{"id":6914,"date":"2017-03-23T08:07:29","date_gmt":"2017-03-23T08:07:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6914"},"modified":"2017-03-27T11:07:10","modified_gmt":"2017-03-27T11:07:10","slug":"a-balanced-view-of-balance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2017\/03\/23\/a-balanced-view-of-balance\/","title":{"rendered":"A balanced view of balance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Balance \/ balanced is one of those ideas\u00a0that everyone seems\u00a0to\u00a0understand, and the word can conjure\u00a0up an\u00a0image: maybe of a seesaw, or a pair of weighing scales. \u00a0In one sense, it's obvious how these work, but that's only because\u00a0we have an\u00a0understanding of Newton's gravitational theory; this understanding may be intuitive or conceptually-based.<\/p>\n<p>However, this is not the sort of balance that we mean when we speak of a \"broad and balanced curriculum\" as the 2002 Education Act does in England.<\/p>\n<p>The idea of a balanced\u00a0diet is nearer to the 2002 use\u00a0of balance because understanding the idea of a balanced diet requires a theory of nutrition that allows you to know what to include in a diet, and in what proportion. \u00a0Without such a theory there's a risk that you will consume a range of\u00a0things that will not do you any good. \u00a0It seems that a lot of us do this nowadays.<\/p>\n<p>And thus it is that, without a theory of curriculum,\u00a0there's a risk that you will study and learn\u00a0things that\u00a0will not do you much\u00a0good. \u00a0Thus, when the Head of <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2017\/03\/15\/a-broad-but-unbalanced-curriculum\/\">Ofsted<\/a>\u00a0talks about 'deep' and 'rich' but does not mention 'balance', alarm bells should ring.<\/p>\n<p>I have written to Ofsted and to the DfE to ask what's going on.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Balance \/ balanced is one of those ideas\u00a0that everyone seems\u00a0to\u00a0understand, and the word can conjure\u00a0up an\u00a0image: maybe of a seesaw, or a pair of weighing scales. \u00a0In one sense, it's obvious how these work, but that's only because\u00a0we have an\u00a0understanding...<\/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-6914","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\/6914","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=6914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6914\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}