Past Movements in Education and Analysis of Curricuar Reforms Essay

For an individual, it must be treated as a continuous process that should not end when graduation rites in each particular level of schooling are being held. True education is life, it must always be a part of our daily living, whether through formal or informal means. Educational systems in general, and educational curriculum in particular, also need not to be static. The curriculum should respond to the demands of a fast-changing society. To some extent, it should also be global or internationally-aligned. These are the reasons why foreign and local educational educators in the past and until now have been introducing educational reforms and innovations. They have been searching means to address the problems being met in the implementation of a certain curriculums and to ensure the total development of every learner. I. The Past Movements for Social Change in the School System Social change affects education. Centuries ago, pioneers of education have sought to introduce renewal in education. Their ideas were far ahead than the actual renewal that took place later on. Among them were Commenius, Condorcet, Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Froebel, Dewey, Drecoly, Montessori and Freinet. 1. Johann Amos Commenius -â€Å"Father of Modern Education† Most permanent educational influences: a. practical educational work Comenius was first a teacher and an organizer of schools, not only among his own people, but later in Sweden, and to a slight extent in Holland. In his Didactica Magna (Great Didactic), he outlined a system of schools that is the exact counterpart of the existing American system of kindergarten, elementary school, secondary school, college, and university. Didactica Magna is an educational treatise which aimed to seek and find a method of instruction by which teachers may teach less but learners may learn more, by which the school may be the scene of less noise, aversion, and useless labor, but of more leisure, enjoyment and solid progress; and through which the Christian community may have less darkness, perplexity (confusion) and dissension (disagreement), but on the other hand, more light, orderliness, peace and rest. b. formulating the general theory of education In this respect he is the forerunner of Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Froebel, etc. and is the first to formulate that idea of â€Å"education according to nature† so influential during the latter part of the eighteenth and early part of the nineteenth century. c. the subject matter and method of education -exerted through a series of textbooks of an entirely new nature His published works: Janua Linguarum Reserata (The Gateway of Language Unlocked) – contained his c onviction (certainty) that one of the prerequisites for effective educational reform was a fundamental change in language of instruction. Orbis Pictus (The World of Sensible Things Pictured) – contributed to the development of the principles of audio-visual interaction. It was the first successful applications of illustrations to the work of teaching, but not the first illustrated book for children. Schola Ludus (School as Play) – a detailed exposition of the doctrine that all learning should be made interesting, dramatic and stimulating. These texts were all based on the same fundamental ideas: (1) learning foreign languages through the vernacular; (2) obtaining ideas through objects rather than words; (3) starting with objects most familiar to the child to introduce him to both the new language and the more remote world of objects: (4) giving the child a comprehensive knowledge of his environment, physical and social, as well as instruction in religious, moral, and classical subjects; (5) making this acquisition of a compendium of knowledge a pleasure rather than a task; and (6) making instruction universal. He also developed the pansophic scheme, the view that education should take the whole of human knowledge as its universe. For him, truth was indivisible and was to be seen as a whole. Thus by relating each subject to every other subject and to general principles, pansophia was to make the learner capable of wisdom. 2. Marquis De Condorcet Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat took his title Marquis de Condorcet from the town of Condorcet in Dauphine. He advocated that the aims of education were: o cultivate in each generation the physical, intellectual and moral facilities and, thereby contribute to the general and gradual improvement of the human race. He envisioned a national system of public education designed to develop the natural talents of all, making real equality possible. His proposals of the five levels of public instructions areas follows: 1. Elementary- for the teaching of the ‘elements’ of all knowledge (reading, writing, arithmetic, morals, economics and n atural science)and would be compulsory for all four years 2. Secondary school- of three years’ duration, teaching grammar, history and geography, one foreign language, the mechanical arts, law and mathematics. The teaching at this and the first level would be non-specialized. 3. Institutes- responsible for ‘substituting reasoning for eloquence and books for speech, and for bringing philosophy and the physical science methodology into the moral sciences’. The teaching at this level would be more specialized. Pupils would choose their own course of study (at least two courses a year) from among four classes: mathematics and physics, moral and political sciences, science as applied to the arts, and literature and fine arts. 4. Lycee – the equivalent of universities, with the same classes as the institutes and ‘where all the sciences are taught in full. It is there that scholars-teachers receive their further training’. Education at this and the first three levels was to be entirely free of charge. 5. National Society of Science and the Arts – a research institute responsible for supervising the formal education system as a whole and for appointing teachers. Its role would be one of scientific and pedagogical research. 