The national curriculum is under review. The government wants a slim-line version, which prescribes “only the essential knowledge that all children should acquire”.
Is this ambition sound? The word ‘essential’ gives us no help in determining what bits of the encyclopedia of human knowledge children should ingest – since ‘essential knowledge’ does not tell us what the knowledge must be essential to: whether it must be essential to being a skilled worker, a law abiding citizen, or what.
Worse than this, though, claims about identifying essential knowledge do not put knowledge in its rightful place, which is an ingredient in promoting truthful belief. Whatever else it ought to do (and there is surely much else, like promote political participation, that it ought to do), schooling should promote the virtue of truthful belief: the habit and inclination of forming and revising one’s beliefs on the basis of evidence and reasons in order that they should track the truth. After all, what we have had good reason to believe at one time, we may have good reason to reject later on. There are some domains in which few beliefs may be called knowledge, about which the truth still ought to concern us: religion, politics, and morality for instance.
It is for these reasons – even from a strictly secular perspective – that an education which promotes truthful belief should deal in not only beliefs which should be imparted as (relatively) settled facts, but in sensitizing pupils to degrees of reasonable possibility, and rejecting what is either unfounded or false. In Religious Education, for instance, it could be taught as a settled fact that Christians believe in God, as a reasonable possibility that the universe had a creator, as an unfounded belief that Jesus had size 9 feet, and a false belief that Jesus was born in
Even still, there is a problem as to what beliefs should form the content of school curricula.
In order to decide how important it is that a particular belief appears on the curriculum, educators ought to ask: how much of a practical difference would it make to the child’s life if they were not right about that belief’s truth? It obviously makes a practical difference if children are not right about whether Christianity is true, just as much as it makes a practical difference if children are not right about how to ensure their health. However, while a great practical difference may be made to society by some experts knowing that nothing can exceed the speed of light, it is not obvious that a great practical difference is made to each child, by their each knowing it. As to whether each child knowing the chronology of
Once one has decided which beliefs pupils should be taught, we should then wonder whether we ought to teach these as being settled facts, or something else. A given belief should be imparted to the pupil where it is known to be true, or made known to them as possibly true, where it is thought to be a reasonable possibility. On the question of when beliefs should be taught to be false or unfounded, the educator is only entitled to do this where they know the belief to be false or unfounded, but should only bother to do it when it is something that they know the child believes – otherwise the curriculum is in danger of becoming a museum of curiosities. Thus, on the assumption that creationism is well and truly falsified, it still has a place in the science classroom just insofar as discussing it enables creationist students to come closer to a more scientific understanding, and to leave behind their false beliefs.
In sum, we should understand the imparting of ‘essential’ knowledge as part of the broader task of promoting the virtue of truthful belief, and curriculum content ought to encompass beliefs which would make a practical difference to children’s lives if they did not believe rightly, even if these beliefs are heavily contested.
John Tillson is a philosopher of education and has just completed an internship at Theos. He will commence a PhD Scholarship in Religious Education at
