FOR over a decade in Australia, controversy has surrounded the school curriculum. In every State, curriculum developers have disagreed about which subjects matter most and why, which subject areas should be required for all students, and, above all, what should be taught in traditional subjects such as English or Social Studies.
Extreme pluralists argue that since there is no longer a common pool of experiences and values in society, there can be no agreement about courses of study, or topics covered by them. But this is not so. Over the centuries, as the world's great books reveal, the importance of philosophy and history, poetry and political science, religion and science, has remained unchanged even though, within and across these fields, such antithetical concepts as monarchy and oligarchy, free will and determinism, patriarchy and feminism, Christianity and paganism, freedom and totalitarianism, innocence and experience have vied for honours.
For as long as civilised societies have existed, people have differed about the ordering of human institutions. The nature of the good life has been the subject of unceasing interest and debate. Although there has been continuing discord about which ideas, which books, which writers, have the greatest imaginative power, there has also been agreement about enduring concepts and values. Despite major differences in cultural perspective, human beings everywhere have not forsaken the view that the scientific, mathematical, linguistic, aesthetic, and spiritual achievements of mankind merit thorough study.
Within the past year, the research of scientists and moral philosophers working in the broad area of situational ethics has shown that even among individuals whose world views differ in striking ways, there is often total concord about how sensitive moral issues should be handled. (1) People who disagree in theory can often concur in practice; and theoretical disagreements about human conduct need not be divisive. In multicultural societies like Australia, a common body of accepted belief about cultural and educational goals continues to make its presence felt.
Dozens of documents published within the broad field of education in the past decade demonstrate that, whatever their individual differences, there is strong agreement among Australian policy-makers about large issues and values. Guides, "frameworks", and reports maintain, with complete unanimity, that it is the duty of schools to preserve basic rights and freedoms; to foster supportiveness, honesty, co-operation, and self-discipline in personal relations; to encourage curiosity, critical thinking, and creativity in all classrooms; and to promote civic responsibility through a commitment to democratic institutions and practices. (2)
What policy-makers, teachers, teacher educators, and interest groups differ about are immediate curriculum priorities and their bearing on large educational objectives. The focus of increasing numbers of government and non-government schools in recent years has been on the "process" of learning instead of the "content" of subjects or the skills of learning to be mastered; the here and now, as it affects the immediate wishes of children ("relevance"); and contemporary issues with direct political implications. A disproportionate preoccupation with the demands of the present has overtaken a proper focus on long-range goals and a balanced vision for the future.
A CORE CURRICULUM
THE SITUATION IN ALL THE STATES
The term "core curriculum" refers to the areas of learning deemed essential for every child. Despite major alterations in school climate during the past 50 years, the importance of the "core curriculum" concept has not diminished. It guarantees the minimum which all students should study, and allows choice in the additional selection of subjects and topics. What has changed over the century are views about which subject areas should be required from P-12 (that is, Preparatory to Year 12), and how each subject should be approached.
In Australia there is general agreement that the core should include English, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies (especially History and Geography), Foreign Languages, the Expressive and Practical Arts (including Technology), and Physical Education (including Health). But according to Mapping the Australian Curriculum, a survey released by the Australian Education Council in March 1989, the States differ significantly about requirements for each of these subject areas. There is continuing debate about how long each subject should be studied, how much weight it should have, and what its parameters ought to be.
At the primary level, New South Wales, South Australia, Western Australia, Queensland, and the Northern Territory have required "common learning areas" identical to the eight core areas named above, though with slight variations in nomenclature. In the ACT, Victoria, and Tasmania, these eight core subjects are not mandatory, but there is a "firm expectation" that they will be covered.
In secondary programs, Years 7-10, there is an optional core in Queensland and the ACT and a "priority" subject core of eight in Tasmania. (3) The Victorian frameworks are so general, and so preoccupied with process at the expense of content, as to allow local schools to teach almost anything. One consequence is that Victorian primary schools allocate only four per cent of class time to Science. (4) In South Australia, along with English, Maths, and Science, a highly politicised semester course in Australian Studies course is required in Year 11. Only Western Australia and New South Wales require a balance of English/Mathematics/Science/ Humanities through Year 12.
DISAGREEMENT ABOUT THE ROLE OF CORE SUBJECTS
Who Should Control the Curriculum Structure?
Without a clear distinction between essential and non-essential subject areas, and without specifications on the dimensions of each, the curriculum is vulnerable to a plethora of demands. Rival groups contend for power on curriculum selection boards and push through program changes which teachers are then forced to implement, sometimes as often as every other year.
At the State level, teacher union executives eager to enhance the status of teachers seek a controlling voice on curriculum development committees. Lobbyists representing community groups demand a stronger focus on multiculturalism or the world of work. Extreme relativists claim that all subjects (e.g. Outdoor Education and Physics) are of equal value, and therefore should be given equal weight by curriculum designers, credentialing bodies, tertiary institutions, and employers.
At the opposite extreme, political and business leaders demand a single national curriculum with core subject areas and essential core topics. Some argue that there should be common learning areas determined by the States after thorough local consultation, and reviewed within specified periods. Others contend that common learning areas established and monitored by the Federal Government would be best, since their presence would make it easier for families to move interstate, and create a more efficient system for everyone. Still others press for the existence of "key competencies" for all pupils, defined in a program of study determined at the federal level.
To date, State Education Ministers have agreed on broad national goals and guidelines for all Australian children, but they have opposed the idea that there should be one curriculum determined by Canberra. The concept works against devolutionary moves in every State (discussed in detail in Chapter 4) to reduce the influence of remote, unwieldy, centralised bureaucracies, and to create a stable balance between required subject areas and student choice. Although attempts to persuade State Ministries to agree to a national curriculum are still being made, the States are currently exercising firm individual control of existing and proposed courses of study.
In a country as diverse as Australia now is, there is no easy solution to the problem of setting up curricula widely acceptable in both their broad outlines and their details. Nevertheless, steps are being taken by individual State Ministries to resolve large differences among groups in conflict, to set up management structures which will give school programs greater stability and flexibility, and to organise co-operative networks among the States so that good ideas can be more widely shared and implemented.
Without going to enormous expense, sensibly focused State groups, following the example of curriculum designers in overseas countries such as the UK, the US, Japan, and Germany, (5) are developing "common learning area" models which can be adapted relatively easily by neighbouring states. This is encouraging. For it suggests that a mean can be found -- as indeed it should be -- between the extreme view, on the one hand, that school programs should be developed entirely at the local level to ensure diversity, and the extreme view on the other that only a highly centralised curriculum structure can protect standards.
How Much Weight Should Core Subjects Have?
Actual core curricula throughout Australia reflect the sound belief that all children should receive a broad general education, balancing the Arts and the Sciences -- that is, work done in subjects concerned directly with human conduct, and work done in more technical areas. They also implicitly honour the view that practical work in such traditionally valued areas as the expressive and applied arts is essential for everyone.
On the whole, from P-10, more class time is given to English, Maths, and Science than to the other core subject areas, with Social Science a close fourth. After Years 6 or 7, Music and Art are usually provided as electives, along with the Manual Arts; but Physical Education and Health are normally required through Year 10. In 1988, fewer than one-quarter of all primary and secondary schools offered a language other than English; (6) but for economic and cultural reasons, there is pressure to reinstate more intensive programs of foreign language study, especially in Asian languages.
Four issues affecting senior secondary pupils remain contentious throughout Australia. How many subjects should be studied in Years 11 and 12? Should any of these subjects be required? Should all subjects studied be time-tabled equally? And how much should each subject "count" for the awarding of leaving certificates and tertiary entrance? So far, there has been relatively little debate about whether the Arts/Science balance established in Years P-10 should be maintained in post-compulsory programs, and minimal discussion about the degree of specialisation desirable. Yet these are important questions.
