THE HURT SCHLOCKER

Review by former secondary-level science teacher Paul Hurt
of the Framework Science scheme, launched by OUP in 2003

The Framework Science Teachers' Guides may well be the worst books ever published by Oxford University Press. They are littered with factual mistakes, full of futile and deadening activities and are so deeply flawed that no amount of revision could realistically resuscitate them. They are completely beyond hope.

These are teaching materials for years 7, 8 and 9. Teachers are provided with two massive, heavy volumes for each year, one of the two being the Teachers' Guide. Who are the authors? No authors are listed on the cover of Framework Science 7 or anywhere else, although the Introduction reassures us that "The lesson plan authors are all teachers and consultants for the Key Stage 3 Science Strategy. They have used their in-depth knowledge to create a teachers' guide that will enable a department to meet the outcomes of the Science Strategies CPD training related to teaching and learning." Framework Science 8 Teachers' Guide is by Sarah Jagger and Damien Rowe (I salute the courage of OUP in daring to print the names of the authors, and the courage of the authors in daring to be named.) Framework Science 9 Teachers' Guide is by Sarah Jagger, Damien Rowe and Samantha Vickers (whose courage I also salute.)

By the way, each of these books is described as a "Teachers' Guide" on the volume itself, but OUP is vague about the the placing of the apostrophe. On the Website of 'Oxford Education', the description is "Teacher's Guide" and "Teacher's Book". In the review which appeared in the Times Educational Supplement of 30th May 2003, the title is given as "Teacher Guide".

First of all, to introduce the world of the authors and their complete indifference to the important concept of differentiation in education, a couple of questions:

1. Define the term 'evaluation.'

2. Define the term 'laterally inverted.' [in the context of light]

Perhaps you have been able to define these terms straight away, without any problem at all. If so, do try and enter into the mind of a 7th year pupil (age 12 or so) who is expected by Framework Science to be able to define 'evaluation', together with 'input variable', and try and enter into the world of the 8th year pupil (age 13 or so) who is expected to give a definition of 'laterally inverted'. These are homework questions in Framework Science, and for the full ability range - for pupils whose reading age may be years below their chronological age, for pupils who find abstract words difficult, and all but the simplest words difficult. The first question comes from sheet 7I.h.6A (A is for 'all', for the full ability range) and the second comes from sheet 8K.c.3A (again, the A is for 'all'.) By the way, the authors don't believe in supplying inverted commas generally - the inverted commas for 'evaluation' are mine - but now and again, as in sheet 8K.c.3A, they do give them.

The idea of 'differentiation' in education, which involves the notion that questions shouldn't be flung at pupils completely unready or unable to make any sense of them, never seems to enter the heads of the authors, after they've paid obligatory lip service to the theme in their introduction (an inert and deadening piece of prose whose main virtue is that it avoids the forced and completely unconvincing jollity of so much in the main teaching scheme.) It should be obvious to anybody that they have no idea how to enter into the world of a pupil for whom science is a difficult subject.

Now for an activity. This gem is from 8E.e. Pupils are asked "to write a poem about either atoms, elements, compounds, mixtures or molecules." In passing, this isn't a very good use of 'either... or', is it? "The first line should have one word and name the scientific idea concerned. The second line should have two words and describe what the first line means. The third line should have three words and say what the first line does. The fourth line should have four words and say how the writer feels about the first line. The fifth line should rename the first line in a single word."

In case this mystifies you, or the average 12 year old, or an exceptionally gifted 12 year old, an example of such a 'poem' is helpfully provided. (You see, OUP abandoned poetry publishing but it still publishes poems - it's just that they're part of other books now, so no need to worry!) As for the poem - wait for it:

"Reaction
Chemical change
Makes new substances
Fizz for frothy foam
Change!"

