How to Reform Secondary-School Education

7/30/2019 How to Reform Secondary-School Education

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presentation in Bucharest, at the workshop on Semiotics,organised by the Center for Complexity Studies, UNESCO Center 25 -29 Nov. 2012

A. Solomonick, PhD in Pedagogy, Israel

How to reform Secondary-school Education

Introduction

Semiodidacticsis a new approach to pedagogic thinking that I am trying toestablish, an approach that is based on my version of semiotics. Semioticsstudies signs, sign-systems, and semiotic reality in general. It investigates therole of signs in people's acquisition of knowledge, both individually and as a

group. That is why it is very important to consider what kinds of signs arecontained in the material taught in schools and other educational institutions, toinvestigate whether this material is absorbed by pupils easily, whether they find itinteresting when they are studying it, and other similar problems. At first glance,these seem to be problems that can be handled competently by specialists ineducation. But in reality, nobody currently relates to the heart of these issues,because they do not have tools for comparing the signs that are incorporatedinto the materials that are studied. And I have found these tools in my version ofsemiotics.

The existing realm of semiotics has not yet produced methods forcompletely implementing such comparisons. It is still in the early stages of its

development as a distinct field, and has not yet given its adherents instrumentsfor comparing the quality of the signs they use. Until now, semioticians have onlyrated signs from three angles: semantic, which looks at the ties between signsand their referents; syntactical, which studies the ties between signs and theirsign-systems; and pragmatic, which identifies practical applications of signusage. From the outset of my involvement in the field, I have focused on a fourthparameter for comparing signs: their charge of abstractness. (I sometimes callthis the quantum of abstractness.) This is a factor that can give us instruments tohelp us choose the proper signs to use in any given case.

I believe that the nature of every type of sign (and, consequently, everysign-system) is inherently cast by its quantum of abstraction. We are still far fromdefining these quanta of abstraction in exact quantative terms this is a matterthat will have to be dealt with further in the future but it is clear that this

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characteristic of signs exists and can be of great significance in many respects. Itis this trait that I utilize in this article for rating teaching materials as moreorlessappropriate for study at particular stages of secondary education. This is theforemost problem that I will tackle in this article.

The second problem I treat in this article is how to deal with what I considerto be the most important stage of school education what I call the intermediatelevel of education. This is the level that is preceded by primary school andfollowed by high school. (In different countries, the intermediate level includesdifferent grades and age ranges, but the category is broadly recognizable.) Mosteducators consider it to be very difficult to define the appropriate content for thisintermediate level of education. They say that it is comparatively much easier todefine the proper content for the other two levels that the appropriate scope ofthe middle stage of school education is much harder to determine. My approachis different. I treat this intermediate level as the starting point for defining thecontent of all the school curricula, leaving the primary school and high schoolcurricula auxiliary to and dependant upon the curriculum of the middle school.

There is one further issue that I want to clarify from the outset: the problemof specific terminology. Since I want to construct a new branch of science, Icannot avoid dealing with its terminology. Although the bulk of this terminologywill only come into existence at later stages, as the field matures and researchwork is more systematically pursued, I will nonetheless be so bold as to makesome preliminary decisions about terminology right now.

In my discussions, I differentiate between two concepts: curriculum andsyllabus. By curriculumI mean the general teaching plan of a particular selectionof subjects in a specific educational institution; by syllabus I mean a plan for

teaching a concrete discipline, such as Medicine or History. I also distinguishbetween a discipline meaning a school subject that corresponds to a completefield of the corresponding science, like botany, mathematics, or geography anda topic meaning a concrete theme of study that unites features from varioussciences, like Caring for our environment or Home collections. Bothdisciplines and topics can be called school subjectsor just subjects. More newconcepts will be added below in the course of my deliberations.

Keeping these preliminary remarks in mind, we may now move on to thesubstance of this article.

Extracting a New Attribute of Signs from Their Classification

At the very beginning of my study of signs, I created a general taxonomy ofsigns. (For our current purposes, this could also be called a classification ofsigns. It is a collection of signs that represents each of the categories of sign-systems we have identified.) This taxonomy was built by defining the basicnatures of the sign-systems in which each known type of sign is included. Tofurther elaborate on how these various types of signs develop, I created adiagram:

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Types of Sign-Systems

Let me begin by giving you a general explanation of the diagram. Afterthat, I will discuss its structure.

This classification diagram is most easily understood when the basic signsof each type of sign-system are explained sequentially, beginning with thelowest level of the hierarchy, as follows:

Natural signs, the basic signs of natural sign-systems, are entities in and ofthemselves visible (or audible) elements of a thing that represent the entirething. These objects allow us to conjure up the entire entity when we cannotsense it directly. For example, a visible pillar of smoke may tell us that a fire is

burning when that fire is not otherwise within the scope of our senses. Similarly,a light coming from a window may suggest that the inhabitant of the room is athome.

