It might not have been like that exactly but there is no denying that early experience of nature, good or bad, will influence adult perceptions. I know that being introduced to wildlife and landscapes, very gently, by my parents was an important factor in shaping my view of the world. And similarly at school there were numerous events that made it more likely that I would become a zoologist and then a nature conservationist.
It’s pretty obvious isn’t it? We send people to school when they are young rather than when they are old because we want to influence their whole lives.
And so, although I rarely pay much attention to this subject, I was alarmed when alerted to potential changes in the curriculum that the Government (here in England) wishes to make by this excellent blog by Jules Howard.
The consultation, will downgrade teaching about the environment in primary schools at a time in our history when we need people to understand these issues better than ever. It might just be a mistake (in which case it’s a bad mistake) or it might be a deliberate downgrading (in which case it’s far worse). I will be writing to my MP on this subject and also replying, very briefly, to the consultation, and I would ask you to do the same (please).
And please, also, sign this petition.
I was impressed to see that The Wildlife Trusts issued a press release on this subject but I haven’t noticed much of a response from other NGOs (but if I’ve missed them then please let me know).
Simon King OBE, President of The Wildlife Trusts, says: “I can hardly believe that anyone would want to make changes to the curriculum that could lead to large-scale human suffering and damage the rest of life on earth. Yet Michael Gove proposes to stop teaching children to care for the environment.
“A younger generation equipped to understand and tackle the massive environmental problems we have left them is our only hope for the future. We urge Mr Gove to drop these ill-considered and dangerous proposals, to introduce more education about the natural environment in schools and do some intensive training in ecology with his local Wildlife Trust.”
So that’s Mr Gove told! Back to Mr Paterson – he needs telling too to judge by this interview with him in Country Life. Apparently a sparrowhawk flew past and was slagged off by our Environment Secretary – what a great champion wildlife has in him! Maybe, even though he wouldn’t like to look at a sparrowhawk Mr Paterson would like to look at the graph of goldfinch numbers:
Goldfinches seem to be at their highest level for 45+ years – they must thrive on being eaten by sparrowhawks. Back to school with you Mr Paterson! Although if your mate Mr Gove has his way it won’t do you much good, you’ll still grow up with unscientific prejudices. But thank you for making your ignorance so clear by giving the interview to Country Life.
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This government seems hellbent on ruining the British countryside. If it’s not buzzards, or bees, it’s reintroducing hunting and restricting wildlife crime organisations. The next election can’t come soon enough!
Owen William Paterson MP.
An anagram of his name and a summary of what he is doing to our wildlife:
Plop! Inseminate warm owl.
Too right. Bring on the revolution.
That’s not very amusing. In fact it’s quite seriously bad. This individual directs government policy for the environment and biodiversity. If this is his attitude to a natural predator in a precarious position at the top of the food chain then is it any wonder that Hen Harriers are on there way out as an English breeding species?
I don’t feel that my teachers have the passion for caring for wildlife. Our school is meant to be a Green Flag Award eco school, which means you’re meant to recycle, feed the birds, grow plants, save paper and try and help the environment as much as you can.
Very surprisingly my school got the green flag award which means your school is great for wildlife, litter free, non paper wasting and environmentally friendly. As soon as we got this award I wasn’t convinced that the school was going to carry on doing all the eco stuff, in fact when the flag was put up, I felt as if the school thought it was a chore; the pond has litter in it, the bird feeders are never filled and the chickens are never let out and have been on the same patch of ground since we got them well over a year ago. I think this is actually worse than doing nothing, as it is teaching the children that these things are not important. I don’t think my teachers have the passion to teach children about how much these things matter. I can see the teacher in charge of the green flag rolling her eyes when I go to her EVERY day to tell her about the feeders and the pond. The whole green flag thing was all about ticking boxes and not about really trying to make a difference.
I feel really, really let down by the school. I will fill the feeders and I will keep telling them about the chickens and the pond, but who is going to do that when I leave primary school in July?
I really wish the RSPB or groups like that had come to visit our school. They have the passion and I think they could have got the children in school to listen. All the school have done is teach us that nature doesn’t really matter once you have got the shiny award.
From Findlay (now 11)
Findlay – great commentt, full of passion. Keep that feeling of dissatisfaction through your life and you will make a difference!
“on their way out” of course. Predictive text strikes again…..
Great comment, Findlay – keep the passion and develop it into positive action for wildlife throughout all your life to come, Andy
I absolutely agree with Findlay. My daughter’s primary school formed and Eco Council so they could get an award which the head teacher seems very keen on collecting. They never organise Filed trips to nature reserves or even to see the wonderful Derby Peregrines on the doorstep. I wrote to her to encourage such trips and she sent me a long list of things they did in school of which my daughter says she hasn’t been involved in The school put one nest box up- big deal! There really isn’t the passion in teaching staff nor the incentive because teaching about our natural world does not get the school up the SATS table.
My eldest st daughter is halfway through 2 years at senior school and has learnt about the enviroment in Geography and PRE but hasn’t had any field trips.
The RSPB and Wildlife Trusts I feel could do more in schools. But maybe they are not invited.
