'Imagination is more important than knowledge' according to Einstein. 'I want there to be core curriculum content – facts, knowledge..' according to Michael Gove. One of them is a genius who changed the course of the world, the other is Michael Gove.
Einstein also is quoted as saying, when he couldn't make his facts fit his theories, 'The facts are wrong'.
If you think that we are preparing our young people to succeed in the 21st century by filling their heads with facts then I think you're probably on the wrong website.
If you are know that such an approach is wrong then let us help you stick to what you believe in. We're not saying 'no facts', we're saying there are other things more important.
And, by the way, please note the irony of the 'fact' that AQA not only stands for the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance, a multi-million pound exam board, that is used to see how much knowledge we have crammed into children, but also Any Questions Answered where, for £1, you can text 63336 and get any fact you want instantly. You then spend the rest of your precious time working out what to do with it, the real skill of the 21st century.
Enjoy our handout of 40 'facts' we learned growing up in 1970's Britain
1. Coal comes from Newcastle
2. Churchill was a great man
3. Communism is evil
4. There is a God and He knows what I’m up to
5. Newton’s Laws of Motions are the way it is
6. There is a dinosaur called a Triceratops
7. The ninth planet in our solar system is Pluto
8. We have five senses
9. All things can be divided into ‘natural’ and ‘man-made’
10. Biology consists of ‘five kingdoms’
11. The British Empire was something to be proud of, spreading great British values to all uncivilised
people all round the world
12. China is a Second World Country and India a Third World Country
13. Christianity is about it when it comes to religion, the rest are just superstitions
14. History started in 1871, before that nothing important happened, after that everything was
really important, every little thing…
15. Upper class white men – like God - have ruled the world forever
16. History has nothing to do with geography. Or science
17. Hitting children with a slipper is acceptable
18. A family is a mother, a father and their children
19. Computers are big, expensive, precious things
20. The Crusades were about truth and righteousness
21. The Middle East is a desert, physically and culturally and academically
22. The white men in the West invented everything
23. America is a force for good in the world
24. There are four different tastes
25. The Baiji River Dolphin can be found in China
26. Knowledge comes in books like the Encyclopedia Britannica
27. There is a country, the world’s biggest, called USSR. And it is evil.
28. There is a country called Yugoslavia where you can go on your holidays
29. Tea comes from Ceylon
30. There is country called Czechoslovakia
31. East Germany is evil and West Germany is like America and there is a wall between them
32. South Africa is also evil but nothing to do with us
33. Rhodesia is good at cricket
34. We have five senses
35. Bernardo o’ Higgins was a great Chilean leader. Like Pinochet.
36. Nelson was a great captain who loved his men and his men loved him
37. No black people were involved in our history. A very few women.
38. There were no good Germans. Or Argentineans
39. If I do well at school I will get a good job
40. If I do what I am told I will go far…