Thanks to everyone who commented with anything other than personal abuse. As usual, the comment were more interesting than the article itself!

I'll try to address as many posts as time and post-limits allow.

Ridd is right, there are many useful facts that change little during a person's lifetime. Newton's laws of motion haven't changed in centuries, have been invaluable in many great advances, and have also been known for nearly a century now to be mere approximations of physical space. As we all know, Newton's equations are reliable on the scale of distance and velocities in which we are used to dealing, but quite useless on an infinitesimal or cosmological scale. And even Einstein's theories fail to satisfactorily account for quantum phenomena. And quantum physics continue to raise mystery after mystery.

Yet some people still wish to teach teenagers that there are 'laws' of physics (who is the lawmaker, and why was he/she so inaccurate?). It seems to me that the only 'dumbing down' that is going on the science curriculum is the failure to mention that scientific knowledge is every bit as uncertain and endlessly reviewable as the humanities. That is what science journals are for.

The presentation of scientific knowledge to children as settled, known, certain, undisputed facts belies the crucible-like conditions under which the scientific community tests every single claim and counter-claim ever made.

Ridd's comments concerning 'real choice' were also true, but trivially so. Ridd bemoans the fact that in cities with many schools, there will be choices, and in country areas with one school, there will be no choice. I can only add that whether we have an outcomes-based curriculum or a prescriptive curriculum, this situation will still hold. It may be that a more prescriptive syllabus is one that Ridd happens to prefer, but there will still be no choice for country towns with one school.

The concerns about coaching and tutoring that Jolanda and Graham Y raised are also made worse under a prescriptive syllabus. For if the syllabus sets down exactly all the content that is to be learnt, a coach can simply drill-and-practice the kid to death outside school hours. Coaching colleges are adept at raising kids' marks for known-content areas, albeit it is shallow rote-learning. But the advantage of coaching is largely lost in an outcomes-based environment.

Graham Y also raises a worthwhile point about liberalism. While this goes into political philosophy and quite beyond the original scope of this discussion, I can only add that the 'liberals' to which he refers, who favour an Enlightenment approach to education, come in many more stripes than Graham Y suggests. One Enlightenment view of liberty was additive - some extra assistance to help a person realise their full potential - a 'be all you can be' helping-hand, and a clear precursor to today's welfare states. This view of liberty led to today's well-intentioned "progressive" liberalism, which in its extreme form becomes either paternalistic, bleeding-heart or nanny-state. But another view of liberty also arose during the Enlightenment, and that viewed 'liberty' as subtractive - as an absence-of-constraint. A freedom-from interference. (Also the freedom to starve to death.) That view of liberty gave rise to the 'law of the jungle' approach in which a person's complete independence is to be prized above interference from the state and which, in its extreme form, is indistinguishable from anarchy. It is clear that both views of liberty co-exist in productive tension in modern politics, modern capitalism, and education policy.

The relevance of this to our discussion? Merely to clarify that when I talked about "true liberals" I guess I had in the latter-sort of "rugged individualist" liberal who is very much of a mind to think 'each to their own' and 'do whatever you like, as long as you don't interfere with me'. That sort of liberalism can be surprisingly tolerant, if a little hard-hearted. But at any rate, that is the sort of 'liberal' I had in mind.

Thin skinned Goldstein does not like personal abuse. I agree that my comment was abusive. It was an appropriate response to an article that was itself abusive. He smeared and hence abused all people who disagree with his views with phrases such as Soviet-stle, regurgitate, fossilised body of knowledge etc. I presume that he feels that it is OK to indiscriminately abuse a lot of people, as he did, but not be specific, as I was.

Speaking of abuse, I think that the due to the ideas and near total power held by The Education Establishment what is happening in schools these days is nothing short of child abuse - especially to the children of poorer families.

Now that statement really IS abusive.

