A traditional fallacy

In the previous two postings I have attempted to demonstrate that school subjects still matter. I have done so largely in response to arguments to the effect that 'traditional subjects' are irrelevant in the information age and also to trends, particularly in academies, that see such subjects undermined in favour of vocational training.

At this point I wish to first single out the rather emotive use of the word 'traditional' as it is used by both critics and ardent supporters of a subject-based curriculum. When a critic adjoins the word 'traditional' to 'subject' they are surely referring to content heavy, fact rich subjects of the grammar school style. Yet we can cannot overlook the clear and well-documented fact that subjects can be other than traditional, so certainly no effective arguments against a subject-based curriculum can be made simply on the grounds that they are too traditional (assuming that the critic has shown beyond reasonable doubt that the tradition is in itself a undesirable thing).

Supporters of subjects, such as our new Education Secretary Michael Gove or Prince Charles for example, also frequently have recourse to the word 'traditional' for very different reasons. 'Tradition' is usually appealed to in this and similar cases to stress that something is time honoured, firmly rooted in our culture and has shown at least some effectiveness in the past. Yet as the critic amply shows, there is no reason to think that just because a tradition served us well in the past that it must continue, and will continue in the future, to do so. It may do this, and the traditional way might be shown convincingly to be the best way, but we cannot assume that this will necessarily be so.

The word tradition is thus a rather inadequate word when it comes to discussing the curriculum. It is used mostly emotively (search for the phrase 'traditional subjects' on the internet and see how many news articles appear announcing the shocking imminent decline of such subjects) and has little place in serious educational debate. Either a subject can be shown here and now to provide young people with the kind of education we have decided as a society is best suited for them, or it cannot, in which case it is unclear as to why it should have any place on the curriculum.

It is therefore up to advocates of each subject to justify its place in the curriculum by relating it to aims that have been clearly and rationally decided upon in advance. Of course, these aims may themselves be disputed. The advocator is therefore best placed if they have a variety of different justifications that can be deployed (and these do not necessarily have to be mutually exclusive and can even strengthen each other). This should also be a continuous justification, for what might have counted as a beneficial and valuable skill or knowledge just a few decades ago may no longer be considered so in the near future.

In short, robotically repeating that 'traditional' subjects should be returned to the classroom (with the implication that they are traditional being the only seeming justification) just doesn't cut it when it comes to educational debate. Moreover, deploying the word traditional tends to unhelpfully polarise the debate, leading us to believe that the only two options available to us are either 'a traditional subject-based curriculum or a topic-based, skills led curriculum with no options in between.