There are more of these futile exercises scattered around the pages of Framework Science. To give just one more example, pupils have to write a poem about either photosynthesis or biomass. A poem about biomass! And literary folk think that the didactic poem, like Vergil's about bee-keeping, is an obsolete form! An example by the authors is again helpfully provided:

"Weight
Downward force
Acting on me
Is measured in newtons
Changes!"

Now, on to a more systematic analysis of the faults of Framework Science. This is a very, very extensive field of study and I will give only some selected examples.

Wrong or misleading information

• Did you know that the reason why windows steam up in cold weather is because of all the fish in the atmosphere?
• Did you know that Milton was a woman?
• Did you know that the highest point in the world is only 8 foot?

Here is some of the misleading and inaccurate information in Framework Science:

1. In the 9th year textbook by Paddy Gannon, the potato is described (p45) as 'the root' of the plant. The potato tuber is a fleshy underground stem, a modified stem, not a root.

2. The reputation of OUP as a publisher of factually accurate books isn't enhanced by this one either: Activity on "Newton and light" (8K.f.1): "Why did Newton think that light consisted of moving particles and not waves, as was traditionally thought? How was he later proved to be wrong?" I won't discuss the use of 'proved' here, this is not the place for a discussion of Popper and falsification (although I commend to the authors a close study of Popper's The Logic of Scientific Discovery). How can they have written such rubbish? Some experiments on light can only be explained with a wave model, e.g. diffraction, others can only be explained with a particle model, e.g. the photoelectric effect. A single model cannot explain observations made in all the different experiments. This is the Complementarity Principle first put forward by Niels Bohr in 1927. Anybody who has seen the inside of a Physics lab at Sixth Form level or above should know this - but that may well exclude the authors.

3. Overhead transparency 9L.c.1 on "A hydraulic system" contains more blunders. How can the authors not know that the unit of pressure called the pascal is the newton per square metre, not the newton per square centimetre? The unit is written as 'Pascals' in Framework Science but all scientific units in the standard SI system should be written with the first letter in lower case, even if the unit is named after a person (in this case Blaise Pascal). The authors always write 'newton', not 'Newton', this time actually getting it right. Any teacher using Framework Science would be vulnerable, liable to look a fool. There may be pupils in the class who can detect these blunders, and the teacher may well be blamed for having such poor teaching materials.

4. The authors seem to have a problem with units. "What does caffeine do?" (9B.g.2) is about reaction time. A standard experiment: a ruler is allowed to fall and is caught. The number of centimetres it falls before it is caught is recorded. But then comes the mysterious instruction (No. 4 in the method section): "Repeat the procedure three times and then calculate your mean reaction time." What has been measured is a distance. How is the pupil supposed to calculate a time? The sheet offers no help at all. In fact the pupil has to use an equation of motion which relates s, distance fallen, a, acceleration due to gravity, and t, time taken.

5. And still more: 7H.b.1 and 7H.b.2 seem designed to increase the common confusion for many pupils as to the difference between 'mass' and 'weight'. On the left hand page, "Rock salt challenge" we have the loose, not-to-be-imitated use of 'weight': "Take your weighed sample of rock salt... and weigh an evaporating basin... and re-weigh the evaporating basin." On the right hand page, "Class record sheet" we have the correct: "Mass of crucible... Mass of crucible + salt... and Mass of salt". The authors do not seem to have talked to each other as often as they should.

6. What are we to make of the suggestion in 7H.b that students should perhaps "email the report [about separating salt from rock] to you as an attachment?" This has all the hallmarks of a self-consciously 'creative' idea, but teachers should never give out an email address to students, teaching unions make that quite clear.

7. In Activity 7A.a.1 the nucleus in a diagram of a cell is correctly labelled, but then described as "the brain of the cell". Later, the unfortunates who study Framework Science will be sitting SATS and GCSE exams, and they will find that if they describe the nucleus as "the brain of the cell" they won't get a mark. "The nucleus controls the activities of the cell" does get a mark, and it is just as easy to remember.

