Illustration by David Simonds

“NOW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life.” How horrible for the pupils at Professor Gradgrind's school; Charles Dickens pulled out all the grim stops in describing it. No one today really thinks that school, especially in the early years, should consist of nothing but dreary rote learning.

But children do love learning real things—why trees have leaves, how two minuses make a plus, the number of wives' heads Henry VIII removed. Only if they begin to build up a core of knowledge can they develop the habits of mental discipline that must last them a lifetime. You cannot look up on Google something you do not know exists; and the ability to hold facts in your head is a prerequisite for many careers—the law, say, or engineering. It is not enough in primary school to learn about learning; children need to learn actual stuff.

So it is a particular disappointment that the interim version of the biggest review of British primary schooling in decades nudges the country a little further down its path toward factfree education (see article). The existing curriculum is not without its faults: repeatedly re-engineered since it was set in place 20 years ago, it is now cluttered and prescriptive. And Sir Jim Rose, once Britain's chief inspector of primary schools, was dealt some marked cards for his review: computer skills had to be ranked alongside literacy and numeracy (though employers complain not that young job-seekers are clueless online but that they are illiterate); room had to be made to teach a modern foreign language (thank heavens); and a gaggle of personal-development goals (learning not to set fire to your friends or trash the classroom) were to be emphasised.

The report suggests that everything be mashed into six “learning areas”. The titles alone appal. History will be part of “human, social and environmental understanding”, where it will compete for airtime with geography and, no doubt, global warming (is it any wonder that Gordon Brown has to scrabble about for a recognisable definition of national identity?). Britain's increasingly fat children will presumably cut back what limited running around the playground they do now and sit, rapt, through lessons in “understanding physical health and well-being” (rumoured to include “happiness” lessons too).

Sad but true

Sir Jim is no fool, and he talks the talk better than most. There is to be “challenging” subject teaching as well as “equally challenging” cross-curricular study, the report insists; nothing will be lost. This is disingenuous. Maths looks safe; and reading and writing reasonably so (although English has to share its “understanding” area with other languages). But other hard, fact-filled subjects—history, geography and so on—will be compressed to make room for the sloppy, politically correct mush.

So, children, here are some crunchy facts. Spending on education has more than doubled in a decade, but standards have stalled as New Labour has conspired with its friends in the teachers' unions to dumb down exams and meet performance targets. One in five pupils still leaves primary school unable to read and write effectively. Britain is sliding down the world's literacy league tables (it does better at maths, which thankfully remains ringfenced). You cannot teach children everything. But that is no excuse for teaching them nothing much at all.