In Victoria, senior pupils complete 16 to 24 units of work from among 44 subject area possibilities. Four units of English, four units selected from a large range of possibilities in the Arts or Humanities, and four from a large range in Maths, Science or Technology are required. Each subject -- e.g., in Arts/Humanities such options as Dance Styles, Legal Studies, Drama, Commerce in Society -- is given equal class time, and each counts equally for the award of the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) at the end of Year 12. To date, each Victorian university has its own subject requirements for different fields of study (e.g. Law, Medicine) which students must bear in mind as they plan their programs.
Elsewhere in Australia, only a limited number of subjects issuing in an Higher School Certificate (HSC) or Tertiary Entrance (TE) credential is offered in Years 11 and 12; and for students going on to university, debate continues over whether programs of study should emulate the American model (English-Social Science-Maths-Science) or the British one (English-Maths-Science). Present arguments hinge on whether a strict balance between the Sciences and the Humanities is crucial in the senior years of school. There is general agreement that all required subjects should count for the award of credentials, and that universities should determine their relative weight for entrance into specific tertiary programs.
Although at present relatively few schools outside Victoria offer a Year 11-12 course to students without an interest in university study, plans are being made to introduce additional senior school options for the post-compulsory years. At present, we do not know which core subjects will be offered for senior pupils with a vocational bent, or how much each is likely to "count" towards the award of credentials, further training, or entry into the work-force; but possible study/training options are discussed in Chapter 4.
Should the Content of Core Subjects Be Specified?
An issue which is still being debated throughout Australia, both across the States and within individual State Ministries, is whether the content of core subjects should be precisely defined. At present most States do not distinguish between essential and non-essential subject matter within core areas, or provide complete lists of topics to be covered in the first 10 years. This means in practice, as later sections of this chapter will show, that the curriculum is open to considerable abuse through lightweight and/or biased emphases.
Throughout the country, syllabus frameworks and guides provide broad guidance about the "processes" of learning recommended from P-10 in each core area; and in some States -- e.g. Western Australia, Tasmania, South Australia -- general suggestions about desirable content are offered. New South Wales has been engaged in a major effort to specify what must, and what should, be covered in common learning areas at all levels of schooling; and its specifications about outcomes in content for all subjects are now in schools.
In Victoria, there is total vagueness about topics and near-total vagueness about texts until Years 11 and 12, when in certain subjects (e.g. English) recommended book lists, identical for all students, are supplied. Elsewhere, for Years P-10, some syllabuses (e.g. Tasmania's primary school literature documents) refer to desirable reading matter for particular age groups. But except in New South Wales, existing P-10 documents or proposals do not attempt to recommend -- even for work in English -- a full and varied reading program from which schools and teachers can select books at suitable levels.
Around the country, boards responsible for Year 11-12 programs are updating their work on topic and text selection but, for the most part, without distinguishing between the centrally important aspects of core subjects and the more peripheral ones. Although reading materials are still being recommended at different levels in core subjects studied in, for instance, Western Australia and South Australia, schools in Queensland and Tasmania now decide for themselves what pupils should read, and which topics they should cover, in such key areas as English. This allows for the kind of levelling down that has forced Victorian universities to set up remedial programs for first year students.
A WORKABLE CORE MODEL: REFORM IN NEW SOUTH WALES
Within the context of the Education Reform Act of 1990 and of recommendations made by Excellence and Equity and the Committee of Review of NSW Schools headed by Sir John Carrick, the New South Wales Board of Studies (7) produced a discussion document called Implementation of Curriculum Initiatives. It received over 2,500 responses from schools, parents, tertiary institutions and interest groups. Following analysis of these responses, Curriculum Requirements was issued in July 1991. The requirements became operative from January 1992. (8)
Because the curriculum initiatives adopted have gained wide acceptance by both political parties and traditionally warring educational groups, they are worth noting here. Even though it is much too early to evaluate them fully, their underlying structures, and the documents being produced by the groups set up to develop them, are already attracting considerable attention in all the States and in policy-making bodies outside as well as within Australia. Of particular interest is their carefully designed system of checks and balances.
Responsible to the Board under the new arrangements are eight Key Learning Area Co-ordinating Committees (KLACCs) to co-ordinate syllabus development in each curriculum area and ensure continuity between primary and secondary curricula. Reference panels to provide advice on policy development (e.g. in Special Education) have been established, as have syllabus committees, assisted by networks and writing teams. Supporting documents for teachers already being produced indicate that diverse, broadly-based programs of study and reading material will be introduced, and that schools will have considerable freedom in book selection.
The beliefs implicit in the new initiatives are that:
- the common learning areas of English, Social Science, Maths, and Science, because of their large influence upon life and the balanced Arts/Science focus which they bring to schools, require more concentrated work than do the other areas;
- the other common learning areas are important enough, nonetheless, to be offered until school leaving age; and
- syllabuses, containing outcome statements in each learning area, should be framed by experts in that area and regularly refined and updated so that essential subject matter is covered by all schools.
By naming the key learning areas and stipulating both their relative weight and their essential parameters, by allowing each KLACC to comment on and monitor what is included in each area, and by requiring regular updates of suggested materials and texts, the New South Wales approach suggests a way out of the dilemma currently facing other Australian States and other countries of the world: whether to institute a common curriculum, distinguishing between essential and desirable areas of study, or to continue to give regions and localities the freedom to adopt their own, potentially fragmented, approaches to teaching and learning. In other words: it balances compulsion and choice.
Since teachers at individual schools normally have neither the time nor the expertise to develop a full curriculum themselves; since local regions working alone are likely to have similar problems; and since a body responsible for devising a curriculum for an entire nation will be remote from vital centres of learning, (9) the structures in New South Wales are attractive. At one and the same time they allow for a broad and expert base to undergird all the plans proposed for each common learning area; they guard against the self-interested politicisation that could easily occur at local or centralised levels of policy-making; and they ensure that mistakes can be rectified through a regular process of review.
The frameworks now in place in New South Wales provide a usable model for other State bodies to consider. They are much more compatible with the better curriculum designs being discussed abroad than with the shallow "guides" and "frames" produced by some of our other curriculum designers at local, State, and national levels. (10) And even the more controversial discussion documents -- for example, a Year 11-12 Studies of Religion course, which has been criticised for a relativistic focus -- can be defended without embarrassment. A marked advantage of their design is that they provide a solid basis -- i.e. a practical guide -- for syllabus improvement.
RECOMMENDATIONS A CORE CURRICULUM There should be a core curriculum, P-10, containing English, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies (especially History and Geography), Foreign Languages, the Expressive and Applied Arts (including Technology), and Physical Education (including Health). In Years 11-12 there should be a balance between required Arts and Science subjects, and there should be diverse, carefully conceived approaches to "common learning areas", bearing in mind the varying needs, interests, abilities, and long-range goals of pupils. From P-12, clear distinctions between essential and non-essential areas of study in each core subject should be made, and recommended reading lists should regularly be fine-tuned and updated. To preserve an appropriate balance between compulsion and choice, and to ensure that those responsible for curriculum design are in close touch with the schools affected by their decisions, individual States should continue to design core programs of study. To ensure the efficient use of resources, the easy transfer of pupils from interstate, and the most up-to-date implementation of educational research, States should network more closely on a regular basis. The means of devising and implementing core programs of study in New South Wales should be carefully noted by other Australian States, as they have already begun to be noted overseas. Already the New South Wales curriculum initiatives suggest that an equitable and balanced solution to the twin dangers of an over-centralised or locally-biased and fragmented curriculum can be found. |
CULTURAL LITERACY
Buttressing the view that a core curriculum is essential in schools is research done on communication in the past decade. E.D. Hirsch, for example, has found that a knowledge base anchored in what we have called "common learning areas" is essential to functioning democracies. (11)
For a modern, industrialised nation-state to function productively, individuals have to communicate with hundreds of people, many of whom are complete strangers -- some of them thousands of kilometres away. The number of people who must share a vocabulary and its accompanying store of meanings and associations is, therefore, very large. The shared information includes facts about the major institutions, identities, groups, rules and procedures, processes, philosophies, and ideas which affect the activities of a nation's population.
