Education

  Star Education Fair

Sunday November 8, 2009

See beyond the obvious

By GANAKUMARAN SUBRAMANIAM

MALAYSIA is in the midst of making significant changes to its education curriculum. The current change being initiated has been necessitated by policy reversal and new promises.

However, every time such changes take place, Malaysian schools and teachers face great difficulty resolving huge contradictions between good educational principles and practices on the one hand, and pressures of accountability and school culture on the other.

The national education philosophy is faultless and the national curriculum is comprehensive. If there was a fault to the curriculum, it would be that it is over-comprehensive — delineating through too many subjects minute details of what is important and how these should be learnt.

These details are exemplified into more explicit codes in textbooks which seem to have chosen certain options and examples over others in directing what to learn and how to teach. These details are then taught and drilled in ways that emphasise that knowing these facts are all what education is about.

In many instances, teachers are left with little options to innovate content selection and methodologies, as they are constrained by the limitations of these prescriptions and expectations of completing the “syllabus” vis-à-vis the content in text and workbooks.

The national education philosophy boasts that education is aimed at producing learners who are holistically developed – intellectually, spiritually, physically, emotionally, etc. Ironically, all of these are to be learnt as book knowledge through explicit and prescriptive textbooks and workbooks - drilled, memorised and examined.

What choice does such curriculum implementation allow for content selection, approaches of delivery and learner-centredness?

Such limitations to scholastic education imprisons and constrains not just teachers and learners, but also parents who negate and neglect learner individuality and holistic human development.

This is a time when there is a growing consensus that education has to move beyond the traditional mastery of subject-centred scholastic knowledge, to include the development of individuals who are able to excel in a complex world that is constantly changing socially, culturally and economically.

At a time when learning and teaching is driven by expected outcomes that are beyond knowledge of facts, what are the expected outcomes within the curriculum that charts the direction of learners, responsibility of teachers and expectation of parents?

Unlike in the past, these outcomes cannot be based on the number of A’s or the amount of information memorised and regurgitated. Education has to retrain its focus on active and engaged learning for intellectual quality drawn out of the nurturing of self-responsibility.

Developing these genuine attitudes will generate learning and understanding embedded in individualised meaning-making, enabling learners to reapply acquired knowledge and skills in new and multiple situations.

When the curriculum is translated into practice and application, its content becomes overly subject-based and discrete.

This compartmentalisation of knowledge is unrealistic and creates learners who have pieces of information that they cannot connect to understand real life issues.

A greater integration of subject matter and discipline is required in the curriculum to ensure that learners connect learning to real life purposes, roles and the applications of knowledge. No real life phenomenon can be fully understood or explained through the knowledge of a single discipline.

Curriculum reforms often come with the reassurance that things are going to be better than before. Underlying this need for curriculum reform is that something may not have been done right before, or that requirements of education are different now, or that new knowledge and understanding of teaching and learning have been gleaned. Contrary to common understanding, the curriculum is not simply the creation of a new document, but more importantly the complete delivery of its full complement through practices and outcomes in schools.

The agents of this delivery are not just the teachers, but the school as a whole. Attempting to reform only the teachers will lead to failure and frustration.

This has been proven time and again in many of the previous attempts at reform and innovation. We have to realise that in changing the teachers’ mindsets and practices, these teachers have to operate within certain cultural, structural and accountability constraints that often remain largely untouched by curriculum changes. Taking Michel Foucault’s premise as a basis, we may understand that the real problem is not one of only changing the teachers’ “consciousness” or what’s in their heads; but how to change the political, economic, cultural and institutional regime of the school.

In other words, what aspects of the hidden curriculum impede and limit the introduction of curriculum reforms or transformation? This impeding curriculum may be driven by certain personal, cultural, religious, and/or political agenda.

Again, not acknowledging the existence of such hidden curricula will lead to the failure of reformation. A good starting point to ascertain this agenda would be to explore with sincerity what is currently shaping the students’ and teachers’ experiences of school, and determining the image of self, others, and the world.

The hidden curricula is often shaped by policies and practices that dictate students’ and teachers’ actions, behaviour, experience and engagements; imposing upon these limitations and restrictions on the one hand, and prescriptions on the other.

Educationists know of the factors that shape a hidden curriculum in schools. Though not all the content of this curriculum is negative, negative aspects of the hidden curriculum can inhibit the success of reforms. Hence there is a need to examine the role of the hidden curriculum and implement sound and equitable education policies and practices democratically and responsibly.

Curriculum reforms therefore need to be holistic and thorough. John Taylor Gatto warns that half-measures will only lead to confusion and produce learners and teachers focused only on formal grades rather than real learning.

Incomprehensive reforms produce learners who are indifferent and impassionate about learning, with emotional dependency on external and instrumental rewards, and intellectual dependency on prescribed learning and texts. There will emerge a serious lack of self-determination on the part of school administrators, teachers and learners, leading attempts at reforms to fail.

Sadly, Gatto’s depictions are all too familiar within our current education scenario.

Therefore, in our efforts to review and reshape education in Malaysia, let’s ensure that we look beyond the obvious.

● Ganakumaran Subramaniam is Melta president and Acting Director of Studies and Associate Professor at the School of Education, University of Nottingham, Malaysia. He can be reached at
Ganakumaran.Subra@nottingham.edu.my

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