Common Sense and the Curriculum

Robin Barrow

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136716874
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book addresses the question 'What should be taught in schools and why?'. The book begins by stressing the way in which such a question should be approached and goes on to offer a comprehensive and stringent critique of a variety of principles for the selection of curriculum content, with particularly important sections on deschooling and the hidden culture curriculum theory. The final chapter contains the positive curricular recommendations, with virtually every candidate for curriculum time examined and assessed in respect of its educational worth.

PART 1. CRITICAL COMMENTS ON
CURRICULUM THEORY

Chapter 1

Towards a Worthwhile Curriculum

I WHO ARE THE CURRICULUM EXPERTS?

A warning shot will now be fired across the bows of that approaching juggernaut the good ship Lollipop. The good ship Lollipop does not have a captain. It is run by the crew. They are an able crew: some are skilled helmsmen, some are competent engineers, some have considerable expertise with radar, and so on. In fact there is not a skill necessary to running the ship that is not possessed by one or more of the crew. In addition, all of them are sincerely concerned about the welfare of their passengers, and count it as part of their job to get on well with them and to make their trip a pleasant one.

Unfortunately, however, not one of the crew has the first idea of where the ship is going or, indeed, why it is going at all. They appreciate their own shortcomings in this respect, although they are somewhat contemptuous of those who would make too much of it. And they are aware that one or two passengers are over-anxious about this state of affairs and need to be reassured. Therefore, making a virtue of necessity, and taking a cue from the name of their ship, they allay unease by preaching a sophisticated version of the ‘suck it and see’ argument.

It is true, they acknowledge, that they did not begin the trip with a fixed idea of where they were going, still less did they have good reason for going to one place rather than another. But that is partly because there are no experts in such matters, as there are experts in radar or steering, and partly because it does not actually matter very much where the ship goes, so long as all is well from day to day and everybody enjoys and makes something of the trip. Besides, some preconceived plan would probably prove totally unrealistic and have to be altered in the face of actual conditions. Conversely a destination is bound to arise out of their day to day experiences.

One of the stewards, who asked innocently how they were to judge whether things were ‘going weir from day to day, or whether a particular passenger was ‘making something’ of the trip, was thrown off at Gibraltar, where the Lollipop happened to have arrived, on the grounds that he was a pedant and an agitator. (In fairness, it must be admitted that he went further than this, asking such peculiar questions as whether enjoyment was all that mattered, and whether the destination arrived at through experience would necessarily be desirable. According to one of the stokers, he also made some odd remark to the effect that he was not sure that a ‘destination’ arrived at accidentally counted as a destination at all.)¹

The warning shot is necessary because the good ship Lollipop is about to hit me.

The ship of education sails not simply without a coherent view of its destination, but with a crew some at least of whom believe that this state of affairs is positively desirable. There are straws in the wind that suggest that once again crude and artificial barriers are going to be raised between practice and theory. Let prospective teachers learn how to teach, runs the argument. What has abstract theory got to do with the practical problems of the classroom? In preparing potential teachers for their job we should be concerned, as it were, with the criteria adequate to giving someone a licence to teach. Such criteria might include the ability to get on well with children or with other adults, the ability to stimulate and the ability to make use of audio-visual aids, but they would not include an ability to indulge in abstract theorising. And so we face the prospect of being caught up in a whirlwind of technology and methodological wizardry. We are back with the notion of training teachers rather than educating them.

It is my firm belief that this tendency towards training ought to be resisted. It is based on a facile distinction between theory and practice, and prejudges the question at issue by thinking in terms of ‘a licence to teach’. Why do we not think in terms of ‘a licence to be a teacher’? Does not that shift of terminology give rise to certain questions? Would we regard somebody as suitable to being a teacher who had never thought about wider educational issues, such as the arguments for and against comprehensive schools, whether children ought to be taught what they are being taught, and whether a good case can be made for leaving children to decide for themselves what they wish to learn? I would think not, and intelligent consideration of such questions would demand a certain amount of competent theorising.

There is a very real danger that the split between practising teachers on the one hand and educational theorists on the other will come to resemble that between the Anglo-Indians and the representatives of government in England itself during the latter years of the nineteenth century. Anglo-Indians would curse members of parliament ‘as “globe trotters”, and insist pathetically, like all entrenched colonials, that only they, the men on the spot, knew what things were really like, and what policies were really necessary’.² The result of this attitude was a steady and remarkably successful opposition to various viceroys, appointed by the home government, ‘who tried to govern the subcontinent with some regard to liberal principles and little regard for illiberal prejudices’.³ For the truth is that ‘being on the spot and knowing the native’ is neither necessary nor sufficient, although no doubt it is generally one important asset, for determining wisely how affairs ought to be conducted. It is a sad trend that would turn teachers into colonials.

