Trivium 21c ltd.

Grid of Posts 3×2

  • Creativity and Collaboration

    “In the popular imagination,” writes Tim Blanning in his wonderful book ‘The Romantic Revolution’, “Beethoven was the romantic hero par excellence: the lonely, afflicted, uncompromising, utterly original genius, ‘a man who treated God as an equal’…” This vision of creative minds echoes down the centuries. The tortured artists in their garret, often poor, wearing black, Read more

  • Lenin and Rand: Why the Need to Disrupt Our Schools?

    When I was growing up a significant number of people on the left were intent on destroying capitalism. They loathed its focus on the individual and extolled the virtue of the collective. They were suspicious of new technology, worried that it would take away jobs. They were protective of their own and were intent on Read more

  • A Knowledge Based Liberal Arts and Sciences Curriculum. Curriculum Series Number Seven.

    A liberal education is focused on teaching knowledge ‘for its own sake’. The two words ‘liberal’ and ‘arts’ might stand somewhat awkwardly in our current landscape, the phrase implies freeing the human being through a study of a curriculum exposing pupils to a wide range of influences, arts, ideas, opinions and facts so that they Read more

  • Hirsch and Bruner: Two Knowledge-Based Curricula Models. Curriculum Series Number Six

    Hirsch’s ‘Communal knowledge’ curriculum and aspects of Bruner’s ‘Spiral Curriculum’ are both predicated on the importance of teaching knowledge. Bruner’s might be a controversial choice as he is sometimes seen as quite a ‘progressive’ figure but, I argue here, there are important aspects of his work that warrant inclusion in the ‘knowledge-based’ category. Hirsch’s work Read more

  • What is a Knowledge-Based Curriculum? Curriculum Series Number Five.

    In the fourth post of this series I suggested that all curricula teach knowledge and therefore some people think the idea of a ‘knowledge-based’ curriculum is no different as all curricula ‘teach knowledge’. But the term ‘knowledge-based’ does not mean merely the teaching of knowledge, there is much more to it than that. The first Read more

  • The Progressive Curriculum. Curriculum Series Number Four.

    All curricula involve the teaching of knowledge which is why some people baulk at the idea of a ‘knowledge-based curriculum’. ‘We all teach knowledge’ they point out, as if there is no difference between anyone teaching a progressive curriculum and those teaching a more traditional academic one. As soon as one gets into the argument Read more