UK Education Secretary, Michael Gove, recently announced a scheme to provide every school in England with a new copy of the King James Bible to mark the 400th anniversary of its translation replete with a brief forward from, well, himself.
The Department for Education estimates the cost of this scheme at £375,000 which may seem like good value depending upon your personal belief system but, leaving the religious aspects aside, could this realised in a different more effective way?
Justifying the scheme, Gove said of the 1611 translation, "It's a thing of beauty, and it's also an incredibly important historical artefact. It has helped shape and define the English language and is one of the keystones of our shared culture. And it is a work that has had international significance."
At a speech given to Cambridge University, Gove referenced Victorian statesman William Gladstone calling for a "recovery of that Victorian earnestness which believed that an audience would be gripped more profoundly by a passionate, hour-long lecture from a gifted thinker which ranged over poetry and politics than by cheap sensation and easy pleasures."
He suggested that learners might "marvel at the genius of Pythagoras, or Wagner, share in the brilliance of Shakespeare or Newton, delve deeper into the mysteries of human nature through Balzac or Pinker, by taking the trouble to be educated."
Despite the howls that Gove is being elitist, I think he has a point.
Why shouldn't every child in England have access to this trove of history, knowledge and culture?
I just wonder about the delivery.
For it is surely the delivery that has been the obstacle for the majority of people to access and marvel at these wonders.
The bible, for example, isn't my thing but as someone living in England I'd say it's useful to understand if you're wanting to fathom why some things are the way they are if only from a historical perspective.
As a child I was given an illustrated "children's bible" at Sunday school intended to assist my journey and to some extent it worked if only to convince me that I preferred Darwin.
But that isn't the point.
What was happening here was that there was an attempt to make the bible more accessible to me at an impressionable age before microcomputers and mobile phones.
So here we are in the 2nd decade of the 21st century, the internet is in full swing and many school age children have access to mobile devices, game consoles and other "connected" technologies. Why not deliver learning in a way that is accessible and relevant to this generation?
It can't have escaped Mr Gove that the King James Bible is in the public domain, digitised and available freely on the net and mobile albeit without his foreword.
So how about a different approach to making this historical artefact, this thing of beauty, accessible to a wider audience in a medium relevant to the modern day? Whilst we're at it why don't we embed those connections to the very things that Gove rightly points out, so people can discover and understand them for themselves?
Let's show how these classic works have influenced history and culture, let's link them to the work that came after or allow discovery by those seeking the source. All this is possible today.
What I'm getting at here is the difference between a digitised artefact and a digital one. Digitised content in a digitised curriculum isn't enough. It freezes education as an archive to output the same results just quicker to a metric that is no longer relevant based around an economic foundation of society that no longer exists. A book on an iPad or Kindle is still a book. I'm thinking of something new and disruptive that shifts the paradigm.
The King James Bible or the works of Pythagoras, Wagner, Newton, Shakespeare, Balzac or Pinker even in digitised form will remain unread and unheard by the vast unwashed. But what if they were brought to life? Would it be so bad if a child discovered Wagner on a digital journey that started with Jessie J and travelled through Dizzee Rascal, Public Enemy and Sisters of Mercy? Isn't there something magical and memorable about discovery?
How might we unearth the treasures that they hold if we could liberate them from their linear bondage? How might we recreate in digital form a journey that would grip its traveller in hours of gifted thinking that crosses poetry and politics without it becoming cheap sensation and easy pleasure?
Digital versions of these classics allowing cross-linking and reference across the diverse richness and media of the web would bring new understanding, new relevance and new learning to these works.
Surely if the mediums of expression that we now take for granted had been available to these cultural icons of history would they not have taken advantage of them?
Even established publishers such as Pearson, whose CEO Marjorie Scardino is presenting a keynote at the LWF 12 Future of Learning Conference, understand that the future of publishing is in the digital domain.
I agree with Gove that all children have a right to the best. And who knows? Wagner may well be more rewarding than the Arctic Monkeys. With todays technology in the hands of many they have the opportunity to compare, contrast, discuss, share and decide in ways previous generations never could.
If it's education reform that Gove wants then surely something that disrupts entrenched thinking and, like every other digital disruption, enables a disintermediation, is needed.
Go ahead and distribute the bible but at the same time provide access to the rest of the "amazing legacy, that treasure-house of wonder, delight, stimulation and enchantment" in a form accessible and relevant to all because if we don't we are "stealing from their rightful inheritance, condemning them to a future poorer than they deserve".
Leading a digital revolution in learning could be the greatest legacy of all.
Graham Brown-Martin is the founder of Learning Without Frontiers (http://www.LearningWithoutFrontiers.com), a global platform for thought leaders, policy makers & innovators focused on new digital learning. Their annual conference, #lwf12, is being hosted at Olympia, January 25/26. Speakers include Noam Chomsky, Sir Ken Robinson, Ray Kurzweil, Jaron Lanier and Marjorie Scardino.
Huffington Post readers wanting to register should go to http://www.learningwithoutfrontiers.com/lwf12/registration/ and if they enter the code HUFFLWF12 they will get a discount of £200 on registration and receive an iPad 2