8. 7B.a.2, a sheet on animal reproduction states: "Squirrels belong to the mammal family." This would make any zoologist wince. The groups or ranks used in the classification of living things are: species, genus, family, order, class, phylum, kingdom, and, most recently added, domain. The mammals are not a family of the phylum chordata but a class. The sentences "Squirrels belong to the class mammals" or "Squirrels belong to the group mammals" would have been just as easy to understand and would have been accurate.

9. Homework sheet 7F.c.4M on reacting acids with carbonates says: "The fact that marble, chalk and limestone all contain calcium carbonate is a problem. Explain why and give examples." This is a question that would mystify the average 12 year old, and probably the average adult. And of course it is not true that marble, chalk and limestone all contain calcium carbonate - they are all forms of calcium carbonate.

10. Homework sheet 7I.g.2A has: "Why are we very unlikely to ever use geothermal energy in this country?" Never mind the split infinitive, as a matter of fact geothermal energy has been used in this country for a considerable time, if not yet on a large scale.

11. The confusion between 'number of...' and 'rate' or 'frequency'. In 9B.i.1, a so-called 'Teacher statement', the teacher is expected to announce (point 8) that "The number of people suffering from heart disease has greatly increased since the 1920s". Wait a moment, hasn't the population increased since then? Even if there hadn't been any increase at all in the rate of heart disease per 100,000 people, the number of people suffering from heart disease would have increased.

12. Similarly, the nutritional information on sheet 8A.d.2, which tells us that "apples contain 200kJ of energy, 0.5 grams of protein" and the rest, is meaningless without the vital information that these are per 100 grams.

13. 7G.d.1 states: "In a solid the particles... are tightly packed in a regular way." This is not true of amorphous solids. "In a gas the particles are a lot further apart [than in a liquid] and move quickly in any direction. There are no forces of attraction between them." This statement is also untrue: there are forces of attraction between the particles but their high kinetic energy overcomes them.

14. The teacher should be able to rely upon the accuracy of the answers in the Assessment Packs to the test questions. They cannot. The Level 5 Question in the 'Acids and Alkalis' test asks: "A solution turns Universal Indicator purple. What is the probable pH of the solution?" The answer given is D, pH4. The correct answer is C, pH9.

15. There are many mistakes which aren't scientifically momentous, but which show the carelessness of the authors and their editors. For example at 9E.e.1 "Nitric acid has the formulae..." instead of "Nitric acid has the formula..." Time after time, teachers will find that pupils give the spelling 'dependant' instead of 'dependent', as in 'dependent variables'. Framework Science likewise! 9I,d.1, Planning webs 1, makes the same mistake, repeated in Planning webs 2, with both in large text sizes and prominent positions.

16. Yet more carelessness appears in the Introduction Section Ideas and evidence for the 8th year and 9th year books (page xiii): "The National Curriculum for science at Key Stage 3 states that pupils should be taught about the interplay between imperial evidence and scientific experimentation, using historical and contemporary examples." For 'imperial' presumably read 'empirical'.

17. 8.bF.a.2 would have us believe that methane is a "smelly gas used by Bunsen burners". In fact, methane is an odourless gas. The natural gas used by Bunsen burners is 90% methane, but the smell is provided by a different compound. In the past, it was assumed (rightly) that science involved respect for factually correct information, attention to detail, progressive elimination of loose, vague expression, use of the proper term, not any old term. The Framework authors, if their practice is anything to go by, believe differently.

18. Sheet 8D.a.5 on the work of Linnaeus is hopeless. Within the space of a few lines we are told that "He called the smallest group a genus" and that "Species are the smallest unit in Carl Linnaeus' system."

19. Sheet 8C.a.1 contains the claim: "As far as we know, all viruses cause disease." Not so, completely wide of the mark. Viruses depend upon the metabolic machinery of a host cell, but that is not at all the same as 'causing disease' in every case.