One of the essential functions of school reading programs is to enable communication on a broad scale to occur. This means that literacy must be conceived, not simply in terms of training in basic reading skills, but in terms of the large cultural requirements of the modern world. Aspiring teachers need to give pupils a wide and broad experience of material with a solid factual and imaginative base -- which of course means that they themselves must be well-read and well-informed.
For years, reading experts have been arguing that literate people are acquainted with a broad range of information gleaned from Science and Social Science, Literature, and the Expressive Arts. A notable finding of psychologists, linguists, and reading experts is that the ability to read with understanding depends upon more than quick eye movements, strong memories, a good vocabulary, and the ability to decode letters. Without an internal storehouse of cultural facts, acquired chiefly from books and secondarily from other media such as film, nine-year-olds have grave difficulty grasping the meaning of the printed word.
To give children the common background knowledge upon which mature communication depends, the better schools around the world introduce them to imaginative and then to discursive literature from many countries as soon as their formal education begins. If teachers lack essential background knowledge themselves, the more enlightened school districts provide regional in-service work designed to fill in some of the gaps. Reading tasks which require an understanding of undeclared assumptions and an ability to place words in appropriate contexts can only be successfully completed by those whose cultural knowledge is diverse and far-reaching.
We in Australia lag behind other advanced countries -- especially, European ones -- in our understanding of the requirements of literacy. The major sign of our backwardness is the absence of wide reading programs in our schools, particularly during the formative stages of child development. Although the English frames published by all of our State Ministries recommend that children be exposed to wide-ranging and diverse reading matter, as of mid-1991 not a single English syllabus in Australia listed books that were worth reading in Years P-10. (12) In the better content-centred syllabuses, picture books and novels for primary school children are mentioned, but they are neither discussed nor evaluated.
At the primary school level our neglect of literature is particularly shameful, both because Years 3-6 are crucial to the imaginative development of children and because there has been a revolution in the field of children's literature during the past 30 years. For eight- to 12-year-olds in particular the range of offerings is unusually good. Immediately needed for both parents and teachers are annotated book lists, prepared by experts in the field of children's literature, which not only classify books according to genre and age level, but indicate the relative quality of recommended selections. (13)
Both in specialist book shops and in municipal libraries, there is material of broad cultural interest which primary teachers ought to be recommending to scores of pupils: novels whose plots reflect the latest scientific discoveries; fictional histories set in India, Northern Ireland, Alaska, ancient Palestine, or Cambodia; fantasies which draw on events from Welsh myth or Arthurian legend; outstanding works of non-fiction, including biography and social history. From the dozens of works of fiction and non-fiction written expressly for children, an extremely broad knowledge of everyday life can be acquired. But this won't happen until our basic conception of literacy catches up with the findings of the world's most distinguished experts on the subject.
RECOMMENDATIONS CULTURAL LITERACY For the sake of basic literacy, children need to read widely in every core learning area throughout their schooling. The fact that ordinary literacy depends upon a wide background knowledge gleaned primarily from habitual reading needs to be much more widely understood. Syllabuses in each State should include lists of recommended reading in core subjects. Because so much good writing is now available for children, the reading lists for Literature programs, and especially those for the primary school, ought to be annotated, indicating genre, subject area covered, intended age group, and the relative quality of each entry. |
TECHNOLOGY AND CIVILISATION
Virtually everyone now takes it for granted that advanced technology plays an important role in the classroom. For many years videos, overhead projectors, cassettes, film, computers, calculators, slide projectors, and other precision instruments have been used everywhere in the world to make teaching easier and learning more enjoyable. Although, as writers like Neil Postman have warned, some of our weaker schools are already relying excessively on educational machinery, confusing instruction and entertainment, (14) sensible teachers around the world, in every subject area and at every level of schooling, have made good use of technologically advanced equipment for close to a decade.
Only recently, however, have educators viewed Technology as a subject in its own right: as a means of illuminating history, instructing children in the development of civilisation, fostering new approaches to learning, and creating forms of understanding which improve the quality of life. On university campuses such as Vanderbilt in the United States, on nationally appointed committees like those operating in the past five years in England and Wales, and on State Boards of Study in Australia (e.g. in New South Wales), teachers and academics have been working together to develop courses which adequately take into account technology's key functions, and which integrate its historical, economic, scientific, and social dimensions.
A key factor in the recent collapse of communism in the Eastern Bloc was the role of communications technology in disseminating information to people there about life in the West. A major means of solving complex environmental problems everywhere in the world is technological expertise. Important documents and articles circulated in the last year have been arguing that pupils need to be informed about key technological matters of this kind, and systematically schooled in the means of furthering technological progress, so that they fully understand events affecting daily existence in Australia and the rest of the globe. (15)
From reports published in such international forums on education as Education Week and The Times Educational Supplement, it is clear that in every core subject area, technology has a key role to play. Just as technological progress is influencing lifestyles, altering the workplace, increasing the scope of citizenship, and giving the concept of a global village greater currency, so it can significantly change the everyday lives of school children and teachers. For it offers many opportunities in all the key learning areas, singly or in two or more subject groups, and at varied levels of complexity.
By encouraging students of every age to devise and implement plans and designs which facilitate wiser control of objects, systems, and the natural and man-made environment, technology helps them to develop and communicate ideas, to develop their practical capacities (including the handling of materials and equipment), to begin to understand the enormous industrial changes that have occurred in the world in the past 200 years, to cope with rapid change, and to meet basic human needs. And it performs these multiple functions in ways which encourage many levels of intellectual and imaginative development.
In a single subject such as Music, for example, pupils can evaluate a model of a violin and discuss in detail how it was made -- the better to understand the evolution of orchestras, as well as of smaller performing groups. In Science, they can explain how a small bridge of specified length was built, what materials were used to build it, and why. In Social Studies, they can discuss why some social systems have been more conducive to technological progress than others. In Mathematics and Art, using sophisticated computer-aided graphic techniques, they can design an environmentally suitable building complex for a rural or urban company.
Across the curriculum, the investigative possibilities of technology are enormous. To be fully realised, however, these possibilities will depend on developments outside, as well as within, schools -- especially, the texts devised by major publishers for across-the-board use. Recent reports from the UK on trivialised, pop-culture approaches to design in technology booklets made for schools -- e.g., booklets which get pupils to plan "happenings" or look "critically" at Coke advertisements or music chart offerings -- provide a timely warning about how easily rigorously conceived new courses can be sabotaged. (16) Clearly, educators need to be vigilant from the start about every aspect of technology course evolution.
Provided that new courses and approaches are very carefully vetted, their benefits can be felt by all children. In special programs for gifted students and pupils with specific learning disabilities who cannot cope neurologically with such traditional forms of learning as copying from the blackboard, reading textbooks, filling in worksheets, or listening to abstract teacher talk, advanced technological equipment and entirely new course designs can be used with great effect. In mainstream programs their possible reaches are equally extensive.
