New critical thinking resources from The Citizenship Foundation

The Citizenship Foundation’s new resources on ‘values in the classroom’ , which they have launched to aid teachers meet the new government expectation that they ‘promote ‘character’ and ‘British values”, focus on facilitating primary school students’ critical thinking skills, encouraging them to ask lots of questions of the texts/stories they are presented with.

The first resource includes a video of a year 6 class doing one of the exercises together, which is very helpful in illustrating what a good classroom discussion looks like.

An additional resource focuses on an exercise which ‘enables children to talk about the difference between power based force and the proper rule of law in which fairness is achieved through consultation and democracy.’

If these sorts of rigorous approaches to discussion were taken regarding all armed forces engagement with schools (such as any use of the very one-sided joint-Ministry of Defence and Prime Minister’s Office ‘British Armed Forces Learning Resource‘), students in the UK would have a much more balanced impression of the military.

See more: military in schools/colleges, character building, military ethos, peace education