My first idea when I read this article was to check the date. Maybe it was published April first. But no. Dame Sally Coates has an idea, and it’s so good that it could kill education in the UK.

What is her brilliant idea?

“Teachers across the country should teach exactly the same lessons at exactly the same time.”

Ok, say what?

“From the age of four to 14 all children in England would study the same content and their success in grasping this content would be tracked. It would set out the exact content that students would cover in each subject and the exact order in which they would cover it.”

This is trying to make education both teacher and children proof. But the dame disagrees:

“Uniformity unleashes creativity. A common curriculum would encourage teachers, school groups and publishers to generate supplementary resources and expertise, safe in the knowledge that all schools would be following the new curriculum for years to come.”

So putting every teacher and pupil into the same mold would make education better? I often disagrees with Ken Robinson, but this is actual making education into exactly the caricature Robinson draws of present day education.

Differences in background, interestes, context,… are a part of the reason why teachers need to be loving professionals who adapt their curriculum to the needs of their class. I’m less opposed to the idea of a common core, if it is just that: a core of goals everybody agrees upon that children need to take part in our society, but with room for personalization both from schools, teachers and pupils by adding other goals and approaches.

Just an idea: replace teachers by cooks, teaching by cooking and lessons by meals and see how that sounds?

UPDATE: I received this original proposal via @steveadcock81.