However I do not need to pursue the specific question of teacher education here. For whatever we think appropriate in the way of a course for potential teachers, presumably nobody can deny that there is still room for some people to be concerned with the serious study of education. That is to say there are many many questions, of which ‘Is there a good case for concluding that children ought to study certain specified things?’ is but one, which are patently meaningful and important. Whether we conclude that it would be desirable for practising teachers to think about such a question or not, it is undeniable that it is a question worth trying to answer.

Education is not a game and children's lives are not to be lightly played with. It is intolerable that a great deal of educational practice should be the outcome of the whims of individuals (be they local government officers, headmasters or teachers) who have not even thought about, much less understood, most of the serious research and argument relevant to the question of what should go on in schools. It is an outrage on our children, as well as an offence to reason, that bandwagons of educational gimmickry, preceded by resounding and vacuous slogans, should career over and crush them, determining and limiting their future, for no better reason than that we are unwilling to pause and do some slow and painstaking thinking. Like children ourselves we are seduced by the glitter and glamour of a new idea, without the patience to examine its real worth. We emote loosely about the desirability of developing critical minds, questioning attitudes, and problem-solving capacities in children, while conspicuously failing to exhibit these qualities in our own reflections on education.

We need, ideally, to inform ourselves of and to understand all the ideas, arguments and evidence that have ever been put forward in relation to the upbringing of children. We need, in practice and in particular, to address ourselves to a detailed examination of the various ideas that are currently being championed, on what should be taught and how it may most effectively be taught, if we are to be entitled to claim that we did our best to consider the interests of our children rather than fulfil our prejudices. This essay is concerned primarily with the former question (‘What should be taught?’). It is concerned with trying to outline and argue for a specific curriculum.

Some, out of patience with my indignation and my clear intention to indulge in yet more theorising, may laconically observe that curriculum theory is already a growth industry. There are already a great many curriculum experts around. Indeed, nominally, there are. But of whom or of what does this strange and expanding breed of curriculum experts actually consist? Who are these people whose expertise is apparently in designing curricula, as yours or mine might be in teaching mathematics or philosophising?

What after all is the curriculum? In its broadest sense it is synonymous with the content of education. Etymologically it is the course to be run. Generalising grossly, and confining ourselves for the moment to the secondary school, we have been familiar with the notion of essentially two types of curriculum for a long time now. One, the typical grammar school curriculum, designed for the more ‘academic’, consists of certain subjects which in the minds of many are hallowed by tradition: subjects such as maths, modern languages, classics and English, although it is worth noting that English, for example, only received the status of a respectable study at university level at the turn of the century. In addition grammar schools have been concerned with certain other subjects, sometimes regarded as being of rather doubtful pedigree, such as geography, biology, sociology, and economics.

At the other extreme has been the ‘non-academic’ technical or vocational curriculum consisting of activities such as woodwork and metal-work, and often geared to other more or less demanding types of apprenticeship. For a vast number of children the reality has lain between these two extremes in a watered-down version of the grammar school curriculum.

The extent to which this stereotyped tripartite picture ever was, or still remains, a faithful account of the actual situation is not our immediate concern. What is important to note is that those who are concerned to redesign the curriculum may attack this pattern from a number of different angles so that many curricula proposals scarcely resemble any part of the stereotype, even in form.

It is not simply that traditional subjects have been challenged and had their presumed value questioned, although that has happened, as in the surge away from classics. It is not simply that new subjects are proposed for inclusion in the school curriculum, although that too happens (psychology being the most recent example). It is not even simply that the whole notion of ‘subjects’ has sometimes come under fire, although that has also happened so that advocates of the topic approach, areas of study and the integrated curriculum exist in no short supply. More than this, in some proposals curriculum comes to include fieldwork, games, outward bound courses, visits abroad or sex education; in others the distinction between curricular and what used to be termed extra-curricular activities, such as chess clubs or debating societies, disappears; proposals for an integrated day sometimes eradicate a distinction between lessons and break; a recent book on the curriculum defined it as ‘all the experiences for learning which are planned and organised by the school’.⁴ and some proposals even define curriculum in terms of how the child learns whatever he learns, rather than in terms of what he learns.

And why not? But once we appreciate the nature and the variety of ways in which planning a curriculum may proceed, it surely becomes apparent that designing a curriculum is virtually equivalent to defining education itself. To propose a specific curriculum, when the term curriculum is so vague and all-embracing, is effectively to put forward a view of what education ought to consist of or of what education really is. From which it follows that to be an expert on curriculum is – or rather ought to be – to be an expert on education.

