An article in the Guardian Teacher Network discusses the
problem of bringing a philosophical approach to teaching, in contrast to
"teaching to the test".
I commented:
Schools are an institution to socialize children and make
them ready for the role allocated to them by society. This is a massive matter
operating on a massive scale. The working class is huge, and schools are there
to refresh it - not to make self-employed creatives or employers or
administrators of all the kids.
Traditionally, independent and critical thought is not
required of workers or the poor, and as someone says here, it fails to
recognize the barriers society wishes to keep in place, so it is liable to
cause more problems than it's worth if it is instilled and encouraged in
education.
So independent thought runs slap bang into the wall of
Philip Jackson's Hidden Curriculum. The glass ceiling keeps women from rising
in society, and the glass wall of the hidden curriculum keeps working class
kids in their parents' factories, offices and dole queues.
The corollary of the hidden curriculum for teachers
(education workers in general) who want to see it gone is the Double
Curriculum. That is, we (I was in this game for twenty years, in a difficult
school in a deprived are, goes without saying really) have to work both to the
official curriculum and the liberating curriculum.
Most, that is MOST, teachers won't even be aware of this,
let alone contemplate undertaking such a project. And for a lot of teachers
attempting it, the result will be burn-out - it's just as frustrating to bang
your head against a glass wall as a brick one.
The solution is to organize publicly and politically against
the hidden, reactionary curriculum - get it out in the open. Work for a
programme of educational change incorporating all the effective learning
methods mentioned here and in other discussions within a programme of changing
society so that all people will have guaranteed meaningful employment with a
guaranteed democratic say in managing their work and everything connected with
it. In this way learning and work will become meaningful, not just spiteful
hostile abstractions, and the activities of learning and working will be
performed with pleasure and a satisfaction we rarely see today.
This is the only realistic way to better education for
everyone. If the political and social perspective is set aside, we'll just see
a repetition of the vagaries of education policy over the past century in
Britain and other developed industrial countries (ie imperialist countries,
like Sweden or the USA).
Utopian corners of good educational practice can and will
exist meanwhile, of course, and provide a growing list of excellent examples to
learn from... but cultivating a tiny model garden in an industrial wasteland
will never satisfy a truly independent and critical mind. It's the wasteland
that needs transforming.
