The Portal Archive October 2012 | Page 8

ragon THE P RTAL October 2012 Page 8 Dumbing down Introducing his plans for an overhaul of school exams recently Education Secretary Michael Gove spoke in the House of Commons of “years of drift, decline and dumbing down”, and his intention to do away with the “bite-size spoon-feeding” of recent decades and “restore rigour” to our education system. under heavy fire Very predictably Gove came under heavy fire for his proposals to ditch the GCSE and replace it with the EBacc (English Baccalaureate), being accused by some critics of turning back the clock and returning to a two-tier system. I suspect we haven’t heard the last of this one. everyone leaves the party with a lollipop Though I wouldn’t favour a system that sets up huge numbers of children for failure and rejection, I can see that we need to move away from a system that is so concerned with making sure that everyone leaves the party with a lollipop. on-the-job remedial training It is time that we recognised that dumbing down does not serve students well; rather it produces university graduates with holes in their knowledge of the basics, like grammar and spelling (and from experience that includes graduates in English literature), and school- and college-leavers with a clutch of ‘good’ exam results, whose basic writing and numeracy skills are so poorly developed that their employers have to provide them with on-the-job remedial training. An education system that dumbs down does not serve students; it actually lets them down. ignorance of Christ himself Similarly, a Church that dumbs down lets down. The product of “years of drift, decline and dumbing down” in the Church’s teaching of the Faith is Catholics of many years with substantial holes in their knowledge of the basics, and younger Catholics with almost no knowledge of the basics at all. For instance, how many Catholics could give a definition of ‘sacrament’? How many know that Christ is one person in two natures, divine and human? How many Catholics know what the Immaculate Conception is anymore? Or the Real Presence? Ignorance of these things is not just ignorance of a few facts, but surely ignorance of Christ himself. passing on of the content of the Faith Pope Benedict is clearly urging the Church to return to a more rigorous schooling in the Faith, which I interpret as a call to leave behind catechesis based on experience, with all its fuzziness, in favour of a catechesis that is an unashamed passing on of the content of the Faith as summarized in the Creeds and the Catechism of the Church. to live confidently as Christians in the modern world Not that the Holy Father is calling on the Church to turn back the clock to a time when the Faith was taught and learnt simply through a series of questions and one-sentence answers. He knows that a mere memorisation of facts will not serve the laity well either. Rather a sound knowledge of the Church’s doctrine and an understanding of the significance of the facts – why they really matter - is what is required to draw people into deeper union with Christ and equip them to live confidently as Christians in the modern world. the Year of Faith What Pope Benedict is calling for in the Year of Faith is what Blessed John Henry Newman desired long before him: “I want a laity, not arrogant, not rash in speech, not disputatious, but men who know their religion, and enter into it, who know just where they stand, who know what they hold and what they do not, who know their creed so well that they can give an account of it, who know so much of history that they can defend it. I want an intelligent, well- instructed laity…” (The present position of Catholics in England, 1851)