Mercurious is right that Newtons Law’s of motion break down when you approach the speed of light and when you are about as big as an atom. They work for the rest of the time and describe just about everything moving that you will ever encounter. Further, any decent physics teacher will tell students about where laws break down. I think it should be prescribed in the syllabus. What do you think Mercurious?

I come from a small town with only one high school that taught senior. I am glad that a learned group of experienced teachers advised by academics and other professional people were in charge of the content of the syllabus. Nowadays, it is the teacher who determines the content in QLD schools, and in country schools the Physics and Maths teacher may not be in the best position, or have the background and experience, to make those choices.

Physics, Maths and Chemistry are no different in Brisbane or Bedourie. There are some basic rules, which seem to work under certain conditions and they work irrespective of your gender, location, culture or socio-economic background. They should be taught to everybody and it is the job of the boards of study to determine this content. In some states such as QLD, they do not.

Hi Ridd. I think Newton's laws and the periodic tables are useful references, like a thesaurus or dictionary. I’ve never seen an English course list the dictionary as a prescribed text - it’s taken for granted that you’ll look up a word if you need to. From what you are saying, it sounds like any science student would encounter Newton’s laws or the periodic table in their course, regardless of whether it was prescribed or not, much like an English student is inevitably going to need to use a dictionary or thesaurus. Prescription is therefore redundant.

Teachers who want to use Newton’s laws and the periodic table can do so. And teachers who can design a coherent, educationally sound course that meets the syllabus outcomes without using Newton’s laws, then good luck to them. Teachers who can’t do either should consider a different profession.

The idea, popular with politicians, that students who can recite Newton's laws or the periodic table somehow 'know science' is a betrayal of science. It is anti-science. It calls to my mind a hall full of medieval monks slavishly copying a debased Latin text they can only dimly understand. If we want to dumb-down the curriculum, then give 'em Newton's laws and the periodic table to copy. But if we want to teach science, then teach them to think like scientists.

The periodic table won’t tell us why mercury is liquid at room temperature, why each layer of electron 'shells' have the number of electrons they do, or ‘how atoms are put together’, as Graham Y seemed to suggest. (If Graham Y DOES know how atoms are put together, he should call the Nobel Prize committee immediately!) In fact, I would consider Graham Y to be doing a service to science, and to his students, if he were to ask them to ponder just such questions, for they will yield far more scientific knowledge, and scientific thinking, than studying the periodic table ever will.

Personally, the best use of the periodic table I ever heard was Tom Lehrer's 'Element Song', if anybody recalls it.

Meanwhile, aren’t we fortunate to have eyejaw here to provide the calm voice of moderation in balance to my hysterical ranting?

The one thing eyejaw got correct is the irrelevant point that the language I use is not appropriate for an academic paper. That is why it is not published in an academic paper. This is an opinion forum, as the editors have often pointed out. The editors of this forum apparently did not consider my language abusive. Perhaps eyejaw's complaint would be better directed to them.

When it comes to the phrases (Societ-style, politburo, etc.) to which eyejaw took offence, eyejaw may also benefit from a short course in critical literacy, so he could learn to distinguish between a literal descriptive statement, and a rhetorical phrase used in an opinion piece to emphasise a point and get people reading.

Regarding the requirement of syllabi to be defined, reliable and verifiable, I have one such right here: "Recite the periodic table of the elements". That is a defined, reliable and verifiable syllabus. I'm sure many politicians would get votes for implementing it. But as anybody who "knows something" about education could tell you, it is a pathetic excuse for a syllabus.

eyejaw makes the assertion that some students receive no formal teaching ever. Such a hyperbolic claim requires evidence. However, instead of evidence, eyejaw provided a refutation in the very next sentence: Students get assignments.

In what way are assignments not 'formal teaching'? They require considerably more work (and marking for teachers) than memorising and regurgitating a list of facts. Or is drill-and-practice the only thing that counts as 'formal teaching' amongst people who 'know something' about education?

As eyejaw voluntarily confirmed, his contributions to this discussion have thus far been an undifferentiated stream of abuse. Quite what this is intended to achieve remains unclear.