The sa国际传媒 Education Ministry is moving in a good direction with a proposed redesign of the curriculum for kindergarten through Grade 9. Like all fields, education must adapt to expanding knowledge and changing conditions.
At the same time, change should not overshadow basic skills.
Education is about acquiring knowledge and skills, about deepening understanding and finding better ways of doing things. It would be tragically ironic if education were not subjected to the same scrutiny and examination as any other field.
Almost every shift in education philosophy brings cries of 鈥渂ack to the basics!鈥� Sometimes those cries have merit; other times, they鈥檙e based more on nostalgia than fact.
The Education Ministry has posted this on its website: 鈥淔eedback from teachers on sa国际传媒鈥檚 Education Plan has suggested that currently, sa国际传媒鈥檚 curriculum has too many prescribed learning outcomes and that reducing those outcomes will give teachers more time and flexibility to allow students to explore their interests and passions.鈥�
For some, that educator-jargon phrase, 鈥減rescribed learning outcomes,鈥� might set off alarm bells, signifying that achieving minimum standards in education will no longer be required, that the three Rs will be abandoned in the quest for broader thinking and more personalized learning, two of the stated goals of the redesign.
In times past, much of education was rote learning. A student was expected to memorize such things as multiplication tables, Latin declensions, historical facts and the Linnaean classification of living things. The student who committed those things to memory and could spew them out at exam time was the student who succeeded, at least in school.
Basic literacy and math skills are essential, but the 3Rs alone are no longer enough. The world is changing at a bewildering pace; it takes more than the traditional basics to keep up.
But we still need those basics. Innovation is not possible without a grounding in fundamental skills and principles. Picasso didn鈥檛 start out painting his cubist pictures 鈥� he first mastered the principles of colour, light and composition. A composer can鈥檛 create a concerto successfully without being proficient in basic music structure.
There is so much more to mathematics than adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing, but that鈥檚 where it starts. There is so much more to language than spelling and grammar, but without those standards, language deteriorates and communication suffers.
A phrase from the Education Ministry鈥檚 draft curriculum document says it well: 鈥淟iteracy and numeracy foundations are at the heart of a person鈥檚 ability to learn and succeed in school and beyond.鈥�
鈥淲hy do we need to learn this stuff?鈥� is a common complaint from some students during lessons on parts of speech or esoteric algebraic formulas. From the perspective of youth, they can鈥檛 always see the future relevance of the subject at hand. They need to learn that the big picture is not a 50-inch TV.
The curriculum redesign proposes to introduce relevance early 鈥� for instance, focusing on financial literacy in Grade 1 and applying math to real-life situations. In this age of easy credit, rampant spending and mounting debt, you can鈥檛 begin too soon.
The best education will happen not when students are spoon-fed the facts, but when they are hungry to know the 鈥渉ow鈥� and the 鈥渨hy,鈥� as well as the 鈥渨hat.鈥� But it might take some old-fashioned discipline (in the true sense of the word) and structure to get them to that point.
The curriculum redesign looks to the future and should not be held back by the past, but discipline and good rules will always be needed. The sky鈥檚 the limit, but first we must learn the science behind flight, and then master the skills needed to fly.
