Book Nook: Curriculum - Athena Versus the Machine

At a time when the curriculum is subject to constant change and accountability Martin Robinson characterizes the system as being a slave to the Machine: a data-obsessed, narrow-minded version of education, where statistics are valued far more than wisdom.

“The ‘great narrative’ of too many of our schools is mundane, with the merely measurable as the pinnacle of meaning. Counting them in, counting them out; these schools employ mechanical metaphors. Each child is set on a ‘flight path’, and data and targets are worshipped rather than the symbolic, spiritual power of a god. Perhaps this is inevitable in a secular world, but is it wise?

“These schools bypass the quality of knowing something and replace it with destination data – knowledge is a means to an end rather than an end in itself. The focus is on the grade and not on the knowing.

“Knowing is essential, it is the stuff of education, but what to know, why to know it and how to know it are not only essential questions, they are also impossible to answer fully with any degree of certainty. Yet there are those who search for objective answers to these questions by allying education to the instrumentalism that is extant in large numbers of schools.

“In many schools, pupils have gone from being potential citizens to being consumers of an educational product, and now find themselves reduced to data points with a need to perform beyond expectations for their ‘type’. Is this a meaningful pursuit? Whichever method is used to justify the content of a curriculum, can utilitarian/utopian aims (or their proxies) justify 13 years or so of full-time education?”

In his new book, Curriculum, Martin argues for the study of knowledge for its own sake whilst accepting that knowledge, alone, is not enough. Schools need to be set up for the individual and communal pursuit of wisdom. He characterizes this pursuit as a god, Athena, whilst the overly mechanistic approach is represented by the Machine.

“While it is essential to provide a knowledge-rich curriculum, it is the quality of the knowledge that matters, and therefore it is within this subjective realm – where individual taste and thought is understood and nurtured, and the way we make meaning in the world matters – that the arguments in my book are made.”

Martin Robinson worked for 20 years in state schools in London as a teacher, a leader and an advanced skills teacher. Now an education consultant, he works with schools and other institutions on curriculum development and a wide range of other issues. He is a regular on the conference circuit both in the UK and internationally.