Hi all,
On 3/26/09, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote: <snip>
" Primary school pupils should learn how to blog and use internet sites like Twitter and Wikipedia and spend less time studying history, it is claimed. A review of the primary school curriculum in England will be published in a final report next month. "
</snip>
Admittedly, I haven't perused the entire article very thoroughly. However, I am /very/ skeptical about teaching primary school pupils how to blog at all, and I am strongly opposed to Wikipedia and Twitter taking the place of history in primary schools.
On the first point, blogging, I feel that /most/ (not all) primary school students (a) lack the skills of expression necessarily to maintain a quality blog, (b) should spend time developing life communication skills instead of overspecializing on Internet discussion, and (c) have plentiful opportunities to express themselves in other, more important ways.
On the second point, I would like to point out that (a) history will almost certainly be around in 1000 years (exceptions might include golden meteorites and acts of God, etc.), (b) Wikipedia and Twitter almost certainly won't—in fact, I'm fairly sure that in even ten years time there will be a "next best thing", and Wikipedia will not be nearly as popular as it once was (and is), and (c) lessons learnt from history may be applied to the entirety of one's life and can affect all of humanity, while Wikipedia and Twitter most certainly cannot.
Anyway, that's my few pence.
—Thomas Larsen