COVID 19 and the Primary Curriculum

COVID 19 has brought into sharp focus inequalities in the education system. While some children, supervised by their parents, have had Zoom classes with their teachers, watched educational videos on Youtube and submitted work to their teachers, others have simply missed three months of schooling. Primary School children will never be able to catch up, because the curriculum is so overloaded with content that there’s no time allowed in it for anything else. 

A student following a class on Zoom

 In my retirement, (I was a biology teacher), I’ve helped children with learning to read, with GSAT and now with PEP. I have looked over class work, assisted with homework and been driven mad by projects, from grades 1 to 6. My opinions are based on what I have observed during the last 15 years, and not on the objectives stated in the curriculum. I realized that one blog post wasn’t sufficient to support my argument, so I’m starting with my list of:

10 Reasons for cutting curriculum

1.         Children need to know that they are loved and wanted and that there is a place for them in society. When children fail to keep up, they lose interest, and start to misbehave.

2.         Children need to learn how to get along with others and co-operate and have empathy. These traits are not developed when there is so much emphasis on competition; and when children are discouraged from expressing their opinions. (See Tracy-Ann McGhie-Sinclair's article on this in the Gleaner.)

3.         Every child has a strength.

a.         Knowing one’s strengths builds self-esteem.

b.         Children’s strengths need to be identified early and coached. Coaching children’s strength encourages them to perform better in their weaker areas.

c.         Praise for good performance is a more effective enforcer than punishment for something done badly.

4.         The Grade 1 curriculum explains to children that we are all different, while at the same time expecting all children to learn at the same pace and with the same attention span. No allowance is made for children suffering from anxiety or ADHD, or even undiagnosed sight or hearing problems. 

5.         The curriculum is designed to inculcate knowledge, skills and attitudes. However, knowledge dominates at the expense of the other two, in spite of the fact that bits of knowledge are soon forgotten. Values and attitudes such as honesty, courtesy, punctuality and reliability are equally as important as knowledge, and are learnt for life.

6.         Children see all assessment as a judgment of themselves. Poor performance in tests lowers their self-esteem, so children label themselves as stupid. The PEP curriculum claims that assessments are student centred and formative, meaning that assessments help teachers identify concepts that students are struggling to understand, and skills they are having difficulty acquiring, so that adjustments can be made to lessons, instructional techniques, and academic support. Teachers have no opportunity to do this, because PEP prescribes factual material to be taught in every lesson in every week of the academic year.

7.         One reason for cramming so much content in the curriculum is that assessment of students’ performance in grades 4, 5 and 6 is the basis on which they are selected for the high schools. Competition for ‘brand-name” schools is so intense that too much attention is given to the children in the top 20% of the ability range. However more important than the top 20%  having mastered grades 7 & 8 work in grade 6, is that all the children should be reading and have mastered computational skills required at their grade level.

8.         Much of the same material that is in the curriculum for grades 4, 5 and 6 is taught again at high school. In fact, some of the better performing students are bored in grade 7, because they’ve done all the work before.

9.     

    Math is a building subject. If children haven’t mastered the basics in grades 1 and 2 they

will flounder in higher grades. Hence the dislike and fear of math in the general population.

10.     The best ways of mastering the English language are by reading for pleasure and by writing one’s own thoughts to communicate with others. Children who are taught to read with access to plenty of books they can read on their own are more likely to enjoy reading. As their reading improves, a whole world of knowledge is open to them. They don’t have to have it prescribed in a curriculum. 

Children's reading room at Hanover Parish Library

I welcome comments on the above. 

I written several blog posts on this same topic including 
Reflections on PEP  and
We are failing our children