Knowledge now redundant in curriculum

from Kiwiblog by David Farrar

As if NCEA hasn't been bad enough, now the new curriculum due out in November will shift the focus from knowledge to skills. Knowledge we are told is no longer needed as according to the Ministry of Education: "there's no use (students) being little knowledge banks walking around on legs … We've got computers, we don't need people walking around with them in their heads… People just have to get used to that."

So how will this system work.  The SST gives us examples:

• Social science students will be marked for taking action to make their community a better place to live, rather than remembering facts about a society on the other side of the world.
• Science students might be tested on whether they know how to design an experiment, rather than whether they remember what the result should be
  

Now one knows how bad the situation is when both the PPTA and the Education Forum says the changes go too far.

So there is now no need for students to remember "facts, historic dates or periodic tables".  By this logic there is no need to learn multiplication as we have calculators.