I am filled with despair more and more each day with this government and the said ministers!!
Well said Findlay. Does your school invite the RSPB to visit? Two of us go to a local school to help with Big Schools Birdwatch ( and we’ve got our medals – well thank you cards – from the children) to prove it. We also clean out the bird boxes and have funded a nest box camera. That school does Forest Schools and really earns it’s green flag.
The other local school seems fairly dis interested despite pro active action by us.
Keep up the good work Findlay.
Judging by the tone of Paterson’s comments it looks to me as though another Buzzardgate situation could be just around the corner. His remarks are more befitting an SBS spokesman than the SOS for the Environment.
….”I haven’t seen a peewit or a curlew around here for years”.
As someone who knows the countryside in his North Shrops constituency better than he does, I can assure him that the peewits are there but due to large scale habitat loss, you will no longer find them in most farms. Find an area of some large, open aspect fields with spring tillage (which sadly tends only to be maize in that area) close to an area of tightly grazed damp pasture and visit it between March and early June and invariably you will find lapwings. Find the habitat and you’ll find the birds. Sadly the farmland in his North Shrops is a monoculture of high N ryegrass leys, winter wheat and maize. Very few farmers in that area grow spring cereals or green crops any more. Most of the wet grasslands were destroyed by MAFF grants in the 70s and 80s. Many more have been drained in the two decades, some as recently as the last few years.
Patterson may also care to realise that lapwings don’t particularly appreciate moronic tree planting schemes in areas of open aspect farmland. A little bird (who knows about these things) tells me that our Ministers own tree planting scheme is particularly ill-considered in this regard.
Findlay, saw you apologising to Mark on Twitter. You, therefore, made me look at this Blog and I admire you for that and for your views. Excellent comment.
Get your questions about the environment in to the leader of the opposition.
Get your questions in for Ed’s Q&A at http://www.labour.org.uk/AskEd
Michael Gove (Nasty Tory Party) need to listen to the message and hear and do what the people of the UK expect him to do. Firstly he needs to stop meddling and make sure he leaves teaching about the environment (a hugely important subject) in the school education curriculum.
Owen Patterson (NASTY TORY PARTY) is failing on the environment. He and they (the Tory Party) wants to kill badgers, foxes, bees, raptors. They do not want to protect wildlife in the UK. He and they ignore the science and need to be made to discuss/debate this with the people of the UK but they wont.
ARROGANCE sums up individual ministers, MP’s and Tory party’s thinking and attitude on the environment, birds and other wildlife…role on the next election!!!!!! We cannot have a political party in power that does not care or show any compassion about the environment, birds and wildlife.
The potential change to downgrade the teaching about the environment in English primary school curriculum is shocking; my two grandsons who are 8 and 9 attend a splendidly run primary school and would benefit from the influence of school in putting across the problems facing the environment. This would reinforce what their parents and grandparents gently introduce into the conversation from time to time. They do need the escapism, magic and fun of Harry Potter and Skylanders etc. but they are easily capable of taking on the concept of long term environmental damage caused by global warming, pollution, over exploitation of the world’s natural resources, overpopulation etc. We don’t want to frighten or worry them but we do want them to think about it and be concerned about and aware of the natural environment.
Findlay’s wonderful attitude and environmental awareness is a breath of fresh air and gives me hope!
They don’t want anyone to learn about the environment as that way in a few years time there wont be anyone with the expertise to write Environmental Impact Assessments for their hair brained ‘developments’ like estuarine airports, slowing the flow of Britain’s largest river, building yet more houses on floodplains, increasing the area of drained grouse moorland etc etc etc – or am i being too cynical.
Benyon, Paterson, Gove et al they are not fit for purpose and if bought in a shop would be returned for a refund!
You tell em Finn!!!
“role on the next election!!!!!!”
“role” – there’s the problem, can’t get the staff no more, innit?
“We cannot have a political party in power that does not care or show any compassion about the environment, birds and wildlife.”
Totally agree – how come we got this roll call of all the talents? Peart, Hughes, Silkin, Cunningham, Brown, Beckett, Miliband, Benn.
With this government we have jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire most obviously concerning all things outdoor. They have continued Labour’s box ticking and brought in a combination of daft and prehistoric policies that are truly depressing. Findlay you have my respect for trying to educate the educators. A good teacher will always admit they can and should learn from their pupils
“The whole green flag thing was all about ticking boxes and not about really trying to make a difference”
Well, Findlay you are learning all about Greenwash – the stock-in-trade of Watermelons. You will make a difference if you rise above their tosh and plough your own furrow.
Take on board stuff like this – from Richard Feynman
“Science is a way to teach how something gets to be known, what is not known, to what extent things are known (for nothing is known absolutely), what the rules of evidence are, how to think about things so that judgements can be made …”.
“The idea is to try to give all the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.”
Our schools should be doing more of that, so that our children are equipped with the critical faculties to analyse the politicised smoke their teachers blow at them.
Einstein (the one with the permanent bad hair day) had some good quips:
“A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.”
“Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.”