Now, despite the fact that there are many who are nominally lecturers in education, it is doubtful whether there are more than a few who could lay claim to the degree of expertise in education that the majority of lecturers in, say, physics or German could claim in their field. For what is absolutely certain is that education is not a single discipline or a unique form of knowledge: it is a field of enquiry or an area of study in which a number of different kinds of question and problem arise, often in relation to one single issue. To make a reasonable claim to competence in this sphere one would need to give evidence, at least, of one's expertise in child psychology, sociology and philosophy. In addition I should have thought that we would rightly be wary of one who had expertise in these disciplines, but who revealed himself to be ignorant of the history of education, and in particular of the ways in which various changes in education seem in fact to have come about, one who was unfamiliar with precisely what is involved in the various subjects or areas of study that might be proposed as educationally desirable, or one who was unaware of the myriad activities that are going on in different schools, and lacking in first-hand experience of such activities. The truth is that most of us who are misleadingly called lecturers in education are in fact, at best, specialists in some discipline or field that has a contribution to make to the sphere of education, but which cannot in itself finally resolve any specific educational issue.

Similarly the question ‘How should we redesign the curriculum?’ is clearly not a question like ‘How may we most effectively get children to speak French?’ nor like the question ‘Is it worthwhile getting children to speak French?’ nor like ‘Is it economically advisable to get children to speak French, now that we are members of the Common Market?’ nor like ‘Does Latin effectively develop logical minds?’ nor like ‘Is English literature a relevant form of study?’ nor like ‘Can one educate the emotions through dance?’ It involves having answers to all these questions – some of which are of logically distinct kinds and need to be approached in quite different ways – and to a thousand more as well.

Whether many of those who appear to be specialists in the field of curriculum are in fact competent in the various disciplines that would be required to examine these different kinds of question is not for me to say. But I think that it is now sufficiently clear that an expert in education or in curriculum, given the all-embracing nature that the term is now seen to have, if such there be, would be a formidable individual. The mass of us must surely be content to make our specific and limited contribution to the resolution of such questions as ‘What should the curriculum consist of?’

II PHILOSOPHY AND THE CURRICULUM

That is one side of the coin: that the study of education involves a variety of disciplines and that no single discipline can in itself resolve any substantial complex educational issue. The other side is that we must stand out firmly for the notion that those questions and problems which arise in relation to educational issues that logically belong to a specific discipline must be answered or examined by those who have competence in the discipline in question. To be specific, we must insist that those questions and problems that arise in the context of curriculum planning which are philosophical in kind should be examined by those who are philosophically competent. Only a fool would seek answers to medical questions from those who had not studied medicine; similarly, only a fool would seek answers to philosophical questions from those who had not studied philosophy.

What sort of questions and problems are philosophical, then? What is the nature of the philosopher's contribution to the curriculum? It is varied. There are many philosophical questions to be raised, particularly when it comes to examining the arguments for various specific curricular proposals. For one of the concerns of philosophy is with clarity and coherence of argument, with specific reference to the precise meaning of concepts which, if left unexamined, serve to obscure argument or, perhaps, carry it unwarrantably as a result of their emotive overtones. A catalogue of such concepts, which function rather as jokers do in a game of cards, representing whatever the player wants them to represent, would certainly include the following: ‘natural’, ‘undynamic’, ‘creative’, ‘alienated’, ‘ideological’, ‘relevant’ and ‘intelligent’. Another philosophical issue that is likely to arise in relation to the curriculum is the nature of knowledge. But there is, I shall argue, one pre-eminent question that anybody who intended to plan a curriculum would need to face and which is, or rapidly becomes, a philosophical question. Namely: ‘What is worthwhile?’

Why cannot this question be avoided? Some, following R. S. Peters, might argue that the concept of education itself is such that to ‘educate’ someone logically involves initiating that person into worthwhile activities by means that are morally acceptable.⁵ There are perhaps certain problems in this view. But we can avoid becoming involved in the argument surrounding Peters’ claim – which is based on his assertion that the term, at least in its central uses, is normative (i.e. that it carries with it the force of commendation as terms such as ‘brave’, ‘good’ or ‘kind’ do) – for clearly what we as a matter of fact are concerned with is a worthwhile education. And a worthwhile education must have a worthwhile curriculum or co...

Table of contents

• Front cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• INTRODUCTION
• Part 1: Critical comments on curriculum theory
• Part 2: A positive theory of curriculum
• INDEX