Times article "Selective schools have no impact on exam succ

[Amber]

Another day, another report:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-43542565" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

On the face of it this looks like a better piece of research with a better conclusion. I should add that I haven't had chance to read the actual report yet but the idea that selection basically acts as a proxy for class advantage is not new and has been very well known for many years. In my view if selective education is to be dismantled it should be done by demonstrating the inequalities it perpetuates rather than trying to claim that grammar school pupils have different DNA from the rest of us. In fact the journal carrying the genetics article, now I that I have dug a bit deeper, is part of a new wave of 'brain science' research which is aimed at treating education in the same way as medicine. The editor in chief even says that quite openly.

Education needs to be treated like health, and the outcomes of new teaching strategies should be tested and evaluated before implementation in classrooms. We are in exciting times for neuroscience, where the merger of neuroscience with education takes us from the molecular and cellular understanding of brain function to the classroom.”
- Professor Pankaj Sah, Editor-in-Chief of npj Science of Learning

I find the idea that children's minds are being viewed in the same way as clinical trials on new drugs frightens me and I think it is part of a move against the social sciences and the 'sciencisation' of areas of life traditionally considered to have different, unmeasurable qualities. There is a lot more to all this which I won't bore readers of this forum with. Those of us who devote our professional life to trying to ensure that education is not treated like a measurable and predictable natural science will be watching this journal very carefully. (I suppose this amounts to a declaration of interest by me, just as we expect tutors and teachers on this forum to declare themselves. My field of study basically opposes this kind of thing as we feel it shifts education from being about the child to being seen as a potential unit of economic capital. In short).

[yoyo123]

Those of us who devote our professional life to trying to ensure that education is not treated like a measurable and predictable natural science

Oh, absolutely!

[mystery]

And not only that, the intro is bunkum not science.