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Rolling back PC in the classroom: UK history lessons
Children will be taught a sweeping chronology of world events ranging from the dinosaurs through to the fall of the Berlin Wall under plans to scrap politically-correct topics in history lessons, it has emerged.

A new curriculum in the subject is to be introduced by a team of academics and teachers in a move intended to give children aged five to 14 a clear narrative of the past, it was revealed.

The document -- published by the History Curriculum Association -- starts in the first year of primary school with the story of the dinosaurs, including how they lived, their extinction and fossils.
The challengers.
It moves on to Stone Age man, the Ancient Egyptians and the Romans before covering 2,000 years of British and world history through to the Cold War and collapse of the Soviet Union.

Other topics include the Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Normans, the Crusades, the Tudors, the Civil Wars, the expansion of the British Empire and the World Wars.

The association is to send copies of its syllabus out to state academies and private schools, which are not forced to follow the National Curriculum, later this month.

Chris McGovern, the association's founder, said that the move represented a radical departure from the existing National Curriculum which sought to teach children through broad "themes" covering issues such as the role of women and social, cultural, religious and ethnic diversity.

He said the current curriculum -- published by Labour -- confused pupils by "jumping around in time" and underestimated the "capacity of young children to follow a narrative".

It was essential for any history curriculum to start with dinosaurs, he said, even though the topic is normally only covered in school science lessons.

"We should be starting off with what fascinates children -- dinosaurs and the world before there were people and a world that died out," he said.

"This introduces children to issues of sustainability at a young age besides capturing and using their very real enthusiasms. Ask five-year-olds if they would prefer to be taught concepts of chronology or dinosaurs."

The Department for Education is already rewriting the history curriculum as part of a major shake-up of subject specifications. It will publish its own primary and secondary school document later this term.
The powers that be.
A DfE spokesman said: "We will publish drafts of the national curriculum programmes of study shortly."
Don't let the gentility mislead you - in disputes like this the academic authorities play a nasty game. Let's hope the dinosaurs win out.

Posted by: lotp 2013-01-20
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=360471