Scrap Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) in secondary schools
I have recently been quite active in http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/, the Online Petitions Site from 10 Downing Street. This is the first of many blog posts that explains my views on certain aspects of our country and why I have petitioned for or against certain things.
PSHE, PSE, Tutorials and Citizenship are a group of subjects that are compulsory to all secondary school students in the UK. When I was at school (upto last year), 2-3 hours per week were devoted to this collection of subjects, amounting to a whopping 12% of all teaching time.
This time was spent teaching the obvious. I know not to take drugs, so spare me 2 hours of time-wasting waffle. And no, I wasn’t planning on causing teenage pregancies either. Nor am I addicted to alcohol or cigarettes.
The vast majority of each year’s syllabus on these subjects repeats the previous years’ work, constantly covering the same cliche issues - drugs, sex, drugs, etc etc. Surely this is common sense today’s youth. My own experience shows that the type of people that take drugs, cause teenage pregnancies, etc etc scive these lessons anyway, so really they’re preaching to no-one. And I, for one, don’t think airing my personal issues to a class of secondary school students is a particularly wise idea.
I agree that PSE raises some valid points about the way society is driven, but the way it is taught in schools is totally timewasting, boring and pointless. Personal and moral issues cannot be taught by books. They need to be learnt through immersion and through good parenting.
What I really begrudge is that these pointless “subjects” are taking valuable teaching time away from other subjects, at a time when the government is being criticised for failures in education. What they really need is to scrap the self-evaluation, targets and red tape and get back to proper teaching.
At the end of the day, you can’t teach morals. They come from upbringing and our everyday exposures and influences everywhere.
If you share my view, vote at http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/scrappshe/ Feedback comments welcome.