20. Then there is the major error concerning Copernicus, an error which demands a digression.

The history of science

The authors tend to use 'believe' as if important new scientific theories are matters of belief. Another example is 8E.c.2: "Other scientists began to believe Mendeleev's work when the element germanium was discovered." Like their misuse of the word 'prove', this is evidence that their view of science is radically misguided.

Copernicus's work proposing the heliocentric (sun-centred) system was published in 1543. Copernicus died in the same year - before he could be censured at all. I presume that the authors are confusing Copernicus with Galileo, who was arrested a hundred years later in 1643. It's possible that the authors are confusing Copernicus with one of his followers, the Carmelite father Paolo Antonio Foscarini, who was actually arrested, but what is certain is that Copernicus himself was not.

Realism isn't a strong point of the authors. Given the current emphasis on test and exam results, it is unlikely that many teachers will give much time to the historical interludes provided. They will be aware that historical material is not examined at the end of the topic tests.

Thirty minutes (!) are allotted by the authors to a discussion of the obsolete phlogiston theory. We are told (worksheet 9H.g.1) that "until 1772, scientists believed that all materials contained phlogiston, that Priestley called oxygen 'dephlogisticated air' and that he didn't expect any change because he thought the phlogiston had already escaped from the calx." Pupils are asked to 'sequence' the cards with this and other information - but it is naïve to suppose that very many teachers will ever have their classes do such a thing. I have a strong interest in the history of science, but I recognize harsh realities when I see them. The authors of the scheme, though, are irrepressible. In Homework sheet 8B.c.5M they set the open-ended question "Briefly explain how developments have led us to our current understanding of the circulatory system." (This is just one out of six on the sheet.) This question alone is a substantial undertaking - the authors provide comprehensive information about Claudius Galen (although the date given of his death, 216 AD, conflicts with current estimates), Andreas Vesalius and William Harvey.

Activities that don't work

1. The teacher is asked to show Overhead Transparency 8B.b.1 to the class and to use it "to explain how respiration takes place in cells. Also explain that respiration with oxygen is called aerobic respiration." What do we find on sheet 8B.b.1? Something just a little bit unexpected. The words 'Menstrual Cycle' in massive bold print, arranged in a circle! Underneath it, a cartoon of a parachutist, with the word 'Gravity' also in massive bold print. That's it! Of all the unlikely linkages, the linkage between 'aerobic respiration' on the one hand and the 'Menstrual Cycle' and 'Gravity' on the other must be amongst the most unlikely. The authors and their editors, apparently, saw the conjunction of the 'Menstrual Cycle' and 'Gravity' on one and the same sheet in a section on Respiration, and didn't find anything amiss. Furthermore, this sheet is described at the lower right hand side as '8B.b.2', but at top left as '8B.b.1'. '8B.b.2' is correct, since the previous sheet, which shows the transfer of substances into and out of cells, is described as '8B.b.1' at both top and bottom of the sheet.

2. 7B.a: "Give students a piece of paper and ask them to write down 20 'cheeky words'... These are the words they know for parts of the anatomy. Collect in the words and read out a few carefully chosen ones. Explain that these are not the scientific words and that from now on they are not to use them in class; they should use the scientific words that you are going to teach them." This activity is allotted 20 minutes of precious teaching time. The teacher may have a class of well brought up young things who would find it difficult to summon up the courage to write down 'bum', let alone more risky words. If so, parents may well be on the phone to complain about the lesson the next day. Alternatively, the teacher may have pupils who are amazed that they have actually been given the chance to use in class the words they hear and use so often - and who will keep repeating them in future lessons, making the teacher's life hell. In short, this activity is a recipe for disaster.

3. 7A.d.2: Filling in a results table to describe specialized cells: five columns to be filled in, with five rows. Each of the 25 spaces measures just 4.5cm by 2.7cm - much too small for the average pupil's handwriting, which is often large and ungainly. Two of the columns ask for identical information: the second "Structure (what does it look like?)" and the fifth, "What does it look like?"

