{"id":6912,"date":"2017-03-15T07:06:00","date_gmt":"2017-03-15T07:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6912"},"modified":"2022-11-26T12:16:29","modified_gmt":"2022-11-26T12:16:29","slug":"a-broad-but-unbalanced-curriculum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2017\/03\/15\/a-broad-but-unbalanced-curriculum\/","title":{"rendered":"A broad but unbalanced curriculum"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wrote the other day<\/a> about the new Head of Ofsted's first unsuccessful foray into curriculum, and in particular about the lack of mention of 'balance' in what she said. \u00a0She preferred to focus on 'broad' rather than 'balanced' despite what section 78 of the 2002 Education Act says.<\/p>\n

The perils of breadth without balance\u00a0are\u00a0obvious. \u00a0Here's a broad curriculum:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Society's debt to Surrealist art and fashion<\/li>\n
  2. The writings\u00a0of Shakespeare, Jonson, Rattigan and Pinter<\/li>\n
  3. The genesis and genius of Bebop<\/li>\n
  4. Moral dilemmas within genetic engineering<\/li>\n
  5. Synchronised swimming (depths 1 to 4)<\/li>\n
  6. Mandarin Chinese conversation<\/li>\n
  7. Fortran programming, probability and\u00a0the Taylor series<\/li>\n
  8. The history and philosophy of science in the Enlightenment<\/li>\n
  9. Cooking traditional English pastries, puddings, pasties and pies<\/li>\n
  10. Flint knapping theory and practice<\/li>\n
  11. The sexual preferences of the kings and queens of England (1066 to 1603)<\/li>\n
  12. Contrasting\u00a0Shia and Sunni approaches to the good life\u00a0in the 20th Century CE<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The above might be a broad curriculum \u2014 from flint knapping to Ben Jonson and Cornish pasties to Fortran \u2014 but is it balanced? \u00a0 A much more significant question, of course, is how could\u00a0we tell? \u00a0Balance is usually enshrined in educational aims and\u00a0Robin Alexander has argued\u00a0that it is deeply undemocratic only to think of aims once content (like the above) has been decided (usually by expert others). \u00a0It is like thinking about nutrition only after a year's meals have been decided upon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I wrote the other day about the new Head of Ofsted's first unsuccessful foray into curriculum, and in particular about the lack of mention of 'balance' in what she said. \u00a0She preferred to focus on 'broad' rather than 'balanced' despite...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6912\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}