RECOMMENDATIONS THE IMPORTANCE OF TECHNOLOGY Technology should influence the content of each key learning area so that pupils of every age and level are more aware of the historical, economic, social, and scientific dimensions of technological advance, and better equipped to handle our natural and man-made environment wisely. By designing and using objects and systems more creatively, children can develop imaginatively and practically in ways which promote sound adjustment to rapid change and which enhance the quality of life. While advanced technological equipment cannot replace the human relationship between teacher and pupil, sophisticated computer software, tapes and videos could more usefully be employed as teaching tools across the curriculum, notably in areas such as Special Education and programs for gifted children, where they have not been sufficiently used before. |
PROCESS VERSUS CONTENT
SYLLABUSES AROUND AUSTRALIA
There are two broad categories of syllabus in Australia: those that concentrate on the process of learning and the attitudes pupils are meant to have, and those that focus on the content of a subject area and the skills of learning needed to master the subject. Those which give primacy to process emphasise activities in which pupils should engage; those based on content stress the understanding which pupils should acquire.
In both Victoria and Queensland, the emphasis on process is marked. Even in the new literacy "guides" published in Victoria, which specify in broad terms the content covered in such basic subjects as Reading, exactly what is being taught is unclear. Elsewhere in Australia -- notably, Tasmania, South Australia, New South Wales, the Northern Territory, and Western Australia -- content receives much more thoroughgoing, precise attention.
In the broad area Language in Use, the difference between the two kinds of syllabus is very clear:
FOCUS ON PROCESS [ACTIVITY] Children will learn to: - make public announcements;
- listen to traditional ballads;
- write a short scene for a play;
- read a short newspaper story;
- discuss their views on a topic of current interest;
- write a report about an excursion;
- read biographical articles about a particular author;
- use a telephone to seek various kinds of information;
- keep a personal journal;
- view a documentary film or video.
From P-10 Language Education Framework, Queensland, 1989.
FOCUS ON CONTENT [UNDERSTANDING] Focus Points for Narrative, Years 4-5 | Anecdote | - develop the understanding that an anecdote provides an account of a sequence of events, who was involved, and elaboration on key events
| | Fiction | - develop an understanding of different types of fiction and that each type has special characteristics, e.g. historical fiction has an author's interpretation of what might have happened, supported by general historical records, and characterisation, setting, speech, etc. that is consistent with the time in which the story is set
| | Myths and Legends | - develop the understanding that legends are often explanations of natural phenomena, and have religious and cultural origins...
- develop the understanding that myths are characterised by supernatural characters interacting with people etc.
|
From Children and Language: Understanding Reading and Writing, Tasmania, 1984. |
Process-centred syllabuses belabour the obvious and say little or nothing about how worthwhile activities should be implemented, or what doing them well entails. These syllabuses fail to comment on the body of knowledge to be transmitted, the large topics covered, the skills needed, or the means of assessment required. Content-centred documents, in contrast, are precise and thorough in their focus on topics, skills, and understanding, and they suggest that their designers have given appropriate thought to the aims of teaching and learning in particular subject areas.
RECOMMENDATIONS THE NATURE OF SYLLABUSES Future syllabuses in Australia should be content-centred. Lists of common-place behavioural aims and attitudes should be scrapped. Syllabus documents should focus on the skills and understanding required to develop an organised body of knowledge. |
SYLLABUS GUIDELINES APPLIED
The practical difficulty in Australia, even with syllabuses which focus on content, is that they cover much more ground in core subjects like English or Social Studies than teacher trainees cover in pre-service programs, and much more ground than can normally be covered in ordinary classrooms. As statements about what teaching in core subject areas should, ideally, be like, the better syllabus documents are very useful; but as guides to what is being done in Australian schools, particularly at the primary level, they are profoundly misleading. (17)
In most Australian schools, time is divided among so many curriculum subjects that it is impossible for each one to be treated with the thoroughness recommended by the more inclusive guides. It would therefore be extremely helpful if all content-oriented guides distinguished between essential and desirable areas of coverage under each large subject heading. Teachers would then be clearer about the difference between minimal and more ambitious standards of coverage.
Gaps Between Theory and Practice: An Example
Language work, which covers activity in many subjects and not just English, illustrates nicely the gap between the knowledge our syllabus require and the knowledge transmitted in classrooms. A major problem, documented by reports from HSC examiners and studies in Western Australia, New South Wales, and South Australia, (18) is that many 18-year-olds have difficulty writing simple sentences with appropriate diction and punctuation. This points to a need for much more thorough, systematic language instruction in schools, and accountability for the transmission of sound knowledge of language, than is currently being provided.
As Britain's Kingman Report points out, (19) teachers and pupils need a shared vocabulary about language so that they can communicate sensibly about the written word and put to appropriate use the "processes" of language. Unless children are corrected in each subject area when they make errors, in terms which they understand, and unless they are shown exactly what standard English sentences and paragraphs are like from infants school onwards, they readily develop bad habits which are difficult to eradicate. Far from undermining creativity, as is sometimes claimed, clear explanations in plain English about how language works encourage its blossoming.
RECOMMENDATIONS SYLLABUS GUIDELINES APPLIED Syllabus requirements must be consonant with what can reasonably be accomplished in classrooms. Large gaps between overly ambitious syllabus recommendations and the insufficiently ambitious realities of (a) course content in teacher training programs, and (b) ordinary classroom practice, must be eradicated. At present, in such vital areas as Language instruction across the curriculum, such gaps are not being remedied as they should be. |
"PROCESS" DIVORCED FROM "CONTENT" IN THE CLASSROOM
Process Writing
Although a trivial or unbalanced emphasis on "process" can occur in every area of the curriculum, the record suggests that in one area in particular excesses have regularly occurred: the teaching of writing.
In recent years, because of the wide acceptance of "process" writing in primary schools, teachers have encouraged pupils to make broad use, across the curriculum, of the techniques they have acquired in English lessons devoted to writing. The major difficulty has been that in many schools so much attention has been devoted to the "process" of getting ideas on paper in draft form that sound editing, which requires a basic knowledge of the "content" of standard English, has been neglected.
In primary and then secondary classrooms, countless pupils never write second or third or final drafts in suitable, corrected form. (20) They are allowed to "publish" work without proper sentences or paragraphs, with mis-spelled words, with errors in diction, and with incoherent lines of thought. If teachers comment on their writing in conferences or on paper, as they are meant to, they often do so in such brief and sporadic ways that errors remain uncorrected. Instead of being given language models to emulate, and systematic instruction in the workings of language, pupils are encouraged to keep on "drafting" freely. Many never get beyond the first stage in process writing.
"Process" Approaches to other Core Subjects
In other major curriculum areas, application of the theory that "process" matters more than "content" has produced problems comparable to those most common in the teaching of writing. In Mathematics, too frequently, pupils are given practice in performing key operations, but without a solid grounding in the principles underlying them. In Social Studies conversation about important issues, such as the need for environmental protection, proceeds without reference to essential scientific, historical, and technological data.
