As some of you might have caught, Finland has recently announced a rather radical reform to their already highly esteemed education system. They have decided to scrap the teaching of “subjects” in favor of an approach that would make “topics” the framework through which the school curriculum is engaged.
This is big news on several fronts.
First, we know that it
is the very stability of the Finnish system that appears to have made it so
successful. Unlike in the US, where schools attempt “reform” by trying
something new each year--and opening
themselves up to the very just charge of faddism--Finland has been working
along the same track for most of the post-war period. They have invested in
teachers--increasing their training and empowering them to use that training
once they are in the classroom.
But now comes something
that will no doubt challenge not only teachers, but much of society. Rather
than a class called chemistry or civics or health, students will now attend
lessons with names like “cafeteria services”--which would “ include elements of
math, languages (to help serve foreign customers), writing skills and
communication skills.”
Such reforms are
interesting for many reasons. But at the very least, they are fascinating for
the way in which they call into question all of the taken-for-granted elements
of schooling. Indeed, some researchers have argued that there is a “grammar
of schooling” that we are so accustomed to that it makes a lot of reform
hard for the public to swallow.
They just don’t
recognize this as school--or the schooling they know.
Now I think that John
Dewey would appreciate these changes--indeed, they mimic the curricular
innovations that he himself championed at the University of Chicago Lab School,
which he helped direct. No doubt he would see them as improving the chances for
meaningful learning.
But I think there is
another angle on this as well.
As I wrote to some of
you, Dewey thought that in the "old society" of pre-industrial
farming--when only the wealthy attended schooling for any length of
time--education happened through daily family routines.
Now this education
through the family--despite what we might imagine of it--was hardly
ineffective. Some of you might even know that at the time Horace Mann was
working to build the common schools in Massachusetts, the literacy rate there was
over 90%.
Looked at in this way,
it’s clear that the family wasn't doing a bad job! (Indeed, it might even
appear that it was doing a better job than the schools of today.)
Reading was part of the
family routine. And since there was no TV at night, while people were doing
their mending, someone would read to the others. Or perform plays. We can see
great examples of this in wonderful books such as Louisa
May Alcott’s Little Women.
Now, of course, there
are lots of other routines aside from reading. Growing, cooking, buying, and
preparing food and clothes is another example and these things clearly take a
lot of work. They require all sorts of talents, but most certainly talents in
math and science. The knowledge that people had back then wasn't very
systematic, but it was eminently applicable to everyday life.
We have clearly gone in
the other direction.
Our knowledge aims to be systematic, but its
relationship to everyday life is anything but clear (when are we ever going to use this?).
So this is what Dewey
calls for. Let's return to what was good in the old system and combine it with
what is good in the modern system. The old system was good because content was
learned in the course of supporting the community and the family. It had a
context that made it meaningful.
Book learning in school
is good because it is systematic and logically organized.
But all students don't necessarily
learn well following adult schemas of logic. Some--perhaps most--might need a
different approach. Hence, Dewey called for teachers to lead students toward
systematic knowledge of topics through having experiences that placed subject
matter content back in its everyday life contexts.
Not exactly
revolutionary, yet both teachers and the public struggle to see this. Why is
this?
Perhaps it is because we
have so deskilled our home lives that we no longer understand the roots of
subject matter knowledge in our everyday lives.
Yet it only takes one
pathway to return there.
I think about my friend who has started a
brewery in Lansing. His kids help. Obviously, lots of science in brewing
beer. And just as obviously, lots of economics in running that new business. Oh
yeah, and lots of civics as they learn about the arcane laws that limit alcohol
distribution and lots of advocacy to change those laws to make Michigan more
microbrew friendly.
One solution: We need
to re-empower families as agencies of learning. Schooling, it is my belief,
will then take care of itself.
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