Images, the basic signs of iconic sign-systems, are not parts of a realobject but a reflection of it; they represent the things they signify because theyresemble those things. Clearly, images are more removed from the things theysignify than natural signs, which are parts of the objects they represent.

Words, the basic signs of language sign-systems, are generally arbitrarysigns that have no intrinsic resemblance to the things they signify. As such,they are more distant from the things they signify than images are. Yet wordsdo have an extra-systemic relationship to the things they signify, in that they

represent actual things that exist in reality, beyond the bounds of the language

Their basic signs (taxons)

Symbols withtransitional meanings

Formalized systemsof the second order

Formalized systems Symbols with constantmeaningsof the first order

Systems of notation Gra hemes

Language systems Words

ImagesIconic systems

Natural systems Natural signs

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sign-system to which they belong. For example, the word table represents anactual thing that exists outside of the English language.

Graphemes, the basic signs of notational sign-systems, only exist withinspecific sign-systems, and only in relation to the other signs in the sign-system.

Their purpose is to represent something within a sign-system in graphic form.For example, the letters of the alphabet are graphemes that represent soundsin graphic form. Although graphemes are more abstract than words, theynevertheless maintain a constant relationship with the things they represent.Thus, the written form of the word table is always t-a-b-l-e, and the individualletters that compose the word table continually represent the sounds assignedto them by the particular language whose alphabet contains them.

Symbols, the basic signs of formalized sign-systems (such asmathematical or formalized sign-systems), are usually arbitrary notations thatare used ad hoc to deal with particular situations. For example, z may meanweight in one situation and something entirely different in another. Thus,symbols are signs with the remotest possible connection to their referents.These are the most abstract of the basic semiotic signs.

Now that the items in the diagram are understood, let us look at thestructure of the diagram. Each level in the structure reflects a separate level ofsigns and sign-systems that is mastered by a person in the course of hiscognitive development. We each begin assimilating signs with those at thebottom of the diagram, and gradually expand our repertoires to include each ofthe levels above it, in turn. Note that in the diagram each level is superimposedon the one below it. This is because absorbing higher levels does not cause thedevelopment of the levels below them to cease, but, on the other hand, each

new level can only appear when the previous level is at least partiallymastered. There is always interplay between the various levels. Our inculcationof the lower levels continues advancing all the time and is enhanced by theskills we glean from the new horizons that are added by the newer levels, whilethe newer levels are enriched by those things the lower levels have alreadymastered. Their interaction is mutually profitable; the signs denoting the sameontological objects on each successive level become more penetrating in theirrepresentation of it as a result of this.

If we arrange all the taxons sequentially natural signs images words graphemes symbols we see that they are arranged in an order thatreflects their increasing degrees of abstractness. This reflects my contention that

the cognitive development of humanity as a whole and of each personindividually, proceeds along a path from lesser to greater abstractedness. Ibelieve this assertion is so obvious that it hardly requires explanation. Weexperience it on an individual level in ourselves, in our children, in education, inthe development of our habits in essence, everywhere. That humanity as awhole has also followed this path, mastering new signs and sign-systems inaccordance with this rule, is also clearly evident: it can be observed in thedevelopment of every science, in our religions and beliefs, and a wide array ofother areas.

So, the first conclusion we can reach from semiotics is that all ourendeavors (including our educational enterprises) advance and mature along

with the abstractedness of the signs we master in the course of our constant and

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unending learning processes processes that take place both in school andoutside of it.

Additional Semiotic Considerations for the Selection

of Educational Content for Schools

What I described above can be used as our chief guideline for choosing theeducational materials for schools. Nevertheless, my approach has additionalaspects that ought to be taken into consideration. It is to these matters that I willdevote this section and some of the following sections of this article. My mainpoint in this context is that pure educational considerations never stand alone inthe realm of teaching and learning; our ideological stances always influencethem. While it is true that all teaching materials come from semiotic reality, ourworldviews make us prefer certain educational content over others. To clarify myassertion, I will resort once again to semiotics, namely, to the notion ofsemiotic

realityand to the laws governing it.I view the notion of semiotic reality as one of the core concepts of semiotic

studies. Because of this, I have included it in my definition of general semiotics:"semiotics is the science of signs, sign-systems, and semiotic reality." In anumber of other articles, I have tried to define the main characteristics of semioticreality as compared with ontological reality, the reality we observe and deal within the real world. I am happy to see that this new notion has begun to appear inthe scientific writings of other authors.

