critical education. In using two attainment targets and two outcomes at GCSE, RE is already distressingly close to this binary distinction; we certainly cannot tread any further on that road.

The teaching of this kind of ‘knowledge’ in RE would be particularly baneful because it would create advantages for those who want their own religious truths to be taught as facts, for those who want a continuation of the flawed phenomenological project of claimed objectivity and for those who wish to minimise young people’s experience of debate and critical thought for political reasons.

The teaching of RE as facts necessarily precludes the possibility of debate. As a result it also, necessarily, curtails the possibility of learners’ participation and autonomy within their own learning. This would be an impoverishment of educational possibility, offering no place to articulacy and empowerment. Whilst posing as a form of academic rigour, facts are a denial of the capacities upon which academic rigour is founded, and therefore a denial of the idea of rigour itself – as well as being a denial of democratic education.

As in any totalitarian system, the learner confronted with ‘facts’ is permitted only two possible responses: quiescence or revolt. Quiescence leads to success in school and career terms: it creates rewarding relationships with authority figures, nurtures a strong sense of institutional belonging. Quiescence also embeds, reinforces and rewards habits of valuing security above truth, duty above integrity, suppression of any disposition towards curiosity and enquiry, criticality, debate or controversy – or at least, it places unspoken but clearly sensed limits on such habits. Quiescent states of mind are ideal for preserving both religious authority structures and the liberal project to avoid difficult questions about diversity and truth.

Facts are a way of embedding certainty. They are a pedagogical fundamentalism, paralleling religious or ideological fundamentalisms in the sense that they create a closed system that cannot be questioned and create reaction. Within the closed system are facts that are truths: outside are opinions that are relative. Both facts and opinions would escape critical scrutiny, the first because they are privileged and treated as uncontestable, and the second because they are considered unimportant. This would lead to a form of RE potentially far worse for learners than at present, though easier to teach, but very clearly lacking in integrity in academic terms, and impoverishing learning.

Can RE shape a better knowledge?

Is there a way out of this for our subject, that doesn’t involve simply turning our backs on this curriculum review and saying that we won’t play? Pondering this, I turned to Paulo Freire, because of his interest in freedom and literacy. Freire knew full well the oppressive capitalist nature of pre-defined knowledge – banking education; he knew that ‘knowing is not eating facts’ (Shor and Freire 1987: 48); he staked out a definition of literacy both more rigorous and more far-reaching than Mr Gove’s: ‘I say that reading is not just to walk on the words, and it is not flying over the words either. Reading is re-writing what we are reading. Reading it to discover the connection between the text and the context of the text, and also how to connect the text/context with my context, the context of the reader.‘ (Op Cit, pp10-11). He contrasted this liberative, rigorous reading with the reading of texts 100 years ago in ways that give us no knowledge of our own time. And his liberating alternative was a rigour based on depth. He proposed ‘… a radical reduction in the transfer-of-information … in favour of a prolonged scrutiny of materials drawn as problematic texts on social life.’ (Op cit, p88). Is there, in his proposal, the germ of an idea for a better knowledge-based curriculum design, that could actually work for RE? Taking his idea of prolonged scrutiny of problematic texts, is it possible to say that the Bhagavad Gita is a problematic text on the question of destiny, and that it constitutes knowledge in that sense? Or the Psalms, a problematic text on anguish, tenderness and fragile joy? Or – because this is Freire – for ‘text’ read ‘context’, that St Paul’s at the time of the Occupy encampment, and the narrative of its reaction to the moral crisis presented to it, is a problematic text going to the heart of Christianity?

So can we say that in RE, knowledge is …

–       Profound, prolonged scrutiny of texts in context, and of our context?

–       Disciplined exploration of questions, and the ways in which they exercise influence?

So encounters of depth, with texts or questions, can be styled as knowledge in RE; those huge wells of insight that lie below simple phrases – such as the Talmud’s ‘who saves a single life, saves the world entire’.

Conclusion

Politically, it is vital that RE stays together, and that we find a path through the mess of this curriculum review, shaping the way knowledge happens, and the way trainee teachers gain it. The path is thin, and the dangers are on either side: to one side, the risk of business as usual, leading to increased isolation and irrelevance – not paying attention to the perception that we have a knowledge and standards problem. To the other, the risk of complete capitulation to Mr Gove’s philistine and reductive model of knowledge. We have to find the transcending, third position between those two, and I believe that we will: we can draw on ancient and new resources to find out how our own discipline defines knowledge, and truth, in a unique way. Here, Howard Gardner’s recent work on Truth, Beauty and Goodness in a postmodern context is going to be useful and encouraging (Gardner 2011: 35). All I can do now is to offer a few tentative conclusions:

–       The Govean claim to knowledge and rigour is flimsy, reductive and easily challenged.

–       We in RE need to pay attention to knowledge, and the relationship between knowledge and pedagogy. In candidates for training, perhaps we need to worry less about the theology they know, and more about the theology they can do.

–       We need to recognise that doing so is a political and ideological project.

–       And so we should commit ourselves to shaping knowledge, defining it, and charting progress, in ways that are politically liberating – an epistemology of and for the poor. To paraphrase the Talmud, ‘Who saves a single insight, saves the curriculum entire.’

I also want to add that Culham St Gabriel’s, as a newly formed trust, will put its shoulder to the wheel of this effort. We are willing to think and work with others in the RE community. We intend to continue our work in CPD, focusing on M level access and supporting primary TAs. Our redevelopment of REonline will support teacher knowledge as well as learning. We also recognise the need to address primary ITE needs in RE. We do this as partners, in the context of this difficult time for RE, and in the hope that this makes some contribution.

Notes

This point was made in the AULRE/Culham summit for ITE providers in RE, in King’s College London, in March 2012.

References

Alexander, R. ed., Primary Children, Their World, Their Education: Final report and recommendations of the Cambridge Primary Review, Abingdon: Routledge, 2010, p248.

BBC (2011), Interview with Michael Gove, Radio 4 Today Programme, London: BBC, 20 January 2011.

Bourdieu, P. (1991) Censorship and the Imposition of Form, in John B. Thompson (ed.) Language and Symbolic Power, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard Press, 1991:137.

Bousted, M. (2012) ‘Teachers, prepare to be straitjacketed’, in Times Educational Supplement, 6 July 2012, pp44-45.

Bruner, J. (1990) Acts of Meaning: The Jerusalem-Harvard Lectures. Cambridge, Ma: Harvard University Press, 1990, pp99-140.

Derrida, J. Of Grammatology, Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 1974.

Gardner, H. (2011) Truth, Beauty and Goodness Reframed: Education for Virtues in the 21^st Century. New York: Basic Books.

Gibb, N, Speech to Reform, 2010.

Gove, M. (2009) Speech in House of Commons Education Debate. London: Parliament.

Hirsch, E.D. (2012), Core Knowledge, www.coreknowledge.org

Ofsted, Transforming Religious Education, London: Ofsted, 2010.

Post, R. (1998) ‘Censorship and Silencing’ in Robert C. Prost (ed.) Censorship and Silencing: practices of cultural regulation, Los Angeles: The Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities,1998: 6.

Shor, I. And Freire, P. (1987) A Pedagogy for Liberation. Westport, Cn.: Bergin and Garvey.

Dr Mark Chater

Summer 2012