What did you learn at school today?
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27 / 11 / 2009 | Author: dnorris
What did you learn at school today; what will you learn tomorrow?
A few years ago, when enrolment by computer was first being introduced to our school we felt we were rushing into the computer age.
I asked the Information Technology technician to give me a list of 6 programmes that would form the basis of all that it was necessary to learn about I.T.
This said more about me as a teacher than it said about me as an administrator because it showed that I thought (along with Plato) that there was a body of human achievement worth passing on to the next generation. Granted I.T. was a new subject but it too would have its core principles set right from the outset, wouldn’t it?
It doesn’t work like that, of course and neither does the new form of education.
When the state pays for education, the state also dictates the curriculum. He who pays the piper really does call the tune. Politicians see education not as a body of knowledge worth passing on to the next generation, but as a tool to solve social issues and to engineer outcomes that they consider important.
It’s an ever shifting scene, more akin to a fashion house than a school, even though it is flattering to think that anyone would believe that schools can solve society’s problems.
Physics and chemistry students have a body of laws that are relatively constant. The theories of Faraday, Newton and Priestly have stood the test of time. Their discoveries form the bedrock of all that has shaped our knowledge of physics and chemistry, but that doesn’t apply to every subject on the curriculum.
The font of all knowledge relating to art used to be observation. Even Leonardo de Vinci served as an apprentice to Botticelli and had to copy Greek and Roman figures. David Hockney never misses an opportunity to remind us of this, but his is a lone voice.
Nowadays observation is not a core requirement. Concepts now count for just as much. Images come, not as finished pictures but as ‘constructions,’ ‘installations,’ and even ‘ready mades.’
So far many of the subjects themselves have held firm. English is still English, Geography is still Geography but that is only the half of it. The syllabus which was an irrefutable topic list comprising Maths, History or Languages is being manipulated to solve social problems and these do not actually merit a place on the curriculum.
If there is an obesity epidemic, then teachers are expected to lecture on healthy eating. If there is an outbreak of anti-social behaviour, then teach citizenship. If the rate of teenage pregnancy is too high then offer more sex education. If there is global warming teach about renewable energy. This is the problem that is at the root of many of the changes that have taken place over the last 40 years in British education. Initiative after initiative has the fingerprints of political aspiration written across it.
‘The Literacy Hour’ was introduced to combat a decline in literacy standards, but reading was still being taught. It was the criteria for those standards which had changed and they were set by a government obsessed with proving that standards were rising.
Academics, in their undemonstrative way have pointed out that the I.Q. of the nation has not doubled over the last 40 years. Indeed it has stayed almost constant. What has changed is the pass rates in the exams.
What has also changed is the body of information that young people have to take on board simply to cope with an ever changing life. That has been exponential.
Today’s practical numeracy is much more complex. Time was when all you needed to do was to check the money in your pay packet, pay your bus ticket and buy your groceries. Now your wage goes into a bank account only to arrive later as a bank statement. Shopping generates a credit account and that generates interest payments.
Modernity is now driving the curriculum, not the 3 ‘R’s.
As such, a role reversal has taken place. The curriculum now has to play a game of catch up. That makes teaching a different profession to the one I believe (as did Plato) it once was. The body of knowledge that teachers accumulate is fast becoming obsolete.
That’s why the experience of teaching abroad is so satisfying. It takes you back into a domain where pupils don’t believe that the teacher is old fashioned, prejudiced and a barrier to progress. Indeed they are looked upon as being exactly the opposite.