Approaches to the other required subject areas are a worry too. In the teaching of Foreign Languages many teachers now concentrate on classroom talk and eschew all systematic study of sounds, forms, and constructions. In classes on Health and Personal Development, pupils are encouraged to do "role play" exercises on topics requiring greater emotional maturity and delicacy than many of them possess. This is notably the case in lessons on sexual behaviour and sexually transmitted diseases, as a 1988 report on management of this subject around Australia made clear. (21)
The teaching of Reading is a particular problem, both because there has been an unbalanced focus on acquiring technical reading skills at the expense of a broader cultural literacy, and because the unsatisfactory whole-word "process" approach recommended by ELIC -- the Australian basic literacy curriculum for the primary school -- is often relied on at the expense of a sounder phonics-centred one. Although expert research has shown that common classroom activities basic to the whole-word approach, such as guessing unknown words from their context, fail to give children the essential grounding in phonics basic to all alphabet-based languages, Australian teachers are still using it -- some, exclusively. In effect, children taught this way are learning to read English as if it were Chinese; and one out of three is managing badly. (22)
What has happened, in this key section of the curriculum and in others, is that "doing" things, regardless of their outcome, has become an end in itself. Teachers are trained to believe that so long as children go through the broad motions of learning -- by, for example, "reading" the word "horse" instead of "pony" -- precision is irrelevant. (23) Pupils, similarly, are led to think that near enough is good enough, that anything in the remote vicinity of a right answer will do, and that they do not need to possess specific information so long as they know how to look for it and where it is likely to be found.
In the name of catch cries like "self-discovery", children are asked to complete broad "projects" requiring no teacher guidance: e.g., "Write a report on Indonesia or another Asian country" or "Organise a poetry anthology on pollution." Whether there is material available on the assigned subject (e.g., poems on pollution), whether the information sought has a particular cultural or historical context which the child needs to be given, whether the topic is suitable for the assigned age group, or whether a child knows anything about the terrain to be explored, is considered immaterial. What matters is getting children "involved" in "researching" -- with or without a compass.
The emphasis on student research in the new Victorian Certificate of Education is indicative of this trend. As a consequence of VCE requirements, the State Library of Victoria has experienced a dramatic increase in the demand on its resources and the requests made of its staff. According to Library personnel, students regularly arrive there without being prepared for research work, and with ill-defined or unspecified topics upon which they expect librarians to provide fundamental guidance. A typical request is, "Give me everything you have on conservation."
Superficially, perhaps, a classroom emphasis on "process" may appear attractively practical; but in reality it omits far more than it accomplishes. Instead of generating a disciplined and useful interest in the world's workings, activity severed from purposeful, clearly defined objectives results in intellectual and imaginative slackness, boredom, and vacancy. Genuine discovery does not take place in a vacuum. In order to "do" anything useful in the classroom, children need to be given a firm grounding in the content of subjects whose parameters are well understood.
RECOMMENDATIONS PROCESS AND CONTENT In the teaching of Writing, Reading, Mathematics, Foreign Languages, Social Studies, or any other key learning area, "process" must not be divorced from "content". Valuable classroom activity depends upon a firm knowledge base anchored in definable, and defined, skills. "Doing", without the burden of having to know anything in particular, makes a mockery of teaching and learning. |
THE TYRANNY OF RELEVANCE
In the absence of a cogent philosophical basis for curriculum design, schools across the country have been concentrating on the here and now. "Relevance", defined in terms of immediate appeal, has assumed incontestable status. Whatever is popular with children, relatively easy to master, and of interest to people right now, is awarded prime classroom time.
The progressive idea, originally propounded by John Dewey, that good teachers start "where pupils are" has been interpreted as an injunction to remain indefinitely in the present. Dewey, who believed firmly that "the achievements of the past provide the only means at our command for understanding the present," (24) would have been horrified by this, and by the consequent dominance of popular culture in school Humanities programs.
Supposedly, the pace of change in the modern world has rendered the wisdom of the past as obsolete as the horse and buggy. The proponents of "relevance" argue that students do not need to know about antiquity or the French and Industrial Revolutions to cope with modernity; they need "life skills", values "clarification" exercises provided by behavioural psychologists, and Media Studies work which incorporates regular television watching and music chart analysis.
In fact, it is the very pace of change which renders obsolete the pursuit of relevance, defined in this narrowly parochial way by its contemporary advocates. To study only the present is to be unable to think beyond current orthodoxies. Relevance can be a prison. If, as distinguished modern philosophers believe, the object of all schooling is the acquisition of knowledge -- i.e. key information, understanding, and wisdom (25) -- then it should be obvious that forms of awareness developed over the centuries matter very much.
The study of the past opens students' minds to the diverse experiences and perspectives of our ancestors. It cultivates minds which can step back from contemporary fashion and move forward, standing on the shoulders of their predecessors. Far from being remote from students' everyday lives, as is often alleged, the past is uncomfortably close to them -- as teachers who have successfully completed work with young people on Thucydides and Gibbon, Bunyan and Melville, will testify.
Fashions come and go. But the great books which have lasted, and which reward re-reading, are concerned with permanent values, eternal questions faced by all people everywhere: war and peace, identity and allegiance, authority and liberty, poverty and affluence, beauty and truth, good and evil. A knowledge of how people in the past grappled with these large issues illuminates our own situation and provides us with a sense of continuity crucial to our capacity to face the future with confidence.
Euripides wrote Iphigenia at Aulis 2,000 years ago. Yet the dilemma confronted by his hero, Agamemnon -- whether to sacrifice his daughter in order to bring favourable winds for his ships and end almost a decade of war and suffering -- remains compelling to modern audiences. The conflict it poses between the obligations of public leadership and the demands of conscience in private life is still very much with us.
One of the troubling by-products of the fashion for relevance is that the study of entire works or extracts from the works of the wisest writers, dating from Ancient Greece and Rome, has almost vanished from our schools. And because we live in a secular age, spiritual values which, for centuries, were deemed essential to the well-being of humanity, are absent from the consciousness of the young. Despite the emphasis in State Education Ministry frames on "social justice", pupils are no longer taught why justice has been called the most important of the natural virtues by our greatest moral philosophers. (26)
The eminent modern American writer Flannery O'Connor once said that all of us in the West are bound to the Judaeo-Christian tradition "by ties which may often be invisible but which are there nevertheless." This tradition, she continued, "has formed the shape of our secularism, it has formed even the shape of modern atheism." (27) Yet not quite 50 years since her remark was made, few young Australians could even guess what she was talking about.
There is no good reason for students to find material with real intellectual substance "heavy", or to conclude that history and literature, science and religion, are, of necessity, boring. The traditional disciplines and the best material comprising them are dry and lifeless only in the hands of inadequate teachers. Skilled practitioners illuminate their richness and make pupils aware of how much can be gained from serious immersion in them. What is tedious to the point of asphyxiation -- as young Australians whose imagination and curiosity have been killed at school will freely acknowledge -- is an unremitting focus on the mundane, the contemporary, and the familiar.
THE NEGLECT OF THE PAST: SOME EXAMPLES
Social Studies
A bias in favour of the present is obvious in Social Studies, which has come to focus less and less on Geography and History -- and, in particular, the origins of democracy and of the basic human rights taken for granted in Australia -- and more and more on Sociology. (28) In many schools pupils don't encounter European or world history unless they happen to study revolutions in a Year 11-12 elective; hence they have no means of understanding the roots of major conflicts or achievements in the modern world.
In particular favour in both primary and secondary Social Studies programs are topical issues like multiculturalism, which are approached by focusing on social considerations of contemporary and immediate interest. Although much attention is paid to such subjects as the distinctive food, clothing, and leisure activities of recent Australian migrants, relatively little time is given to their social and political histories. Common causes of emigration, such as centuries-old civil wars, gross poverty, or tyranny, are not examined in depth -- if at all. Broad reading programs including literature set in the countries from which most of Australia's immigrants have come, do not exist. (29) And study of the geographical regions which have given Australia so many new residents is, at best, fragmented.