4. 9C.e.4: "What is in plant products? For each of the plant products... decide which food substances it contains." The columns are headed "contains cellulose", "contains fats", "contains proteins", "contains starches" and "contains sugars". The plant products are cotton, rice, potatoes, splints, perfume, corn oil, textured vegetable protein, paper. That word 'decide'. It is fundamental that scientific problems are not decided by thinking about them, but by carrying out observations or experiments. Nearly all pupils (and perhaps nearly all teachers - but I hope not) are likely to 'decide' that potatoes contain starch but not protein and it seems very likely that this is what the authors believe too. If so, they are making a mistake. W. G. Burton's study The Potato gives full information about the content of potatoes: "The daily [protein] requirement of a 70kg adult would be met, on average, by the consumption of some 2kg potatoes" (3rd ed'n, pp371-5). The pupil is in no position to fill in the table at all, so filling in the table becomes a non-scientific, an anti-scientific activity.

5. "True or false?" in 7E.d.1 is a similar activity. "Ask students to identify whether they think the statements are true or false by putting their thumbs up for true and down for false. They should put their thumbs up/down straight away, not wait to see what others do. After each question ask one student to explain their reasoning before confirming the correct answer." Straight away? That means with no time for thought? Not that thought is the way to decide the answer. When the teacher reads out number 4, "Bleach is alkaline", given the fact that the pupils have not been given the chance to test the pH of bleach and that bleach hasn't been mentioned in the teaching scheme until now, then any pupils who called out "How could we be expected to know?" should be rewarded for their insight into scientific method. Statement 17 "Lemon juice contains citric acid" is another case where the proper answer is "How could we be expected to know?" 7E.a mentions in passing that oranges contain citric acid, but to remember this information, to make the inference that if oranges contain citric acid lemons do too (and we don't decide scientific questions by making these inferences) and then to put the thumb up or down - to do all this more or less instantly is asking quite a lot.

6. What about statement 18? "A common acid is sodium hydroxide. It has the formula NaOH." This is partly true and partly false. The formula is correct but sodium hydroxide isn't an acid. This is an extreme, elementary error which is going to cause no end of confusion, to put it mildly. The pupils are even expected to know a lot about the history of brewing as well as the history of the pH scale. Statement 15 reads: "The pH scale was designed to control beer manufacture." There is not the slightest information about this anywhere in the scheme.

7. Activity 9B.i.4 and 9B.i.5 is "Diamond rank cards". "Pupils are asked to rank the cards from the most important to the least important and to explain the reasons for their decisions. The cards include Lister (development of antiseptics), Pasteur (multiple contributions to science), Jenner (vaccination), Fleming (antibiotics)." Not so much a difficult as an impossible task, or at least an unrealistic one. 'Explaining the reasons', this constant, impossible demand that pupils should have a very sophisticated grasp of language. A scientist could make a major discovery and yet find it very difficult to explain how this discovery compares with other discoveries. Great scientists may be supremely gifted in their own field, but amazingly inarticulate and surprisingly limited outside it, such as in verbal explanation.

8. A snappy starter makes the mistake of testing the knowledge of pupils in the first lesson of a topic, before they have been taught anything about the topic at all, a mistake which is often repeated. The pupils are given cards with terms and cards with definitions and they have to match them up. They have to define, amongst others, 'porous', 'non-porous', 'interlocking' and 'sedimentation'.

9. The authors often prefer paper-based activities to experiments. In the whole of section 8E, "Atoms and elements", a section which lends itself to a wealth of interesting experiments, apart from a dull demonstration of heating copper which takes only a few minutes, there is only one class experiment, 8E.e.3, "Investigating iron and sulphur". Truly, pupils in the fifties (or forties, or thirties...) of the last century were given a more interesting time than pupils who have to study this section of Framework Science. The teacher can make the topic come alive, but with no thanks to these books, and it will need a lot of extra work.

