Individuals 'learn' because it serves them in some way, and children of course are more instinctive than adults. Regardless of learning style, a young child will want to learn something as a way of exploring the world, and will use all senses: this is because the rational brain is not yet in many cases ready to retain information merely from sitting down and 'taking notes'.

So, they thought trying to decide what to wear for their Year 11 Prom was stressful?

What does Gove want us back to? He wants young people today to get bogged down in minutiae of detail and take their eye off the goal. He wants worker drones with no sense of their own capabilities and intelligence. He doesn't want people to solve problems, he wants clerks to write down sums in a book, perhaps to help balance the national deficit.

More than a quarter of children aged between 10 and 12 cannot add two small sums of money without using a calculator, a survey has revealed. Youngs...

These are the rare qualities good engineers must have, but where are the salaries and the status to match? I know of a number of brilliant students who decided to go into "the city", banking and finance, after graduation because that is where the money and the status are. It is not scientists who put a man on the moon, it is engineers