3. Jean Jacques Rousseau According to the history of education, he was the first great writer to insist that education should be based upon the nature of the child. Rousseau’s Emile is a kind of half treatise, half novel that tells the life story of a fictional man named Emile. In the history of education, the significant contributions of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi are: 1) his educational philosophy and instructional method that encouraged harmonious intellectual, moral, and physical development Pestalozzi’s most systematic work, How Gertrude Teaches Her Children (1801) was a critique of conventional schooling and a prescription for educational reform. Rejecting corporal punishment, rote memorization, and bookishness, Pestalozzi envisioned schools that were homelike institutions where teachers actively engaged students in learning by sensory experiences. Such schools were to educate individuals who were well rounded intellectually, morally, and physically. Through engagement in activities, students were to learn useful vocations that complemented their other studies. 2) his methodology of empirical sensory learning, especially through object lessons Pestalozzi designed object lessons in which children, guided by teachers, examined the form (shape), number (quantity and weight) of objects, and named them after direct experience with them. 3) his use of activities, excursions, and nature studies that anticipated Progressive education. He also emphasized the importance of the nature of the child and propounded (advocated) that in the educational process, the child must be thought in relation to the subject matter. He sought to understand the nature of the child and to build his teaching around the natural, progressive and harmonious development of all the powers and capacities. He is an advocate of each man’s right to education and of society’s duty to implement that right and pave the way to universal national education. His motto â€Å"Learning by head, hand and heart† is still a key principle in successful 21st-century schools. 5. Friedrich Froebel The German educator, Friedrich Froebel, was one of these pioneers of early childhood educational reform. Froebel’s educational principles: a) free self-activity As an educator, Froebel believed that stimulating voluntary self-activity in the young child was the necessary form of pre-school education (Watson, 1997a). Self-activity is defined as the development of qualities and skills that make it possible to take an invisible idea and make it a reality; self-activity involves formulating a purpose, planning out that purpose, and then acting on that plan until the purpose is realized (Corbett, 1998a). Corbett suggests that one of Froebel’s significant contributions to early childhood education was his theory of introducing play as a means of engaging children in self-activity for the purpose of externalizing their inner natures. ) creativity Froebel designed a series of instructional materials that he called â€Å"gifts and occupations†, which demonstrated certain relationships and led children in comparison, testing, and creative exploration activities (Watson, 1997b). A gift was an object provided for a child to play with–such as a sphere, cube, or cylinder–which helped the child to understand and internalize the concepts of shape, dimension, size, and their relationships (Staff, 1998). The occupations were items such as aints and clay which the children could use to make what they wished; through the occupations, children externalized the concepts existing within their creative minds (Staff, 1998). Therefore, through the child’s own self-activity and creative imaginative play, the child would begin to understand both the inner and outer properties of things as he moves through the developmental stages of the educational process. c) social participation A third component of Froebel’s educational plan involved working closely with the family unit. Froebel believed that parents provided the first as well as the most consistent educational influence in a child’s life. Since a child’s first educational experiences occur within the family unit, he is already familiar with the home d) motor expression Motor expression, which refers to learning by doing as opposed to following rote instructions, is a very important aspect of Froebel’s educational principles. Froebel did not believe that the child should be placed into society’s mold, but should be allowed to shape his own mold and grow at his own pace through the developmental stages of the educational process. 6. John Dewey He contributed the educational philosophy which maintains that education is life, education is growth and education is a continuous reconstruction of human experiences from the beginning to the end of life. He was the spokes person of progressive education which states that aims have significance only for persons, not for processes such as education, and arise only in response to problematic situations in ongoing activities. Aims are to be viewed as anticipated outcomes of transactions, as intrinsic aspects of the process of problem-solving, and as a motivating force behind the individual’s approach to problem-solving situations. The Progressive Education Association, inspired by Dewey’s ideas, later codified his doctrines as follows: a. The conduct of the pupils shall be governed by themselves, according to the social needs of the community. b. Interest shall be the motive for all work. c. Teachers will inspire a desire for knowledge, and will serve as guides in the investigations undertaken, rather than as task-masters. d. Scientific study of each pupil’s development, physical, mental, social and spiritual, is absolutely essential to the intelligent direction of his development. . Greater attention is paid to the child’s physical needs, with greater use of the out-of-doors. f. Cooperation between school and home will fill all needs of the child’s development such as music, dancing, play and other extra-curricular activities. g. All progressive schools will look upon their work as of the laboratory type, giving freely to the sum of educational knowledge the results of their experi ments in child culture. He believed that education has two sides: the psychological and the social on the same plane. Education must start from the psychological nature of the child as the basis for directing his energies into totally useful channels. Schools must be set up to include bond the individual and social goals. The needs of a new society are to be taken into consideration in modifying methods and curriculum. 7. Ovide Decroly He influenced instruction in the kindergarten, the aim of which was to guide the child’s desire for activity and to give him a sense of discipline and norms for his social behavior (same with Dewey) 8. Maria Montessori Maria Montessori left a long lasting mark on education around the world.