At the secondary level, when students are ready for solid immersion in worlds outside their own, time is wasted on contemporary issues so slight as to barely require teaching, or so complex that they cannot be taught well by people with patchy backgrounds in History-Geography-Economics. Units on the family are assigned to teachers with Commerce degrees. Graduates with majors in Ancient or European History are expected to cover the plight of Aborigines since 1788. Geography teachers without any university work in science are asked to be competent on the ozone layer and the greenhouse effect.
The new Australian Studies course in Victoria, until recently compulsory for all Year 11 students, dramatises the problems generated by a preoccupation with the here and now, and a shallow understanding of the purposes of formal study. Despite some references to history, its focus is largely on the present. An option on the rock music industry in the Work in Australian Society segment of the course recommends the study of television music programs, tapes, CDs, music magazines, and an Encyclopedia of Rock and Pop. Other course segments concentrate on current political platforms: gender, ethnicity and class, or the competing claims of -- for instance -- the mining industry, environmentalists, unionists, farmers, and small business. Suggested study materials are overwhelmingly contemporary, and many of them rely heavily on the media for inspiration. (30)
In sum: the solid knowledge base, especially in History, which high school graduates could once have been assumed to possess, and which contributes to a fundamental understanding of Australian customs and institutions, is being thoroughly eroded. In the name of relevance, thinly disguised monuments to Sloth are being erected.
Literature Programs
In lower secondary English programs, there is a similar neglect of the broad contexts governing the structure of solid programs of study. Pupils are introduced to an overwhelming number of contemporary books and a dearth of earlier material. Insubstantial but popular literature regularly finds its way into classrooms and libraries, and into some guides for teenage readers published by State Education Ministries (e.g. in South Australia). Particularly neglected is first-rate non-fiction: memoirs, letters, essays and reflections, biography, autobiography. Often the related questions, "Is this book suitable for close study?" and "What will pupils learn from reading it?" are not asked.
In the senior years of English, only one State -- New South Wales -- requires pre-20th century prose, poetry and drama. Around the country, students leave school without experiencing much of the great literature of the world written before 1900. Although there exists plenty of good modern literature, suitable for classroom use, there is no justification for designing English programs which concentrate on it at the expense of a more historically balanced selection. Even less is there justification for including as much inferior 20th-century literature as is currently prescribed. (31)
Because of the relative neglect of Foreign Languages in primary and secondary programs, many pupils never acquire enough proficiency to read the most rewarding literature available in French or German, Russian or Japanese. This is a great pity, not simply because the study of foreign literature in the original teaches students so much about the reaches of language, but because it enhances their understanding of other cultures in a unique way. If intensive language work were re-introduced in schools, the concept of multiculturalism could acquire a new dimension.
Only 40 years ago, Victorian school children in Grades 1 to 8 were using Readers which introduced them to Homer, Shakespeare, Milton, Bunyan, Voltaire, Coleridge, Dickens, and many more great writers from around the world. (32) Now, countless numbers of pupils there and in other States never encounter anyone who wrote in the first part of this century, let alone earlier centuries. Many do not know why Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden. Even if State Ministries do something, soon, to rectify such extraordinary irresponsibility, its ramifications are likely to be felt for generations.
Music and Art
In other areas of the Humanities -- the study of music, for example -- a similarly unbalanced emphasis on current objects of interest is present. If music is taught to more than a small minority of pupils in secondary schools, present rock hits, popular songs from recent musicals or movies, and earlier forms of rock are classroom staples. An education kit used in Victorian schools, Roll Over, Beethoven, illustrates the point. Many children never study classical music or music theory during the whole of their schooling; and those who do, even in some of the better non-government schools, are rarely given instruction with a coherent historical focus. Most would not be able to distinguish a Gregorian chant from a Bach fugue or a Bartók quartet.
There is a similar problem with Art. Except in the senior years of school, when Art History is required of those who do Art as an elective, pupils are not systematically instructed in the largest movements in painting, sculpture, or architecture. Even terms coined in this century, such as "abstract expressionism" or "soft sculpture", mean as little to the usual Australian child as Brancusi or Le Corbusier; and most never see slides or coloured photographs of earlier art -- medieval manuscripts, the statues of Praxiteles or Donatello, the etchings of Dürer, the portraits of Rembrandt -- let alone exhibits in the galleries of our major cities.
Yet familiarity with the great achievements, early and late, of civilised people is fundamental to the serious study of "multiculturalism". How, in the name of relevance, can we continue to allow countless young Australians to finish school without knowing anything about the finest imaginative accomplishments of their forbears?
RECOMMENDATIONS RELEVANCE Mistaken views about the contemporary nature of "relevance" must be overturned so that pupils become more familiar with a wide range of human achievement in the broad world of culture spanning the globe and the centuries. |
THE POLITICISATION OF SCHOOL COURSES
There is a fundamental difference between teaching children about political institutions and processes and adopting a politicised curriculum. In Australia, we neglect the study of political structures (civics). Perhaps for this reason, many of our courses and teaching materials, especially in the Humanities, have inappropriate political emphases and aims.
The Hobart Declaration on Schooling released in April 1989 by the State, Territory, and Commonwealth Ministers of Education stated that students should "participate as active and informed citizens in our democratic Australian society." Similar documents produced by individual States over a long period have contained the identical sentiment.
Since 1989, two reports from the Senate Standing Committee on Employment, Education and Training, Education for Active Citizenship and Active Citizenship Revisited, have expressed concern about students who are ignorant of political processes in their own society. Indeed, the Committee has said that our pupils have a more than even chance of completing their secondary education without taking a single course which prepares them for active citizenship. Although its second report notes that curriculum frameworks in various States are paying greater attention to citizenship, doubts are expressed about whether policies enunciated in documents are finding practical expression in schools.
THE IMPORTANCE OF CIVICS
It is worth emphasising that the school which functions well usually contributes, by this fact alone, to citizenship education. Well-run schools contain well-behaved children who recognise the need to obey rules designed for their protection. Nevertheless, to ensure that all pupils are consciously aware of the principles which underlie the orderly operations of institutions, formal instruction in civics should be a required component of Social Studies courses.
In addition to giving children a sense of their location in the world and in time, the study of civics has a more specific role in imparting an understanding of such basic matters as:
- the events, processes and people central to the foundation and development of democracies;
- the fundamental differences between democracy and tyranny;
- the origin and meaning of key concepts like "basic human rights" and "the rule of law";
- the role of the Constitution and Parliament in Australia; and
- the importance of checks and balances in protecting liberty and justice.
Through the study of civics, children come to realise that the rights which they take largely for granted are underpinned by a saga of struggles and sacrifice, and that in the context of world struggles, freedom is a rare and valuable commodity. Because Australian well-being has depended on political and legal institutions with British roots, it is essential for Australian children to be schooled in the pertinent branches of British civic history. The decline of British History in schools noted in a survey, (33) and the decline also of those branches of European History which are directly concerned with the preservation of fundamental human rights, is disturbing.
Democracy and universal education evolved together; hence if education fails, democracy is likely also to fail. When neglect of the systematic study of civic virtue is complemented by an increase in the politicised content of instructional material widely used in schools, there is genuine cause for alarm. Democratic societies are far from perfect; but they are also fragile, and their survival depends on popular belief in their legitimacy. Curriculum designers need to exercise care in criticising the operations of democracies -- which means that the practices which protect freedom, equality, justice, and the common good must be scrutinised as fully and carefully as those which undermine them.
