Reforms in Schooling: Problems and Challenges
Srinivasiah Muralidhar
Give me the school where discipline, regimentation and good
manners are not everything. We would rather have a school where
we can talk on equal terms with our teachers on sex, morals,
ethics, royalty, religion, etc. We want a school where teaching will
be equated with a perpetual quest for truth, beauty, integrity. A
school where personality and brain-building come first and
diplomas or certificates last. After all, a diploma or degree is not
the perfect vaccine against stupidity.
(Cosette, aged 17)
A School where the teacher is regarded as a friend and yet
respected;
Where the barrier of the desk is overcome,
And learning is a series of discussions and experiments;
Where the formidable word 'lesson' is incomprehensible,
For there are no lessons as such,
And yet we learn more willingly than before.
(Susy, aged 17)
Although hundreds of books are written about education and schooling
every year, very few deal with the views of the student, the client of the
school. To redress this imbalance, The Observer newspaper in Britain
organised a competition for secondary school students in December 1967,
and invited them to write essays on 'The school that I'd like'. A selection
of delightful entries including those of Cosette and Susan above are
recorded by Blishen (1969). Reading the entries is a salutary and sobering
experience - one is struck by the concern, passion, intelligence, originality
and intensity behind the students' pleas for reforms in schooling. It would
be interesting to see what our own students have to say about schooling in
the South Pacific.
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The early 1970s also saw the emergence of a number of publications (see
for example: Buckman, 1973; Holt, 1973; Illich, 1973; Reimer, 1971)
which were highly critical of formal education which emphasised routine,
privilege and competition. Although these critics highlighted the harmful
effects of formal education on children, they did not come up with viable
alternatives to the way education is provided through schools in most
countries. Some of the alternatives suggested by the deschoolers, although
sound, are so drastic and revolutionary that they have failed to fit into the
mindframes of policy-makers and practitioners.
Given that there is much concern about the way education is being
delivered through schools (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988), and that schools are
here to stay for a long time to come, the best we can do is to see how we
can bring about improvements both at the system level and at the school
level so that our students and teachers will actually begin to enjoy their
work in schools.
There are a number of factors that affect the quality of education provided
in our schools, factors such as the quality of the curriculum, the availability
of books and other materials to support teaching and learning, the
knowledge and skills of teachers, the background of students, and the
availability of administrative and professional support for teachers.
Moreover, policy makers and curriculum writers cannot ignore the fact that
it is the teacher who occupies the central place in transmitting any given
curriculum, and as experience has shown us, there is no such thing as a
teacher-proof curriculum, no matter how well it is designed. One of the
criticisms levelled against the curriculum reform movements in science of
the late 1950s and 1960s, especially in the United States and Britain, is that'
they failed to take account of the realities of the classroom (Jackson, 1983).
Those who developed the curricula knew very little about science
classrooms, how teachers translated curricula into practice, and the factors
that influenced practice. Sharpes articulates the relationship between
teaching and curriculum rather nicely:
I define curriculum as the teaching act...[It] is not a plan but the
plan in action...[It] is not a body of knowledge, but someone
knowing what to teach...[It] is what the teacher does, and what the
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teacher knows, and who the teacher is...Instruction, how the teacher
teaches, is one side of the coin; curriculum, what the teacher
teaches, is the other....Curriculum is in the mind of the curriculum
transmitter, and can only be learned (in an interactive sense) from
the words and actions of such a mind. (Sharpes, 1988: 11-19)
It is therefore appropriate to begin by examining the role of the teacher in
terms of our expectations and in terms of the constraints under which
teachers operate, and then comment briefly on issues related to curriculum
deliberation, textbooks and examinations, and the role of the arts in the
curriculum.
The role of the teacher
We want teachers to pursue knowledge, truth and intellectual independence,
but education in most places is equated with little more than training young
people to regurgitate vast quantities of knowledge, much of which is
irrelevant to their lives.
We expect teachers to experiment, to be bold, and to take risks, but
teachers themselves are constrained by prescribed textbooks, rigid and
overloaded curricula, and examinations in whose design they play little
part. And yet, they are supposed to faithfully impose the curricula on
captive students.
