Time to rethink lessons

Old subjects like trigonometry don’t add up any more, says expert

TRIGONOMETRY shouldn’t be taught in schools, according to a US education expert hired to help review and overhaul Australia’s school curriculum.

Education guru Charles Fadel says schools shouldn’t teach “old things that don’t matter”, such as trigonometry, and should replace them with so-called 21st century skills such as “mindfulness”.

“I give you the example of trigonometry … in reality, every single discipline is full of old things that don’t matter, they’re there because they have been there since the Greeks,” he said.

“And also, that we fill up time and space to bring in new disciplines, the ones that should be part of the curriculum, like personal finance or robotics or wellness or entrepreneurship.”

Mr Fadel, CEO of US firm Centre for Curriculum Redesign, made the remarks in a speech in Melbourne last year before being hired by the Australian Curriculum and Assessment Reporting Authority (ACARA) in July to research the maths curriculum.

On his website, Mr Fadel says his role is to “assemble evidence for reviewing, designing and refining the Australian curriculum”.

ACARA has since tried to downplay Mr Fadel’s role, say- ing there was no curriculum “redesign”.

“ACARA has publicly clarified a number of times that there is no review of the Australian curriculum underway,” CEO Robert Randall said.

“Any decision to make changes to the Australian curriculum can only be made by COAG Education Council.”

Centre for Independent Studies education researcher Jennifer Buckingham said parents should be concerned about wacky ideas being put into the curriculum.

“Parents should be really sceptical about what they’re being told,” Ms Buckingham said.

“Trigonometry was one of the things he picked throughout his lecture as an outdated knowledge for the future.

“The rationale behind that is the future is entirely unknown and it is more for them to be creative and mindful, rather than knowing anything.

“But for the foreseeable future, we’re going to need doctors and nurses and engineers.

If you want children to be able to choose high level maths at the senior years, that has to start in the early years of schools.”

Mr Fadel describes himself as an “education thought leader and futurist, author and inventor”.

He has worked at technology company Cisco and teaches at Harvard University.