Link: https://asteriskmag.substack.com/p/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-worlds-best

CfE is certainly laudible in it's aims. But I suspect fails to meet most(all?) of it's goals. This is the first real critical piece I have read about the lament of The Tradition, and I feel certain it is refutable in most it's statements. But it also has a truth to it that is hard to dismiss: curriculum for excellence isn't working. I would like to see a return to more knowledge acquisition, joined up courses make so much sense to me, and emphasis put back to a broader reading of topics. In an AI world, we all need to learn to read better. That isn't saying we go hand in hand back to 1926, that world is not 2026, and I say we need to retain largely the principles of CfE

• Successful learners
• Confident individuals
• Responsible citizens
• Effective contributors

https://education.gov.scot/curriculum-for-excellence/about-curriculum-for-excellence/the-purpose-of-the-curriculum/

Hard to argue that these principles shouldn't exist after all. But to reframe them to show that knowledge underpins these would be helpful imo. How can you be confident individually without a foundation of knowledge to draw upon? (Confidently incorrectly!) How can you be successful at learning without learning (preferanly lots) of where that subject is grounded? How can you be a responsible citizen if you haven't read about what that looks like and understand some alternative philosophies? And it is very hard to see how an effective contributor could ever be without a pool of knowledge and wisdom to draw upon and well read enough to convey those sentiments.

This was a great read, thanks for linking it.

I'm a teacher in Australia, and our curriculum is similarly lacking in specificity. The last 15-20 years of Australian education has focussed on "inquiry" and "srudent-centered" learning, to the detriment of our student results.

This report by Ben Jensen goes into massive detail about how weak our curriculum is. I'm sure there's a lot of overlap between the story of Australia's curriculum, and the story of Scotland's.