Coming to a school near you

From the Times of London we learn that British schools will no longer be required to teach children the difference between right and wrong under plans to revise the core aims of the National Curriculum.

The revised core aims set out by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) also delete the requirements to promote leadership skills and to teach children about Britain’s cultural heritage.

The present guidelines state: “The school curriculum should pass on enduring values and develop principles for distinguishing between right and wrong.”

The QCA proposal simply says that pupils should “have secure values and beliefs,” reflecting a world of relative rather than absolute values. A spokeswoman for the National Union of Teachers said: “Teachers always resented being told that one of the aims of the school was to teach the difference between right and wrong.”

The requirement to teach Britain’s “cultural heritage” will also be removed. The present version states: “The school curriculum should contribute to the development of pupils’ sense of identity through knowledge and understanding of the spiritual, moral, social and cultural heritages of Britain’s diverse society.”

The QCA proposal says that individuals should be helped to “understand different cultures and traditions and have a strong sense of their own place in the world”. By the world, the QCA means primarily the European Union as reflected in a proposal requiring children to learn more about the benefits of the European Union. In an effort to improve its image and standing in Britain, the Minister for Europe has expressed concern that “children were indifferent to the EU because they were not taught about benefits such as free trade and cheap travel.”

Culture and tradition: out. Cheap travel: in.

The aim to develop leadership in students has also been removed. One of the present aims is to give pupils “the opportunity to become creative, innovative, enterprising and capable of leadership”. The QCA proposes only to ensure that pupils “are enterprising”. Rather than develop leadership skills, the pupils should be enterprising.

The Times published a long list of comments from readers. Here are a few of the best.

This is moral relativism in its most extreme. However, we are becoming an increasingly Balkanised nation, without a shared identity or even a viable consensus.

It is the school's job. It is the parent's job. It is the church's job. It is law enforcement's job. It is the job of every adult who wants to see his or her children become adults with a solid foundation of knowing what's right and wrong. The thought of the future of this planet in the hands of people guided by whatever feels good, situation ethics and moral relativism is terrifying.

Cato said it all: "Leges sine moribus vanae". Laws without moral underpinnings are in vain. No society can continue to exist without the foundation of a shared sense of what is right and wrong. It is therefore a duty to teach what is good and what is bad, in the home and in the schools as well as to reflect them in the laws by which we assent to be governed.

Anarchy is the breakdown of a society when commonly agreed laws and an understanding of what is acceptable are not enforced. History has taught us that once this process starts it will only be reversed once the situation has become so chaotic that there is no alternative but to introduce draconian measures. Failing to teach our children right from wrong will hasten the process.

Is this England’s problem, perhaps coming soon to schools in America? Or is it already here in the US? Here are comments from America.

I'm one of those silly Americans who have a love affair with all things English. The history, literature, law, and manners of the most civilized country in the world have been the foundations of all free and civilized nations. I wish you knew how heartbreaking it is to watch while the English give their magnificent heritage away with both hands. This latest travesty is just another "good intention" paving the road to the hell of multicultural anarchy. I've watched while American schools give in to the increasingly ridiculous demands of the relativists in the name of "diversity" and "cultural respect". It's been a disaster. Please don't do this. Take your beautiful country back before it's lost forever.

I have watched the US education systems deteriorate to an unbelievably low level of student incompetence. We have high school graduates who can't do basic math and are committed non-readers, who absorbed only revisionist history texts, have the attention spans of gnats, and no judgment or sense. With parents casting aside the task of teaching social responsibility and moral judgment, students may be exposed to it only in school. Your schools could easily become as educationally poverty-ridden as ours.

I guess Pink Floyd is consulting on the new standards for British education. "We don't need no eduation..." You wonder why violent crime is so high in the UK? Reap and sow, laddies. Whoever in the world would hire such nutballs to run the educational establishment? Its decline into bad farce is so clear, and will accelerate. Adios Britain. Adios America??

My children have finished school, thank heavens, but I still worry about granddaughter Christy. What about your kids and their kids? Do you care if our schools reinforce America’s cultural heritage and values? Should schools teach the difference between right and wrong, that democracy is right while Communism is wrong? Are leadership skills worth cultivating? Parents must become involved in the schools and take the initiative to find out what their children are being taught.