An exceptionally well pitched and timely contribution to the curriculum debate is David Lambert's recent opinion piece in the TES entitled 'Crack curriculum's core and open a world of opportunity' (Lambert, 2010). With the ceaseless pendulum of educational policy apparently swinging back towards knowledge and away from the premium put on skills and pedagogy seen in recent times, now seems like a good time to put some thought into this matter and to think beyond the usual polarisations. Actually, it is essential that we do so, to counter the inevitable barrage of what Lambert accurately terms 'Gradgrind-sounding rhetoric about facts and old-fashioned subjects'.
Lambert argues that the past decade has seen the inexorable rise of a professional language of pedagogy. To my mind much of this language has become increasingly cumbersome and is often vacuous, with catchphrases such as 'learning to learn' being the order of the day. Because of this, many teachers have become disengaged from the curriculum, which has now been largely reduced to a 'vehicle' to 'deliver transferable skills'. Yet, as Lambert rightly points out, the curriculum is really more than this. The curriculum is all about the destination, or the aims, of an education and it is pedagogy that is perhaps better thought of as the vehicle. I certainly agree. We have all heard the old cliché that it is the journey and not the destination that matters yet clear headed thinking on this matter surely suggests that destination and journey are both of much import, even if that destination is not perfectly clear to us.
Crafting a curriculum involves making choices about the selection of knowledge that we are going to teach, and this selection, as Lambert points out, is always going to be influenced by our principles, values and our 'sense of educational purpose'. Although enlivening learning with relevant topics is an excellent idea, a curriculum totally fashioned according to the latest news items and contemporary themes is bound to be ultimately shallow and unsatisfying. Subject disciplines like geography are vital precisely because they offer a world of facts, ideas and experiences that take us beyond the everyday and familiar. As Lambert asserts, there is absolutely no doubt that starting with the world of the child's everyday experience is sound pedagogy. However, failing to move beyond that is a betrayal of education's promise. Again, it is to forget your destination through a preoccupation with the journey.
The 'move towards the unknown' that Lambert refers to here is particular pertinent for me and links up nicely with my previous posting on the question of education and technology. In that post I explored what Michael Bonnett (2002) had to say regarding 'education as a form of the poetic'. There we saw that genuine education may involve a listening to 'what calls to be thought'. This means an openness and receptiveness that goes way beyond the calculative, instrumental approach that both a single-minded focus on facts for the sake of facts on the one hand and generic skills on the other equally represent. Bonnett spoke of an 'an ever-evolving triadic interplay' that involves teacher, learner and subject matter. In this vision, the teacher lets the learner learn rather than attempting to impose learning upon them.
In the same way, both teacher and learner are engaged in letting that which calls to be learned show itself. This is an intent, rigorous, and by no means purely passive listening to what we may call, after Heidegger, the 'call of Being' or 'the song of the earth'. The geography curriculum is, I think, a particularly apposite place for this kind of teaching and learning to occur. Geography, as David Lambert reminds us, is all about trying 'to make sense of ourselves at home on planet Earth'. In this process of 'making sense' we are to a large extent venturing into the unknown. Of course, we know all kinds of facts and figures about the Earth and using these to incite curiosity amongst learners does no harm, but ultimately teachers and students alike are on a journey, and education is surely most at its most enjoyable when it is seen that way.
I fancy that his journey is somewhat like the ones taken by the early explorers of the Earth. That is, we are not completely without a destination in mind. We have an inkling of the direction in which we are headed and we are not totally 'lost at sea'. This would get us nowhere, and we would blunder forever onwards, with all the skills needed to sail the ship but with no guiding sense of purpose. However, our idea of our destination is necessarily patchy; its precise coves and peninsulas are hazy and as yet not fully revealed to us. It is this element of the unknown that pulls us and causes us to set sail in the first place. As I have said before, learning begins in wonder. Viewed like this, education is all about revealing and letting things come to light. It is an attentive, open-minded journey into what is part known, part unknown.
I should add, however, that to say that teacher and learner are on the journey together is certainly not to say that their roles are somehow equivalent or interchangeable. By virtue of the sheer fact that they have journeyed further and know the territory at least a little better, the teacher is charged with the praiseworthy task of guiding the learner, and this brings with it the need for serious, sometimes difficult, judgement. As Lambert rightly says, questions of knowledge and of curriculum are something that teachers should get involved with. Just as the learner’s role is not to passively absorb what is to be learnt, the teacher’s role is most decisively not to passively deliver it.
This is why any idea of education as simply an assimilation of prespecified facts or the acquisition of general skills is bound to be inadequate. It is time to bring to an end the persistent confusion and misplaced antagonism between knowledge and skills and to think hard about the heart of genuine education. Lambert's article is a commendable contribution to this task.
I should add, however, that to say that teacher and learner are on the journey together is certainly not to say that their roles are somehow equivalent or interchangeable. By virtue of the sheer fact that they have journeyed further and know the territory at least a little better, the teacher is charged with the praiseworthy task of guiding the learner, and this brings with it the need for serious, sometimes difficult, judgement. As Lambert rightly says, questions of knowledge and of curriculum are something that teachers should get involved with. Just as the learner’s role is not to passively absorb what is to be learnt, the teacher’s role is most decisively not to passively deliver it.
This is why any idea of education as simply an assimilation of prespecified facts or the acquisition of general skills is bound to be inadequate. It is time to bring to an end the persistent confusion and misplaced antagonism between knowledge and skills and to think hard about the heart of genuine education. Lambert's article is a commendable contribution to this task.
References
Lambert, D. (2010) 'Crack curriculum's core and open a world of opportunity', Times Educational Supplement, 27 August [Online]. Available at http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6055960. (Accessed: 14 September 2010)
Bonnett, M. (2002) 'Education as a Form of the Poetic', in Peters, M. (Ed) Heidegger, Education and Modernity. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers Inc.
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