THE BRITISH VERSION OF "SCIENCE"

The science that all pupils study from the age of 14 is to focus more on "lifestyles", general knowledge and opinion and less on chemistry, biology and physics, says the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority. It published a "revised programme of study" that will govern the content of GCSE from 2006, to "ensure increased choice and flexibility for pupils so that they can study science relevant to the 21st century".

Instead of learning science, pupils will "learn about the way science and scientists work within society". They will "develop their ability to relate their understanding of science to their own and others' decisions about lifestyles", the QCA said. They will be taught to consider how and why decisions about science and technology are made, including those that raise ethical issues, and about the "social, economic and environmental effects of such decisions". They will learn to "question scientific information or ideas" and be taught that "uncertainties in scientific knowledge and ideas change over time", and "there are some questions that science cannot answer, and some that science cannot address".

Science content of the curriculum will be kept "lite". Under "energy and electricity", pupils will be taught that "energy transfers can be measured and their efficiency calculated, which is important in considering the economic costs and environmental effects of energy use".

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PHILADELPHIA GRADUALLY GOING PRIVATE

Maxcine Collier had been principal of the 400-student Anderson Elementary School in Southwest Philadelphia for five years when, in 2001, she was told that a for-profit company, Edison Schools Inc., was going to take over the school's management from the Philadelphia School District. Parents and teachers were apprehensive, she said. But more than three-quarters of Anderson's students were performing below grade level, according to Pennsylvania state testing standards. The school, in a neighborhood that borders suburban Upper Darby, housed many special-education students from other parts of the city. "There was no cohesiveness. Many of the children were from elsewhere, and they didn't bond, which hurts education, especially in urban settings," Collier said. "We knew something had to be done better."

Three years later, Collier said, Edison's curriculum, particularly in math and writing, has doubled the number of children who reach state proficiency levels and has unified her teachers. "We still have a long way to go, but I can see already we are on the right track," she said.

Last month, the Philadelphia School Reform Commission, which runs the nation's fifth-largest school district, awarded contracts to Edison to operate two more public schools, in addition to the 20 it gave the company three years ago. The 20 schools were considered among the worst performing elementary and middle schools in the city -- many with less than 10 percent of students at grade level -- and the district was seeking ideas on how to improve them. Though six other organizations, including Temple University and the University of Pennsylvania, were given contracts to manage schools, it is Edison that has taken the lead and come under the most scrutiny as the third academic year of Philadelphia's school "privatization" trial ends next month. Edison, which manages five charter schools in the District of Columbia, has the largest number of Philadelphia schools under its supervision and is the only provider to be offered more by the commission this year.

It has been loudest at proclaiming its purported successes and, perhaps only because it is the largest, taken the brunt of the criticism. It almost went out of business in 2001 when Wall Street traders dropped its stock to less than $1, contending that Edison could not survive managing a mere 20 schools. Edison has since been taken private and asserts that it is solvent. "I think a lot of people in public education around the country have been watching us," said Chris Whittle, Edison's chief executive. "It is in Philadelphia where the movement of outside management of schools is most advanced, and Edison is in the lead here. It is our most high-profile commitment ever, and we accept the criticism and praise that will come."

The privatization movement in Philadelphia was an outgrowth of an agreement between then-Gov. Mark Schweiker, a Republican, and Mayor John F. Street, a Democrat, that the state would offer more funding for the city's schools if it had more control over how they were run. The state appointed the School Reform Commission, which essentially runs the district, with James Nevels, an influential attorney and head of an investment firm, as its chairman.

Critics, including the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, which represents most of the unionized employees in the district, complained that Edison would reassign teachers willy-nilly. After much wrangling, Edison did not get the exclusive contract it wanted, and the teachers union continued to represent teachers and principals. Though many experienced teachers transferred out of the Edison schools, all the schools began that first year fully staffed. "There was a concern at the time that Edison wouldn't be solvent, but I am a pension manager and did the due diligence and determined they would be viable," Nevels said. "It has turned out marvelous, too. There was a lot of outcry at the beginning, which isn't all bad. But when we awarded the two schools to Edison at the April meeting, there was nary a peep."

Nevels and Richard Barth, Edison's manager in Philadelphia, said that based on a standardized state test, grade-level proficiency in the schools Edison manages has increased from 6 percent to 21 percent of students in the first two years of the contract.

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FUNDAMENTAL FLAWS IN PUBLIC EDUCATION

From his address at the nation's governors' conference, I give you Bill Gates: "American high schools are obsolete," he said, adding, "By obsolete, I don't just mean that our high schools are broken, flawed and underfunded.... By obsolete, I mean that our high schools-even when they are working exactly as designed-cannot teach our kids what they need to know today.".....

As a matter of historical fact, our public education system was designed two centuries ago, in large part, to honor a racist public policy. This was well researched and reported in the late E. G. West's book, Education and the State (Institute for Economic Affairs, 1965). Private schools were doing just fine, providing what markets provide in exceptionally efficient and, indeed, wise ways: a highly diverse approach to teaching students, not the statist and mainly one-size-fits-all approach, but they also did something very benign and decent-in their diverse and decentralized way they extended their services to all races and religions. But the politicians at the time couldn't stomach this, so they decided to impose a public education system that would be appropriately racist and discriminatory, to fall in line with the prevailing mainstream public philosophy of racism. The result is what we see now, a defunct public education system, defunct not because of some recent mistakes, as Mr. Gates contends, but because of a fundamental flaw in it, its association with government.

Most of us who have gone through the various stages of American public education may not realize this but we have been part of a massive collectivized system, not unlike one the Soviet Union would have championed and from which, in time, it choked to death. Elsewhere public education remains partly functional only because it tends to be highly elitist and does not aim, as it does in America, to accommodate the egalitarian pedagogical philosophy of providing everyone with schooling, nearly to the level of a guaranteed college degree.

The bottom line is that education, like all other productive, creative services in society, is better off decentralized, privatized. Sure some will have to seek out special help, but so do some as they seek to satisfy their clothing, housing, or nutritional needs. Nonetheless, once we abandon the fantasy that everyone needs to be subjected to the same schooling and everyone needs to have his property taxed so as to support this contorted system, the sort of hopes Mr. Gates, and others, with different but equally legitimate agendas for young people, are voicing will no longer have to go unsatisfied. There will be plenty of schools responding to the varied needs to American students and the opportunities that face them in all the disciplines of education. There will, in short, be entrepreneurship in education, as there is in the software industry.

No doubt, this approach is going to be dismissed with total disdain by some-first, by the people who are wedded in their thinking to how government is the solution to all human problems, and, second, by those who are currently mindlessly employed by the state educational systems across the country and care not a whit for proper schooling but mostly for their continued steady employment, not unlike those who have worked for defunct and misguided-and indeed more or less unjust-institutions throughout human history. But they really aren't the best source of wisdom about what young human beings need in the way of an educational alternative to what we have now, an evidently bankrupt one

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

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