THE news that primary teachers were beginning to do topic and project work once again was most welcome. Young children enjoy getting involved in something that relates to the real world around them and it was a pity that teachers were ever made to feel sordid and unpatriotic for following their professional instincts.
Provided the work is demanding and well-informed, there is nothing wrong with projects. Indeed, they bear more resemblance to adult life in the 21st- century than much else children might undertake. Unfortunately, some project and topic work was shallow and rambling, giving the whole genre a bad name.
Contrary to popular belief, the 1967 Plowden report did not offer an uncritical endorsement of such frippery. It stated quite unequivocally that school subjects should not be buried under fuzzy, ill-focused activities. The best project work has always seized children’s imagination, persuading them to work on their topic way beyond the constraining confines of their classroom.
Some children remember their projects for years after they have left school. My most memorable was on York Minster at the age of 10. Although we were each given our own bit to research - I had the magnificent Five Sisters window - the whole class knew the place inside out.
When we eventually went to visit it, the guide was astonished at these little junior school plebs from 50 miles away pontificating about architectural styles, freely using the termin-ology of cathedral architecture. Years later, when it was partly destroyed by fire, I could sense my former classmates weeping collectively at the desecration.
At its worst, however, project work could corrode young brains. One of the most boring projects I can ever remember was a two-term effort on the topic “Water”. For six months children poured it, weighed it, measured it, drank it, painted with it, and no doubt passed it.
They read the history and geography of it, the turning into wine of it, its chemical formula, its properties when boiled, frozen, stamped on, juggled with. In the end they were so sick of the damned substance, it was the exact opposite of being lost in a desert: they never wanted to see a canal, a lake, an ocean, or a tap again as long as they lived.
Nonetheless, it was outrageous that teachers were ever harassed out of topic and project work, as if any form of it must be inherently evil. So how has it come about that many schools have restored it? Did groups of primary teachers meet in secret locations, heavily disguised as an undertakers’ convention, or prance around in funny dress pretending to be Morris dancers or freemasons?
Was there a disco in an underground cavern where project enthusiasts could meet in safety without fear of being outed by traditionalists as the sons and daughters of Satan? “I tell ‘ee, Mrs Worthington, yon lass of thine will rot in hell for that there project on Carrots across the curriculum.”
Poor old John Dewey was demonised by the right wing for his historic part in the popularity of project work. In his 1938 book Education and Experience he actually stressed that teachers may have to intrude more, not less, if children are to capitalise on their experience, but he was accused of being a permissive trendy, responsible for the undermining of orderliness and, indeed, of society.
Yet all he did was recognise that young children can more easily make sense of the world if they study it as it is, directly, with personal involvement, not just in a bookish way. What he wrote was self-evident, rather than anarchic or anti-social. Bully for those teachers sensible enough to reintroduce project work, not as a replacement for other forms of teaching, but as a useful part of their rich armoury. I hope they are not vilified once more.
My taboos for any project fan wanting a trouble-free life are as follows. No silly topics. No long-winded projects that die after a week but then have to stagger on posthumously. No pretending that some piddling interdisciplinary enquiry has covered the universe, making further study unnecessary. No copying out wholesale from the Internet. And definitely no projects on sex education.
One of our local right-wingers, when arguing for a complete ban on sex education, used to say that if children learn about something in school they will enthusiastically put it into practice. Alas, as a modern linguist I can only say how I wish that belief were true. In reality, a boring project on sex education would be the most effective form of birth control ever devised.