One of the more troubling features of Social Studies as a school subject is its heavy concentration on the weaknesses of Australia and other democratic countries. A recommended text for Australian Studies, A People's History of Australia Since 1788 (four volumes), presents the history of this country since European settlement as a saga of exploitation, social injustice, and oppression. (34) A publication of the Victorian Commercial Teachers' Association, Workers of Australian Society, takes as its major themes the inevitability of class conflict and the exploitation of the working class. (35) In New Wave Geography, pupils are shown a full-page picture of a mushroom-shaped cloud with the words "Nuke Off" printed over it so that they understand the contribution of our uranium industry to the arms race.
In books like these, which are used around the country for work in History, Commerce, Economics, and Geography, the theme of impending disaster is stressed. There is no apparent recognition that evaluating a society against unattainable standards of perfection, and detailing its weaknesses at enormous length without presenting counter-arguments, is harmful. Children need encouragement so that they believe in themselves and in the future, and they need to be thoroughly familiar with the forces which promote civic health.
MAJOR WEAKNESSES IN SOCIAL STUDIES PROGRAMS
Texts which focus on the imperfections of democratic countries like Australia, and their failure to solve social and political dilemmas not confined to their shores -- and there are many such texts now in use -- create a false impression about these countries and the world. Their oversimplified concentration on political and social oppression (e.g. the suffering -- especially the present suffering -- of Aborigines, females, and migrants), or on unresolved cultural problems in the world (e.g. environmental decay, nuclear weapons), gives young people the impression that nothing is right anywhere. And because their conceptual base is so narrow, they bore good students half to death.
Even though the discussion of major 20th-century political and social problems has an obvious place in Social Studies classrooms, a programmatic emphasis upon them -- and, especially, upon certain ones to the exclusion of others -- is singularly inappropriate. As well as doing sociology itself an injustice, this restrictive focus on politically fashionable societal "issues" prevents pupils from being introduced to subject matter crucial to their proper functioning as citizens. Clearly, an acquaintance with the nature and origins of civic virtue is as important to the young as a consciousness of social and political wrongs; but where can they obtain it, if all they ever read or hear about in Social Studies are unresolved contemporary societal dilemmas.
The ideas which fire people working in branches of the Social Sciences barely represented in Social Studies programs -- moral philosophy, religion, ancient European and Asian history, cultural anthropology -- never reach most Australian youngsters. Regularly our pupils are bombarded with facts about people who exploit the earth and everything on it; but about such fascinating and influential ideas as the golden mean, ideal forms, philosopher kings, noble savages, the cardinal virtues, the active and contemplative approaches to life, the greatest good for the greatest number, or the categorical imperative, they are allowed to remain totally in the dark. Views about the ordering of society which have affected human conduct for centuries are for most of our children equivalent to Swahili.
Not only does a rigidly utilitarian focus on sociological "issues" distort human history by giving Australian children the idea that the problems preoccupying one group of social scientists are the only ones which merit considered attention in Social Studies; but it encourages these problems to be presented in loaded terms. In topic areas which treat the effects of personal conduct on society, and which are now widely discussed in Social Studies classes -- namely, race, ethnicity, sex and gender, and the family -- there are overwhelming biases in texts and support materials. Scholars on the Left and the Right, with increasing dismay, have been pointing them out. (36) On topics concerned with dangers to the earth -- notably, war, economic collapse, and environmental decay -- textual bias is equally great.
An Example of Social Studies Bias: Environmental Studies
Of the disturbing examples of bias currently found in Social Studies courses, perhaps the most common are in units on the environment. Like studies completed in Women's or Peace Studies, the work commonly undertaken in Environmental Studies has built-in political aims. Its primary object is not the discovery of truth, but the implementation of an ideology. This is particularly disturbing because highly complex problems regularly face scientists, economists, and industrialists responsible for environmental protection; and many of these problems are being solved in fascinating ways.
At the moment the CSIRO has a program on water conservation designed to help our rural and urban sectors by getting rid of industrial impurities, salt, and colloids in re-usable water. A classroom focus on the technical knowledge required to make this program work would interest primary, as well as secondary, children. (37) Basic scientific information about particular geographical regions with water problems -- for example, the Mallee -- could be combined with other pertinent information about the area's economy at levels appropriate for individual age groups. But this would require a sizeable rethinking effort from our curriculum designers.
A major difficulty in Australian schools at present, discussed in "The Greening of Our Schools", (38) is that teachers who assign work on the environment rely insufficiently on books with a sound scientific base, and much too heavily on environmental lobby groups and politically-biased texts as sources of information. One of the most popular, Battle for the Earth: Today's Key Environmental Issues, endorses the absurd claim that the development of the market system "has been the main cause in [sic] the increase in the incidence and seriousness of famines throughout history." A second, The Gaia Atlas of Planet Management, praises the agricultural model developed by Communist China. A third, Blueprint for a Green Planet, announces that "the best way that individuals can help to influence national policies is by swelling the membership (and funds) of environmental pressure groups."
In search of converts, materials of this kind are thin on fact and strong on emotive, alarmist statements designed to shock: e.g. "The ultimate horror of nuclear war is becoming more probable every day" or "How many readers of this book believe they will die peacefully in their beds?" or "Our immediate task is to do everything we can to bring our present life-destroying culture to a halt. Time is running out dreadfully fast." Instead of concentrating on scientific, economic, and historical understanding of environmental management, such books encourage students to embrace platitudes, slogans, and benevolent hopes for a better world. The disciplined methods of analysis fundamental to the major disciplines have no place in their programs for change.
RELATED WEAKNESSES IN ENGLISH PROGRAMS
In English, an emphasis on gloom and doom is as common as it is in Social Studies. Political bias is expressed through an overwhelming preference, at the secondary level, for written material concerned with social and psychological "problems" -- especially, personal dilemmas approached from a secular vantage point. Such topical issues as family break-up, the abuse of authority, corruption in high places, institutional dry rot, adult neglect of the young, lawlessness, civil strife, greed, and wanton destruction of the environment are often pursued through the study of literature of extremely dubious quality.
In both government and non-government schools, books whose vision of life is cynical, joyless, and nihilistic are accorded a respect which should be reserved for works of social criticism with a balanced view of human possibility. In many English common rooms, staff critical of mediocre literature which treats serious subjects from a "politically correct" vantage point are often ignored or scorned. On State syllabus committees, too, teachers unhappy with inferior material and eager to introduce pupils to a broad range of imaginative works find themselves dismissed as reactionaries. In many States, no effective checks exist to prevent narrow, sectarian interests from dominating book selection.
A 1989 analysis of all the HSC literature texts assigned at the time in Australia found that book after mediocre book dealt with depressing subjects. (39) That situation still prevails. Crude, unremitting exposés of moral turpitude, such as After the First Death, Whose Life is it Anyway?, and the television script of Scales of Justice, continue to be widely recommended. Plays and novels whose approach to existence is bleak, and therefore seriously open to question as a staple young adult diet, abound.
Although of course excellent literature is read everywhere in Australia, material which plays upon youthful fears and generates anxiety, even shock, enjoys a prominence in schools which it deserves neither on literary nor on any other grounds. Children see life in relatively simple terms. Adolescents are prone to allow their passions to blind them to the complexities and ambiguities of the world. The aim of literary study is not to extinguish youthful idealism, but to ensure that it is tempered by realism. Habitual exposure to visions of life anchored in a balanced awareness of human strength and imperfection ought to be a major feature of school literature programs.