We want students' autonomy to be respected when teachers themselves
hardly have the freedom to make decisions, and when autonomy, by and
large, is foreign to most educational institutions.
We would like to see teachers and students as partners in the learning
enterprise, but how can the roles be reversed in overcrowded and ill-
equipped classrooms which inhibit dialogue and where teachers are forced
to spend most of their time maintaining discipline and 'covering' the
syllabus.
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We bemoan the fact that teachers lack professional commitment, but we
fail to see that teaching is no longer seen as a noble and vital profession.
Teaching in many of our countries has degenerated into an undervalued and
underpaid avenue for white-collar jobs, offering very few incentives for
professional growth and development.
Curriculum deliberation and planning
In most developing countries, curriculum has not been seen as an act of
deliberation - it has, by and large, excluded teachers and parents from the
consultative process. Curriculum deliberation is a social dialogue - the
wider its reach, the stronger its grasp of the social contexts in which
education is to function. The only way to expand the reach of curriculum
deliberation is to include teachers and parents in it. Because we have a
narrow view of curriculum deliberation, the issues that affect our society
are not adequately reflected in school curricula. The knowledge imparted in
the classroom bears little relationship to the concerns that children and
members of our society might have. As Krishna Kumar (cited in Joseph,
1993) points out:
This kind of transcendental curriculum is not just wasteful, for it
does not use the opportunity the school provides for imparting
useful knowledge; it is destructive, too, for it promotes a kind of
schizophrenia. The educated man produced by a transcendental
curriculum sees and seeks to establish no relation between his
education and his personal life and conduct.
We must discard the notion that curriculum is a bag of facts and the view
that teaching is the successful delivery of known facts. Unless we accept
humanist concepts of curriculum and teaching, we will continue to be
burdened with impossibly large and irrelevant syllabi and thick textbooks.
We must recognise that curriculum planning involves a selection of
knowledge, and teaching involves the process of creating a classroom ethos
in which children want to pursue inquiry. Curriculum based on this view of
teaching can be prepared and implemented only when the teacher's right to
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participate in the organisation of knowledge and the student's right to
autonomy in learning are accepted.
The culture of textbooks and examinations
In many of our classrooms, the text book dominates the curriculum, and the
teacher's primary role is to familiarise students with its content to the point
where it can be easily memorised and regurgitated. The situation is in fact
more serious when we consider that for the majority of our students and
teachers, especially in senior science and mathematics, 'textbook' means
'Notes and Examples' - many of our students do not even read 'real'
textbooks.
The textbook culture is closely linked to the examination culture which, in
many of our countries, sets the agenda for education and determines what
happens in the classroom. The tragedy is that most of our time and energy
goes into preparing students as meticulously as possible for the examination
by confining teaching to the contents of the syllabus and past examination
papers.
Lopsided curricula
The curriculum in many of our schools is lopsided in that it has become
overly academic at the expense of social, moral, personal and aesthetic
values (Unesco, 1992). While education in the so-called academic subjects
may help us to compete more effectively in the job market, it does not feed
the human spirit, it does not make us whole as individuals. Access to the
wealth of our cultures and the cultivation of the sensibilities, human
imagination and judgment are not peripheral educational concerns. The arts
represent a form of thinking and a way of knowing and, as such, their
presence in our schools is as basic as anything can be. The Central
Advisory Council for Education in England, through the influential
Plowden Peport (1967) declared:
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Art is both a form of communication and a means of expression of
feeling which ought to permeate the whole curriculum and life of
the school. A society which neglects or despises it is dangerously
sick. It affects, or should affect, all aspects of our life from the
design of the commonplace articles of everyday life to the highest
forms of individual expression.
Moreover, a growing body of evidence from classrooms indicates that
strengths gained in the study of art carry over into other subject areas
(Williams, 1991). We therefore need to recognise the constructive role the
arts can play in the lives of children by integrating the arts into the school
curriculum and giving it the same status as other subjects. The arts
curriculum could include areas such as creative writing, painting, sculpture,
carving, weaving, pottery, dance, music and drama. Schools could choose
what areas they wish to offer depending on the local context and the
expertise available within the school and in the community. Education
rooted in arts and cultural studies will provide an anchor for our children to
lead satisfying lives in culturally rich societies such as ours.
