Not for Employment but for Life

John Dewey once wrote that education and experience cannot be automatically equated to one another, and that is absolutely true to some extent. Education in itself is useful change that occurs in experience, the encounter with a different other (see Piaget and his theory of schemas). Non-useful change can be turned into useful if a sufficitently trained educator is able to do so. This is why it is elementary that a teacher takes hours on end planning and researching how to better reach their students. Not because the plan is king; on the contrary – being highly adaptable to the context it is performed is critical for it to be in any way effective. It is therefore verging on this critical balance of keeping with a plan and adaptability. Being too much of either can lead to a disastrous educational experience.

This is already rather a pressing matter when coping with balancing a tyrannical and bloated curriculum and the everyday pressures of creating change in living, breathing beings constantly affecting each other in ways that would drive the everyman to cope with laying bricks or filing accounts blush. That is not to say that these do not have their own yoke to bear; far be from it. But this is to highlight exactly why educators feel drained after every term. And that is without mentioning the countless reforms every other Wednesday (so to speak) rearing their ugly head or the unannounced shifts in the curriculum that is thrust upon them. Especially those where it seems suspiciously strategic; the removal of certain literature calling for the emancipation of society or a protest in favor of environmentally-conscious politics and so forth…some things are too much of a coincidence and far from apophenia.

Which begs the question; on what criteria do the people on top assess what is useful and what isn’t for children they never meet? On what criteria were these chosen as the people who get to do such decisions? Historically, there were fewer people devoted to education itself and more so to industry, which does create an uneven bias for a system that describes itself as “student-centric”, starting from the design of the curriculum framework to the more recent task force during the pandemic. Of course, I agree that children should be equipped with skills to perform in an economy, sadly even to survive within an oppressive capitalist system; however, it is to be done as fully functional human beings and not worn down, weathered and soulless versions of themselves. The system will only face stagnation without fully functional selves!

How can that be achieved with a bloated curriculum?

Does that mean fewer subjects? I don’t think so. In fact, I would dare say in terms of skills it would benefit further breaking down, but let me not get ahead of myself.

It would require trimming the fat from topics that would not be useful to the student; that are relevant to the student in their context and their ambitions. As an educator and has been a student myself (which is suspiciously forgotten by so many running the show) I have learned that if the students do not deem something relevant, they will not learn it. Sure, it befalls upon the teacher to indicate how what is taught is relevant; but it is also evident that even the people imparting the material fail to see such relevance in what is being taught and do so only half-heartedly, and one can easily understand why when encountering the subject matter itself.

Personally, I find that the student themselves express if something will be useful or not without explicitly stating it outright; if they fail to understand the object in question or refuse to learn it, then it is time to reassess whether this is a failure in methodology in imparting knowledge or its usefulness, behavioral issues or, as is most likely, completely useless information in and of itself to the student’s context. Forcing it will only lead to frustration and it is best, in that case, to move on and either return to it later scaffolding it with something else or completely ditch it altogether and not even return to it in assessment as it does not make sense to even mention it, let alone rub in how much of a failure it was in trying to understand the topic in question.

This brings me to my usual proposal; rather than having an abstract mark at the end of each year, a student would have a list of acquired skills, like a portfolio that is periodically and casually updated by a teacher. If something is not listed, then it was simply not acquired. If it is observed to flounder, then it is removed until it is relearned. This would enable employers to note in depth what skills were acquired by their potential employees anyway and what opportunities they would need to create if they choose to invest in one individual or another. I believe this was the intended trajectory for the Learning Outcomes Framework in Malta, but let us not dwell on how ill-conceived its execution was carried out.

 In order for this to work, however, it would require smaller groups to be manageable and therefore better manpower and classes to accommodate such. Therefore a thorough reform of the entire structure of the division of labor in the educational sector, including conditions of work and salaries to incentivize the engagement thereof in keeping up with the economy. But the latter is also true across the board, and not limited to teachers.

But either way, the sooner it is given a second look, the better.