The diagram below, which illustrates what I call the transmutation ofexistential events, should help to clarify what I mean by semiotic reality:

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The Transmutation of Existential Events

When we are born, we find ourselves in the world of ontological reality , aworld that exists independently of us and to which we have to adapt in order tosurvive and live comfortably. To begin adapting to our ontological reality, westudy it, both at school and by ourselves. This acquisition of knowledge, and thedrawing of conclusions from it about ontological reality, proceeds with the helpof signs. The crystallizations of our thoughts are formed using signs: ourspeech consists of signs (words are signs of their referents), and the pictures,maps, diagrams, etc., that we use to explain ourselves, are all signs, as well. Allcultural creations literature, ballet, sculpture, and so forth are infused withsigns. Our scientific investigations are performed using signs and their systems,and the results are also expressed in signs. All of these signs and sign systems

are gathered together in a special plane of our lives that I call semiotic reality.Humans use semiotic reality to help them cope with ontological reality.

With the help of semiotic reality, we can penetrate into the essence of realobjects, understand the ways things work or behave, and sometimes evenchange the course of events for the benefit of the human race. In recentcenturies, scientists using semiotic reality have succeeded in introducing manychanges into our lives, making them more comfortable and pleasant. Usingsemiotic reality, we have succeeded in creating a vast array of amenities thathave completely changed us and improved our surroundings. Some of thesechanges were of a material ontological nature; these were added to ontologicalreality. Others were of a semiotic nature, and served to improve our semiotictoolbox for further and more effective usage.

4.

1. Ontological Reality

(first- and second-nature)

5.,

3. Practicalactivity 4. Science

6. Mythology,religion,ideology

7. Education5. Arts

2. Semiotic Reality(signs and sign-systems)

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Semiotic reality, the collection of semiotic findings about our surroundings,our lives, and our selves, can be preserved in special receptacles, such aslibraries and computerized databases. From these receptacles, particular itemscan be retrieved, studied, and worked upon; and thereafter they can be

returned to their receptacles for continued storage. Sometimes thesereceptacles are organized according to the type of knowledge they contain; atother times, they gather all kinds of information together. The most importantpoint is that these receptacles are all used for safeguarding semiotic data.

But one should be aware that a variety of kinds of human activities liebetween the ontological and semiotic realities. These activities can change ourattitudes towards the materials collected in a particular sphere of semiotic realityin very substantial ways. Consider, for example, the sphere of humaneducational activity. When people deal with this sphere of semiotic reality, theytend to extract only those topics that match their worldviews. Religious peoplechoose those things that do not contradict their beliefs; scientifically orientedpeople tend to choose scientific research; and artistically minded people neglectmost of the things that the other people tend to select, choosing instead thosethings that suit their creative inclinations. Even if people agree about whatmaterials to use, they deal with those materials from very different angles andwith very different emphases. Although my approach in this article tends towardseducational subject matter that is either scientific or of a practical nature, youshould keep in mind that these choices reflect my particular tendencies, and thatother choices could legitimately be made. I will discuss this issue further in thenext section; for now, I would just like to mention that my final conclusions will besplit between these two ideologies (the scientific and the practical).

Besides this very serious limitation, two others warrant some discussion.While it is true that any sequential pursuit of knowledge proceeds from the lessabstract to the more abstract, it is also true that the pace at which the knowledgebecomes more abstract varies from one human venture to another. This isevident if we compare the human activities that are included in my diagramabove of thetransmutation of existential events. Each of the activities differs fromthe others both in terms of the speed of sign-developmentand of the pace of theincrease in abstractness. The activity that has developed the most quickly isscientific activity; it expands in a most wondrous way, and during the last fewcenturies, it has changed our lives tremendously, turning our former bare-bonesexistence into something very different. Its achievements to date cannot be

underestimated, and, as it progressed, it learned to use very abstract signs tohelp it progress.

In comparison with scientific activities, all other forms of human endeavorseem deficient. Practical ventures only require a much more simplified point ofview; they use much less complicated methods of dealing with reality and muchless abstract signs. The religious approach relies on beliefs rather thandemonstrable findings. It also rejects further improvements to what has alreadybeen accepted as its basic truths; the more solid and unchangeable its preceptsappear the better. Similarly, the artistic attitude to reality does not demandconformity with real life everything depends on the innermost feelings of theartist. The progress of sciences obviously defines the character of our existence;

we depend on it to manipulate our environment and change it to our advantage.And the educational sphere has followed this trend, becoming completely

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dependent on scientific progress and focusing almost entirely on science as thesource of its subject matter, to the point that most school disciplines aresimplified versions of corresponding sciences. Whether this is the best way tohandle school education will be discussed later in this article.