Over-complexity of language

7B.g.3A and 7B.g.3B are overhead projector transparencies which show curves that would tax the understanding of a good 11th year pupil, and have headings which include the phrases "stature-for-age percentiles" and "weight-for-age percentiles".

The Homework sheet 7E.b.7A is yet more bad news for the poor downtrodden 7th year who is not a star in the academic firmament. Yet again it is designed (although 'designed' may not be the best word) for all pupils, not just the most able: "In 1995, a survey revealed that 42% of UK trees were healthy, 45% were slightly defoliated..." "Slightly defoliated"! Why not "had lost some of their leaves"? The bemused or bored or alienated pupil is also told that "Freshwater acidification is a serious problem in susceptible parts of the UK."

Take Teacher's statement sheet 8H.a.4, and let's be realistic: not every class is perfectly behaved or perfectly quiet. Now try to imagine the teacher in such circumstances reading out each of these statements (a selection from the ten in the scheme) and asking whether they are true or false. The pupils are given "a few seconds thinking time", not quite long enough, I'd say:

1. There are ten types of weathering. (If pupils call out after a few seconds that they can only think of nine, then the teacher doesn't have the more demanding kind of class mentioned above.)
5. Fossil fuels are never found in sedimentary rocks.
7. Sedimentary rocks are impervious.
8. Each layer of sedimentary rock can be made up of a different combination of minerals.
9. Compaction is the movement of sediment by water.

Commit yourself to an answer for each of these: true or false? Only a few seconds thinking time allowed! Well, true or false? The answers are: 1 is false, 5 is false, 7 is false, 8 is true, 9 is false. Oh, I forgot to stress the fact that this exercise comes in the first lesson of the topic "The Rock Cycle", and before the teacher has had the chance to give very much in the way of explanation.

Throughout the 8th and 9th year scheme, there are sections called "Pupil-speak". For some reason, these sections for the younger 7th year pupils are called "Student-speak". Each of these is supposed to be "a pupil-friendly statement that clearly outlines the teacher's expectations". So how do pupils (or students) speak, according to the authors? 7K.b has explaining "the effect of matter on the weight of an object." 7K.c has explaining "the effect of force on elastic materials." Pupil-speak 9F.g has the task "to identify how you measure reactivity quantitatively and which variables need to be controlled." Pupil-speak for 9H.b demands the ability "to explain how the relative positions of metals in the reactivity series affect the amount of energy produced when they react."

The authors seem to have strange ideas about how pupils speak and what they speak about. The 'Expectations' section of 9K.b has the expectation that "some pupils will be able to use the definition of speed in calculations and conversation" (my emphasis).

Even the making of a simple poster is fraught with difficulties for the mystified/puzzled/understandably worried/understandably hostile pupil. In activity 9D.g, "Reviewing work" [on Plants for food] pupils have to produce posters which are then judged using no less than six "class-agreed success criteria". Posters have to be given a mark out of ten against each "success criterion". This being Foundation Science, the marks are also accompanied by "Reasons for Judgments". Pity the poor under-achieving boy or girl who is struggling in Foundation Science, who completely fails to understand its impenetrable language, but who makes a real attempt to produce a nice poster, puts a lot of work into the colouring, incoporates useful information - but then gets low marks for its "success criteria". This activity is liable to lead to such a crushing of confidence, or hostility to the pupils who drew up the success criteria, that it can't be criticized too severely.

Perhaps it is not appropriate to include here the many sheets of 'Jumbled words' and 'Anagrams,' but I will. Most of the jumbled words have a strange look, as if written in some ancient version of Finnish. So, sheet 7B.f.1 in the section on growth charts, has "vanooluit, trainstemuno, tearsiniolitf, pillanofa bute, canpatel, tinicami liduf". Can you decipher these? Do you think you could have done when you were twelve years old?

A mania for definitions

Asking for definitions is the subject of countless homework questions. For example 7J.b.6M, Question 1: "Write definitions for the following words: resistance, resistor, conductor, current, filament bulb."

