Thursday 5 November 2015

The politics of writing in schools

Are physicists asked to help the Curriculum get physics right? 
Yes.
Are writers asked to help the Curriculum get writing right?
No.

The interesting question to ask, though, is why not?
I think it's because 'writing' is political.
It's seen as owned by people in power.

They want to control how it's learned, what kind of child/student should write what. They don't want to leave it to teachers and they don't want to leave it to writers. They don't want to leave it to writers and teachers to talk about it together.

And they want to use it for end-point, high stakes, centralized testing. This means controlling writing so that it is written in very specific ways, and only the controlled things are written about.