I actually agree with you on all points, but I think you are underestimating how overwhelming things can be for a teacher just beginning her career. Without any central curriculum a teacher has to inspect textbooks much more carefully in order to find a book that would suit her needs. It’s a lot of extra work.
This is a smaller problem in math and science teaching and a larger one at humanities and social sciences. This problem could be alleviated by having teacher education include classes where you get familiarised with different textbooks and different approaches to teaching your subject.
This problem could be alleviated by having teacher education include classes where you get familiarised with different textbooks and different approaches to teaching your subject.
Teaching a teacher about different approaches of teaching his subject seems fairly straightforward for teacher education for myself.
I once tried to learn something about reading by looking at what an academic journal has to say. It spoke about fancy terms like Heideggers notion of meaning. I’m well educated despite having spent a lot of time in school and do have an idea of what Heideggers notion of meaning happens to be. On the other hand it’s useless for a teacher who wants to teach his students to read.
Teachers education could simply switch to teach the actual practice of teaching instead of trying to teach fancy educational theories and the problem would be solved.
I think that getting rid of curriculum provides a lot more benefits in the humanities and social sciences than it does in mathematics.
To me it would make a lot of sense to teach students during humanities or social science classes nonviolent communication (NVC). It a fairly straightforward framework with decades of history. On the other hand I do know that your average high school teacher doesn’t have the skills for teaching it, so it’s impossible to just write it into a centralized curriculum.
Berlin has 12 districts. Each of those has a democratic representation. While my sister was in school there was a political change that lead to the voting age for that particular democratic representation be lowered from 18 to 16 years. There were a lot of people in her class that could vote because they were 16 but not 18.
A good political science teacher would have addressed that opportunity to actually teach how this kind democratic representation works. I use the term democratic representation because it’s not a parliament because it can’t make laws and I don’t know whether there a term in English that directly translates the German word. Her teacher didn’t because she was too busy teaching to the curriculum.
Most of the stuff she taught the student will probably be forgotten after 5 years. She missed a crucial chance of actually teaching students who were voting at the first time in their lifes how the institution for which they vote works and what it does.
Worse she had a fairly bad idea of what the political institutions in Berlin actually do. She knew how to teach the textbook or the curriculum but she failed at the crucial task of teaching her students of how politics works in reality. Even how it works on the basic level of what the formal responsibilities of the body for which they vote happens to be.
Teacher simply teaching to the curriculum is often like students guessing the teachers password. There no transfer of real knowledge.
I think that humanities teachers who just try to teach whatever the curriculum says instead of teaching what the think will be valuable knowledge for the students abandon their real responsibility as a teacher.
When a student ask why he should learn something the answer should never be “Because the curriculum says so”.
I actually agree with you on all points, but I think you are underestimating how overwhelming things can be for a teacher just beginning her career. Without any central curriculum a teacher has to inspect textbooks much more carefully in order to find a book that would suit her needs. It’s a lot of extra work.
This is a smaller problem in math and science teaching and a larger one at humanities and social sciences. This problem could be alleviated by having teacher education include classes where you get familiarised with different textbooks and different approaches to teaching your subject.
Teaching a teacher about different approaches of teaching his subject seems fairly straightforward for teacher education for myself. I once tried to learn something about reading by looking at what an academic journal has to say. It spoke about fancy terms like Heideggers notion of meaning. I’m well educated despite having spent a lot of time in school and do have an idea of what Heideggers notion of meaning happens to be. On the other hand it’s useless for a teacher who wants to teach his students to read.
Teachers education could simply switch to teach the actual practice of teaching instead of trying to teach fancy educational theories and the problem would be solved.
I think that getting rid of curriculum provides a lot more benefits in the humanities and social sciences than it does in mathematics. To me it would make a lot of sense to teach students during humanities or social science classes nonviolent communication (NVC). It a fairly straightforward framework with decades of history. On the other hand I do know that your average high school teacher doesn’t have the skills for teaching it, so it’s impossible to just write it into a centralized curriculum.
Berlin has 12 districts. Each of those has a democratic representation. While my sister was in school there was a political change that lead to the voting age for that particular democratic representation be lowered from 18 to 16 years. There were a lot of people in her class that could vote because they were 16 but not 18.
A good political science teacher would have addressed that opportunity to actually teach how this kind democratic representation works. I use the term democratic representation because it’s not a parliament because it can’t make laws and I don’t know whether there a term in English that directly translates the German word. Her teacher didn’t because she was too busy teaching to the curriculum.
Most of the stuff she taught the student will probably be forgotten after 5 years. She missed a crucial chance of actually teaching students who were voting at the first time in their lifes how the institution for which they vote works and what it does.
Worse she had a fairly bad idea of what the political institutions in Berlin actually do. She knew how to teach the textbook or the curriculum but she failed at the crucial task of teaching her students of how politics works in reality. Even how it works on the basic level of what the formal responsibilities of the body for which they vote happens to be.
Teacher simply teaching to the curriculum is often like students guessing the teachers password. There no transfer of real knowledge.
I think that humanities teachers who just try to teach whatever the curriculum says instead of teaching what the think will be valuable knowledge for the students abandon their real responsibility as a teacher. When a student ask why he should learn something the answer should never be “Because the curriculum says so”.