After asking for a definition once, the authors may go on to ask for it all over again. Take 9I.b.5A, Question 4: "Define voltage." The authors seem anxious that there should be no doubt at all that the pupil knows how to define 'voltage'. A little later, in the homework question sheet 9I.d.3A we have (Question 1): "Define the following: (a) energy transfers, (b) voltage [yet again], (c) voltmeter, (d) current."

8C.a.5A, Question 1: "Define the following terms: bacteria, fungi, viruses."

7H.a.3A: "For each of the following words write a definition: dissolving, evaporating, filtering, insoluble, mixture, separation techniques, soluble, solute, solution, solvent."

This is the homework for all pupils of all abilities for the first lesson of this topic, for pupils who may have a reading age of 7 or 8! In this first lesson, these kids will have been gathered around the front and presented "with a selection of liquids, e.g. distilled water or deionized water, seawater, a suspension of chalk in water, ethanol, copper sulphate solution", and then set a challenge. Yes, the word 'challenge' is apt enough. They are asked "to devise techniques, e.g. filtration, evaporation to dryness, etc., to find out whether one of the samples is a mixture or not."

Another example of this mechanical exercise is Question 1 of 8L.g.2A: "Define the following words: Amplitude, Sound intensity, Pitch, Noise pollution." This is followed almost immediately by the deeply mysterious Question 3 (wording and question mark as in the original): "Explain in as much detail as possible why battle scenes in space on films are often scientifically incorrect?" And more at 7I.a.3A and 7K.h.4A: "Define the word fuel... Define the word speed." What do the authors want for 'speed'? "A scalar measure of the rate of movement of a body expressed either as the distance travelled divide by the time taken (average speed) or the rate of change of position with respect to time at a particular point (instantaneous speed)" (Collins English Dictionary)?

The mania extends to classroom activities too. Again and again, the use of cards with "key words and definitions", as in 9C.a.1 and the game called 'Pelmanism', which involves finding out "if the cards are a match (key word and definition)... As you can see, the key to this activity is remembering where the revealed and replaced cards are placed." This involves a needless layer of complexity, wherby attention has to be given to remembering where the cards are placed, not just to their content. If any of the cards is lost or mislaid, the 'game' becomes difficult. None of these activities leads to any work in the pupil's exercise book.

Nor does the tedious game of 'Splat', which recurs throughout the Scheme: it is played by pupils at the board, and yet again involves giving definitions. "Ask two volunteers to stand facing each other next to the words. Now invite another pupil to define one of the key words on the board without using it. The first volunteer to splat the correct word with their hand continues into the next round." Again, the emphasis is upon a sophisticated command of language, and as with so much else in the Scheme, the sense of the authors' ingenuity and creativity is palpable - at least, that is how they see it. The rest of us are likely to see only an idea which may have seemed promising enough at the time but which should have been quickly shelved.

Definitions are not central to science. In general, pupils should be able to demonstrate that they can use concepts in the context of scientific method. To define concepts calls upon sophisticated verbal skills and is far less important at this level. In Unended Quest (p19), Karl Popper, almost certainly the twentieth century's most influential philosopher of science, gives a 'table of ideas,' and places 'definitions' on the left-hand side, the 'philosophically unimportant' side. The place of definitions in science is peripheral rather than central.

Summing up

There is an extract from the judgment of the Court of Appeal in the case of Andrew Malcolm, whose book Making Names was rejected by the Oxford University Press: "...all new titles published from Oxford have to obtain the approval of the Delegates. They are particularly concerned to maintain the high academic reputation of the scholarly and pedagogical books published in the name of the University." As for Framework Science, these particular pedagogical books don't exactly meet these exalted standards. Instead, the editors and Delegates of OUP have allowed the publication of books that would disgrace a vanity press. The Delegates are senior academics of Oxford University. In their Annual Report for 2003/2004 they make the claim that Framework Science "was critically acclaimed by science consultants and helped us to gain market share." Who on earth were these consultants?