Science: pure or applied?

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Peter Evans

Peter Evans is headmaster of the primary school in Holsworthy, Devon, and is the author of Technology in the Primary School (ASE 1977). (This was the First Prize winning entry in the ASEs Award Scheme, 1976). In a splendidly irreverent, insightful but persuasive argument, he makes a strong case for the inclusion of ‘technology’ rather than ‘pure’ science in the primary curriculum. His observations are as pertinent as they are accurate: ‘Of nuts and bolts and metal and wires used to conduct electricity, of practical reasoning, of the use of purposeful controlled imagination — as distinct from the pixiliated stuff of creative writing — and of the application of science and mathematics in the design of working gadgets, there is rarely a sign’. True, but isn't there still a place for tadpoles, levers, magnets and even the thrum-eyed primrose (p.22).