Providing quality education
In the light of what has been said above, providing quality education for
our students will remain a chimera unless deliberate and genuine efforts are
made to remove some of the obstacles in the path of creative teaching -
obstacles such as overloaded and inflexible curricula, the culture of
textbooks and examinations, the neglect of the arts, high student-staff
ratios, the paucity of learning resources, the neglect of libraries and
inadequate in-service education and professional support for teachers.
It is futile to expect the brightest and the best to turn to teaching as long as
the profession remains undervalued in terms of salaries and status. We need
to put in motion mechanisms that not only attract but retain young men and
women in the teaching profession. Unless teachers are taken more seriously
by the people responsible for policy and planning, by school authorities, as
well as by students and parents, they are unlikely to take their own role as
educators seriously.
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Speaking about reforms in schooling, Tharp and Gallimore (1988) warn us
of the dangers of approaching reforms in a piecemeal fashion:
Teaching will not be reformed until schools are reformed. Schools
will not be reformed until it is understood that schools must be a
context for teaching, and that context must itself be a teaching
context. To demand that teachers truly teach in existing schools is
like demanding that a surgeon achieve asepsis under water in a
stagnant pond. (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988: 6)
We need to shift towards a system that would better meet the needs of our
society and of individuals within it as we move to the next century - a shift
that fosters closer relations between teachers and students and that gives
greater responsibility to students to manage their own learning.
Improvements evolve from the efforts of many, and for that, we need trials
in many schools in which teachers, students, parents and administrators
learn how to work in a new system and find out what is effective and what
is not. Useful trials can be undertaken on any scale, from whole systems to
single teachers. Some will require bold deviations from established forms
of organisation, others can be tried in present classrooms. The only
obstacles to trials are the assumptions that maintain the present system, and
the only way of discarding the assumptions is through trials. In this
connection it is appropriate to mention the initiative taken by the Arya
Pratinidhi Sabha of Fiji in organising a day-long seminar in October 1994
on the theme 'Enhancing of teaching and learning in our schools'.
Approximately 50 teachers from schools run by the Sabha in the
Suva/Nausori area participated in the seminar.
Conclusion
As we move towards the next century, it is important that we train our
children to be independent thinkers and encourage teachers and parents to
promote intellectual independence in children. Schooling has a vital role to
play in that teaching, a teaching ethos that is grounded in an understanding
of how children learn in a particular context. Successful school reform
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depends very much on knowing why we need to alter our ways, and that is
where research comes in. We need solid research to inform us which
experiments work best and under what conditions. It can be argued, with
good justification, that the quality of educational programmes will
determine our potential to shape the future to our benefit and our ability to
maintain some control of our own destiny. We must begin the process of
developing educational structures and programmes suitable for our time.
This is a challenge that must be addressed by all who are committed to
enhancing the quality of the education provided in our schools.
References
Blishen, E. (Ed.). (1969). The school that I'd like. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Buckman, P. (Ed.). (1973). Education without schools. London: Souvenir Press.
Holt, J. (1973). Freedom and beyond. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Illich, I.D. (1973). Deschooling society. Harmondsworth: Penguin Education.
Jackson, P.W. (1983). The reform of science education: A cautionary tale.
Daedalus, 112 (2): 143-166.
Joseph, A. (1993, September 5). Curricula for the classroom. Sunday Herald. : 1.
Plowden, B. et al. (1967). Children and Their Primary Schools: A report of the
Central Advisory Council for Education (England). London: Her Majesty's
Stationery Office.
Reimer, E. (1971). School is dead. Harmondsworth: Penguin Education.
Sharpes, D.K. (1988). Curriculum traditions and practices. London: Routledge.
Tharp, R.G. and Gallimore, R. (1988). Rousing minds to life. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Unesco. (1992). Education for affective development. Bangkok: Unesco Principal
Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific.
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Williams, H.M. (1991). The vital role of the arts in education: Expressing our
imagination and feelings. A speech delivered to the President's Committee on
the Arts and Humanities, Washington, D.C., October 3, 1991.
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