“Greenest goverment ever”
A quote which angers me more every day. Not only is it not the greenest goverment ever. It is surely one of the least green goverments ever. I’m racking my brain but I literally can’t think of anything they have done to help nature and the environment. Unless you call backing a ‘green’ wind energy which is a waste of money and has to destroy habitat to be built anyway. If it’s not killing Badgers without listening to science its trying to sell off the forests or wiping ecology off the curriculum. The only people this ‘green’ goverment will please are Red Grouse keepers when Hen Harriers finally become extinct in England.
Every day I become more and more angry with this goverment when it comes to the environment and I can only feel sorry for Defra ad it faces more cuts and is being led by a man who knows nothing about the environment.
Ifall our youngsters were like Findlat we would have little to worry about over Paterson’s ignorant dislike of the Sparrowhawk or Gove’s tinkering with the curriculum but sadly they are not. I hope you have all signed the petition, I have and will be writing to my MP about these idiotic potential changes to geography teaching. People in education need all the facts or at least as many as possible otherwise how will they make informed decisions in the future?
We may not all agree about many things but on this issue we surely do, good education makes for better and more informed citizens and informed citizens make better decisions about the world around them.
Indeed, Paul,
“good education makes for better and more informed citizens and informed citizens make better decisions about the world around them.”
Which is exactly why the tory party does it’s best to destroy it! 😉
For many years Bayer (& others) have carried out a very expensive and clearly successful lobbying campaign. Take the Amenity Forum for example, a hugely influential, Bayer sponsored, group of companies and organisations (including English Heritage!?), who together with the NFU have effectively written government policy and commandeered consultation with regards the new pesticide regulations.
Attacking government ministers is all well and good. But is it no time that we start to sniff out and lay bare the real enemies who have infected the hierarchy of the industry’s involved to an extent where government cannot choose the right route even if they wanted to
Pip – i expect industry to pursue their interests and that will sometimes mean that they use dirty tactics – but politicians work for us and are there to deliver good things for the country and its people so they must be held to account. Although, of course, it’s our fault that we voted for them in the first place.
But that system doesn’t seem to be working. Nick Boles’ bizarre meeting post budget with developers and the language used display a contempt for the traditional methods which cannot be argued with using conventuals methods. One thing about land industry that should be played upon is that it remains mainly made up of SMEs and largely independent also – the amenity forum, HTA, NFU etc., try and manipulate this but largely fail in all honesty. A concentrated effort to engage with industry and more importantly the public also can break this – but some barriers need to be broken down, some acceptance of opinions, hard for some to stomach. Discussion, discussion, discussion. And whilst the afore mentioned ‘organisations’ who talk for the industry continue to plug and promote methods which don’t work for biodiversity nor economically we all have to offer solutions, which do, which exist and which are making many of us based abroad wealthy.
There is another take on the Geography Curiculum in England: http://m.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2013/mar/18/teachers-climate-change-schools-curriculum
Could it be that Mr Paterson has missed the local peewits and curlews because of commitments in France? One can only hope its a retirement mansion for him.
Findlay sounds in need of support with his frustrations with his school. Perhaps he is now mature enough to seek a wider audience. Had you thought of writing to your MP with your concerns about the Eco Award and how your school has responded to it, and maybe your local newspaper would find the story interesting? At least it is to be hoped that some sympathetic person gives the poor chickens a break during the holidays.
I don’t recall being taught anything about wildlife or the environment at primary school – nor indeed much at secondary school. But in the late 50’s and 60’s wildlife was everywhere and prolific where I lived in the countryside, and even into the 70’s when I worked at the BTO there was little to warn us of the impending disaster. What I find shocking [in hindsight] is that as the 70’s turned into the 80’s and the problems began to show themselves, everyone, including conservationists, appeared not to recognise what was happening and if they did, were unable to make their concerns heard. Rather than reduce the amount of time in schools spent learning about the environment [whats left of it] – it should be doubled at least.
Dear Lorraine Miller: I agree there are very few teachers these days with any passion for a single subject, let alone several – especially at primary level. Maybe the strict curriculum has drummed it out of them if it was ever there in the first place.
Schools are usually quite keen to have visiting speakers come in provided the charge is low (or even better absent). I myself talked to a whole school assembly about the Derby Peregrines last week and am booking up more for next term….though schools say they are focusing on their SATS now and it is difficult to find the curricular time to have external people come in.
We do have one excellent infant teacher in the county who has used the peregrine web cams and indeed the blog to great effect (and across the whole curriculum) with her classes, so there are a few bright lights out there – but they need as much support as we can give them…and it’s an uphill road. Long gone are the days when a teacher could choose a subject (such as the oak tree or bird migration for example) and devote a term to it, drawing in history, science, geography, maths, creative writing and much more. Once the children became enthused by the subject (and their teacher’s passion for it) they saw they needed some maths or whatever to understand that topic better and knuckled down and got on with learning the maths almost without realising it since there was a compelling reason for doing it.
Conservation bodies do what they can with schools but it isn’t nearly enough….they only scratch the surface. There has to be a real zeal within the teaching staff (and the opportunity for them to demonstrate that zeal, not have to teach in prescribed short bursts of maths, history, english etc).
Things look bleak for the future with so few Findlay’s or inspired, creative teachers about these days…..
Nick