RECOMMENDATIONS DEPOLITICISING THE CURRICULUM Civic education should be a significant component of the Social Studies curriculum, and of the wider school policy. Pupils should be given a sound understanding of the origins and nature of democratic institutions; the differences between democracy and tyranny; and the means of protecting basic human rights. Widespread political bias in every aspect of the Social Studies program, particularly forms of bias which promote an unbalanced concentration on unresolved contemporary social and political problems and a neglect of the historical and modern dimensions of civic virtue, should be eradicated. Reform in this area can best be accomplished if curriculum review structures of the kind recently set up in New South Wales are more widely instituted, and if professional bodies of educators working in schools and universities -- for example, the Australian College of Education -- regularly undertake a systematic review of texts widely used. |
ENDNOTES
1. In "Solving the Doctor's Dilemma", New Scientist, 11 January 1992, one of the more interesting facts presented is that the 11 people who served on a National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioural Research in the US in the mid-1970s reached consensus regularly on ethical issues raised by particular cases. They disagreed when they had to give reasons for their decisions.
2. The recently revised brochure, The Values We Teach, released by the NSW Department of School Education in 1991, expresses in a particularly lucid way views about basic principles which all the States share.
3. At present, secondary schools in Tasmania normally teach eight priority core subjects even though they are not required. The only government requirements for Years 7-10 are in Health and Handwriting.
4. Curriculum Provision, Victorian State Board of Education, 1991.
5. Among the more illuminating curriculum frames is the California Social Studies document designed by a team of educators headed by Professors Diane Ravitch of Columbia University and Charlotte Crabtree of UCLA. Also of considerable interest are the National Curriculum documents still under discussion in Britain. Although some of their features are controversial, they have in common a very precise discussion of content to be covered and attainment levels (targets) to be achieved at key ages and developmental stages; and they have been developed by groups of teachers and academics from around the UK working together.
6. For fuller details on language programs in Australian schools, see Education Monitor, p. 13, Winter 1991.
7. This Board is an independent statutory authority which is not responsible to the Department of School Education.
8. For a more detailed discussion of the Board's curriculum work, see the Annual Report of the New South Wales Board of Studies, submitted to the Ministry by its President, John Lambert, for the year ending on 30 June 1991.
9. The draft document, A National Statement on English for Australian Schools, July 1991, which is dangerously mechanistic, ill-informed, and rigid in conception, dramatises this difficulty nicely.
10. On the shallowness of some of our syllabus guides, see Susan Moore, English in Australia: Content vs Process, Education Study Paper No. 22, Autumn 1991.
11. E.D. Hirsch Jr., Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know, Vintage Books, 1988.
12. There are States that are currently developing reading lists, but to our knowledge only New South Wales's is currently available.
13. To help with the preparation of annotated book lists, the expertise of existing Education Department groups, such as the team responsible for producing The School Magazine in New South Wales, could be enlisted. A recently published guide to good novels for children is Susan Moore's What Should My Child Read?, Albatross/Lion, 1992.
14. See especially Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, Penguin, 1985.
15. One such document in Australia is the report on environmental education in primary and secondary schools, "The Greening of Our Schools", Review, Summer 1991, which found that in lessons on the environment, very little attention was being paid to the advantages of technological progress (e.g. cleaner, more efficient machinery). The same report found that the most widely used books on environmental education in secondary schools have an antipathetic attitude towards technology.
16. See, for example, Professor John Eggleston's article on this subject in The Times Educational Supplement, 22 November 1991.
17. For more detailed information on syllabuses, and language syllabuses in particular, see Moore, English in Australia: Process vs Content, op. cit.
18. On literacy studies undertaken in WA, SA, and NSW, see Susan Moore, Teacher Training: Entrance Requirements, IPA Education Study Paper 21, September 1990.
19. See Sir John Kingman's Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Teaching of English Language, Her Majesty's Stationery Office, March 1988, p. 33 especially. One important implication of Kingman's remarks about a shared vocabulary is that examination questions set for pupils in, for example, Years 10 and 12 should avoid jargon and rely on clear, straightforward prose.
20. Two nationally prominent experts on the teaching of writing in the US, Ellen Kolba and Sheila Crowell, report similar problems in the "drafting" stage of process writing in American schools. Their books on the teaching of writing, Practicing the Writing Process, Books 1-3, and especially Book 1, are very helpful on how to improve inadequate drafts.
21. See Susan Moore, Sex Education as a Health Hazard, Education Study Paper No. 2, 1988
22. On the dangerous effects of a process-centred, "whole word" approach to reading, three recent Australian articles are especially useful. The first two are by Bob Charles: "Madness in the Method" in Education Monitor, Spring 1991, and "Literacy in the 90s" in SCORE, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1991. On this key matter, Charles refers to essential overseas research in the UK and North America, including, respectively, Martin Turner's and Jeanne Chall's (starting with Learning to Read: The Great Debate, 1967). The third article, by Chris Nugent, "Planned Illiteracy", SCORE, Vol. 1, No. 3, 1991, discusses the long and painful history of the whole-word, process approach to reading propounded by ELIC, and the recent national testing program on Reading in the UK, which has demonstrated the dangers of the whole-word approach. A fourth article, soon to be published in SCORE by Tasmanian optometrist Dr Byron Harrison, discusses Harrison's long program of research with children whose reading has not been satisfactory. It goes even further than Charles and Nugent in exposing the inadequacy of whole-word teaching methods, and describes in some detail methods of diagnosing decoding problems in adequate readers. The one out of three figure (i.e. children having trouble) is Dr Harrison's.
23. Proponents of the whole-word approach to reading argue that children who read "horse" instead of "pony" have grasped the author's meaning, and "reading for meaning" is more important than phonic accuracy. This argument is dangerous because of the looseness of perception it encourages.
24. For a full discussion of Dewey's views about the importance of the past to the present, see his Experience and Education. This book is a short and invaluable introduction to his thought, and a major corrective to current Progressive thinking on "relevance".
25. On this subject, Mortimer Adler's A Guidebook to Learning For the Lifelong Pursuit of Wisdom, Macmillan, 1986, is instructive.
26. On the importance of teaching children about key personal and civic virtues such as justice, which are fundamental to the Judaeo-Christian and other moral traditions, see further Susan Moore. "Justice For All", Education Monitor, Autumn 1992.
27. See The Habit of Being, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1979, p. 255.
28. Even geography texts now offer a sociological approach to their subject. The popular New Wave Geography, published by Jacaranda for the Geography Teachers' Association of Victoria, exemplifies this trend. For a critical review of this book see Graham Miller, "New Wave Dumps Traditional Geography", Review, March-May 1989.
29. On ways of organising wide reading programs with a multicultural focus, see Susan Moore, "Multiculturalism from Another Angle," Education Monitor, Winter 1991.
30. See Ken Baker, "VCE Australian Studies: the Illusion of Relevance", Education Monitor, Autumn 1990.
31. For a more detailed analysis of inferior modern literature prescribed for Year 11-12 students throughout Australia, see Susan Moore, HSC Literature Texts in Australia, Education Study Paper No. 10.
32. See further, RJ. Stove, "The Victorian Readers", Education Monitor, Autumn 1992. The multicultural nature of this enterprise is clear from Stove's remarks on the range of material regularly read.
33. "The End of British History?", Review, Winter 1990.
34. For a critique of the approach to Australian History represented by A People's History of Australia Since 1788, see the contributions by John Hirst, Tim Duncan and Ken Baker, Review, December-February 1988/89.
35. This text is reviewed by Ken Baker in Education Monitor, Spring 1990.
36. See, for example, the lengthy article on Political Correctness in Network News & Views, August 1991, or Dinesh D'Souza's book-length discussion, Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus, Macmillan, 1991.
37. We are indebted for this information about the CSIRO's program on water conservation to Mr Mitch O'Toole, the Science co-ordinator of St Clare's College, Waverley, NSW, and the author of numerous school texts on science.
38. Op. cit.
39. HSC Literature Texts in Australia, op. cit.
