Curriculum for the future: getting the balance right

Mr Walter J. Cole Mooloolaba, Queensland

What is school preparing our young people for? Most would undoubtedly argue that the important thing is a sound career.

So, what is important for a career?

Well, over the past few years, a great emphasis has been placed on literacy and numeracy, followed by computer skills. And yet the curriculum continues to be over-crowded with areas that are deemed important in the political agenda, such as the current argument about Australian history, as well as citizenship and civics, personal development, and so forth.

Most of us, who are in the same vintage as most politicians, know that we did not have such courses when we were at school as a compulsory part of the curriculum. In fact, for my Intermediate Certificate in NSW in 1952, I studied English, Maths 1, Maths 2, Combined Physics and Chemistry, French, Latin and German. Many would argue today that it was narrow and yet I believe I had a far better preparation for the world of work in terms of having a sound literacy, numeracy and basic science background, together with an understanding of how foreign languages work. My studies for my Leaving Certificate in 1964 were English, Maths 1, Maths 2, Physics, Chemistry and French. I finished university with an honours degree in metallurgy in 1968, at the age of 20.

In this day and age, while the curriculum is certainly more interesting and broad, as far as student learning activities are concerned, we have to ask whether we are providing students with the basic necessities for entering the workforce. We could also question students’ readiness for tertiary studies, when we hear complaints from university personnel about the poor preparation of students.

The real question we need to ask is whether we wasted the opportunity provided by the Windham scheme, in NSW, in 1962, when an extra year of high school (from five to 6 years) was introduced. Could it be said that we watered down most of the genuine core courses in order to introduce courses that would ‘diversify’ the curriculum, but with no real direction for education?

While I enjoyed teaching mathematics at all levels in secondary schools, I have to admit that the mathematics taught, even at an advanced level, did not come anywhere near the rigour of the mathematics I was were taught in my youth, in Mathematics 1 and 2. What was the difference? Well, clearly it was time! Mathematical rigour was obtained by splitting it from the first year of high school. The courses did not have more crammed into them but there was a far greater depth in the way in which issues were pursued and developed.

So where has our curriculum gone wrong? Well, I believe that courses have been watered down. More and more courses have been crammed into schools, especially those based on social issues or the ‘pet subjects’ of politicians. This has been to the detriment of the core purpose of schooling. Many of the courses have been designed to make up for the lack of responsibilities parents have taken in the social education of their children. The first major issue schools took from parents was sex education and that has become one of the backbones of personal development courses that now work all the way from the first years of schooling. We talk even now of adding driver education. Drug education is a continuing and growing responsibility of schools. One wonders at its effectiveness when one sees the huge resources poured into this area and the continued expansion and growth of illicit substance abuse by young people.

The reality is that time is continually being taken from the core and fundamental curriculum, to continue in the usually ineffective ways of providing social education. In fact, most social education needs to be dealt with at home, not at school. Worse still, as these programs fail, schools also get the blame for their failure, despite the fact that they have implemented in accordance with a syllabus designed by the government of the day!

The politicisation of education occurred in the time of Rodney Cavalier (Minister for Education, in the Unsworth Government, in NSW) and Terry Metherell (Minister for Education, in the Greiner Government, in NSW), when merit selection was brought into schools as a part of a major restructure of education. Since then, education has been regularly restructured at great expense. However, there has been very little change to the overall performance of students in the compulsory years.

Curriculum has been worked over and new syllabuses with greater rigour introduced but the resulting improvement in student outcomes has not eventuated. And what are the reasons for this ongoing failure? In my belief, there is far too much in an overcrowded curriculum to be able to provide the necessary time to skill students in the very areas that society continues to demand, that is, the ‘3Rs’ and work skills.

The introduction of Vocational Education and Training courses in secondary schools actually is the first dramatic change the makes schooling more appropriate for the vast majority of students. So much so that students, who have in the past dropped out because the workload was far too rigorous for their needs, are suddenly finding courses exciting and stimulating. In a VET course, they can actually demonstrate what they are learning, as a measure of their progress. A small high school in north western NSW is currently showing the possibilities that VET courses provide, through its belief that any vocation a student wishes to follow can be provided through VET. It has an extremely strong partnership with the regional TAFE organisation, based in Armidale and students are performing at extremely high levels. And why is this so? Because time is provided for the students to be able to study the courses that are appropriate to their work needs.

The most important skills students need from school are those that are fundamental to all people in society - the 3Rs. This seems to be a universal desire by all employers and, surprisingly, even all tertiary institutions! I say ‘surprisingly’ because a great deal of time is spent on communication skills in the compulsory years of secondary school - and yet students are not getting through (And I am not criticising here the teaching methods . . .  I more question the courses themselves, as I would for the similar deficiencies in numeracy, after the mathematics courses taught to all students.

Probably the most important skill we can teach all students is to be able to learn independently. Basic skills are always the same - they cannot change. Reading is reading and, in 30 years time, it will still be the same skill. The same is true for writing and basic number skills. However, most other current learned facts can be easily dated. To teach students a great lot of facts is quite useless. But to teach students how to learn means that they can update facts and skills as they change over time. The motor mechanic who was at the top of his class in 1970 would be useless now if he did not update his skills to include electronics in motors (unless he specialised in working on engines from that era). However, he would get very little work, given that today’s mechanic could easily function in that environment.

Unfortunately, we have a history of failure as far as curriculum is concerned. It is far too broad to allow the time to develop the basic skills that are expected to be held by all students by the time they leave school. It is time to depoliticise education and return it to the position it deserves in our society, one in which all can expect success in developing those basic skills that will help them reach fulfilment, as far as a successful career is concerned.