Didactic Conclusions

As I stated above, the advances of science are so impressive that theyquash all other considerations for selecting study material for school education. Itis taken for granted that most school disciplines must be based on branches ofscience. Botany should be taught in schools as it is formulated in science, or atany rate as a clone of the chief features of scientific botany; geography should betaught only in its cartographic form, while its topographic level, which is nearer towhat we see in our real lives, should be ignored; and so on. And the more closely

a school subject matches the contemporary state of a science, the better it isconsidered to be. It is felt that schools should not deviate from the classificationsof science or omit even one of its important offshoots. This also means that wehave to teach all the significant features and concepts of the sciences, howeverabstract they are, even though schoolchildren cannot possibly understand themat their age.

In this respect, our school curriculum was directly inherited from past schoolcurricula. In ancient Greece, people did not have a lot of scientific information,but whatever they knew, they taught in their schools (rhetoric, for example). Inthe Middle Ages, this practice was no longer in vogue; teachers primarily taughttheir students the skills and behaviors of young warriors and courtesans. When

humanity entered the scientific era, people began to include the advances of thequickly developing sciences in the school curriculum. Up to a certain point, thisworked reasonably well, but over time, the scope of scientific discoveries made itimpossible to squeeze everything into the time limits of school hours and thechildren's abilities to digest the material. At that point, it became necessary tochoose limited parts of the vast scope of the sciences to teach in the schools,with the result that the selection became quite arbitrary and often inexplicable. Alot of necessary scientific information was left untaught, while what was taughtwas often not useful to school children outside the boundaries of the schools, intheir lives outside of school.

I am not against using the scientific approach as one of the main guidelines

for setting up a school curriculum; after all, science is ultimately the driving forcebehind our survival in the world. I am only against applying it in an unrestrictedand inappropriate way. I want to define limits for it, and to regulate how it isapplied to different age groups, especially since the scientific approach as it isunderstood today is not free of contradictions and drawbacks. (I will describesome of these below.)

When school disciplines are automatically planned to be replicas ofscientific fields, as is usually done, they very often do not coincide with the actualinterests of many of the pupils. Such disciplines are approached by pupils asformal requirements that they only study because they are included in the schoolcurriculum; they do not study them of their own volition but because they must

master them for matriculation. Many of us, years after graduating, think back onour school years and reflect that a lot of time was spent worthlessly on one

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subject or another for no apparent purpose. Even the order in which the materialis presented is defined by the needs of the science rather than the pupils'developmental needs. And, even more significantly, much of the material ispresented in a form that is simply beyond the children's cognitive abilities. The

sciences have quickly reached the point that it is not possible for the majority ofschool children to master them at their early age. It is beyond their capacity tograsp these subjects not only because they penetrate deeply into the topics, butalso because they present a world that is vastly different from what we observe inour day-to-day reality. Consequently, people who are inclined to see realitysimply as it appears find themselves confused and frustrated by the picturepainted by the sciences.

Many philosophers and specialists in education have taken notice of thisinconsistency in planning school curricula and have made suggestions abouthow to improve the situation. One important example is John Dewey (1859-1952), who initiated such teaching methods as Dalton's plan and teamwork inschools. Dewey declared that the school education of his time was tootheoretical. He held that the curriculum should be reconstructed by the pupilsthemselves, who would, he felt, take the themes of study from their own lifeexperience. Naturally, this reform failed, as pupils are too young to extract thetopics for their education from their surroundings and to formulate them based onthe knowledge they have already acquired. I agree with Dewey's negativeappraisal of the existing curricula in schools, but I do not support his method ofreforming them. Rather, I only propose that scientific material should bepresented in a different form.

Indeed, why should we imitate the existing sciences and present them in

schools exactly as they are dealt with by mature scientists? Why should we notshow them in their earlier stages of development, when they had just begun toevolve and had not yet achieved their contemporary forms? If we do this, we canpresent them in a more down-to-earth manner that will be easier for our childrento comprehend. This will help pupils to connect to the subject matter, which will,in turn, make it easier for them to understand and give it greater appeal. After all,those things that we experience as nearer to us are more intelligible to us and wetend to accept them with greater delight.

That is why I propose modifying the intermediate level of school educationby replacing disciplines (botany, geography, physics, etc.) with topics thatincorporate science in a more intelligible form. Thus, the intermediate-level

curriculum I propose would contain topics like Growing PlantsorOur Fruit andVegetable Garden instead of Botany, and Great Voyages and Discoveriesinstead ofGeography(see my list of suggested topics below). Only at the high-school level will we encounter complete disciplines of the kind that are nowincluded both in the intermediate and higher levels of schooling. Even in highschool, these disciplines should only be taught as special subjects for specificstudents.

Topicsvs. School Disciplinesat the Intermediate Level of School Education

At the intermediate level, I think topics have definite advantages over the

disciplines as they are taught now:

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1. Like disciplines, topics represent scientific knowledge, but topics do thisnot in its present scientific form, but rather at the incipient stage of itsdevelopment, when it had just begun to be researched. This choice isbased on the recognition that as a scientific field penetrates deeper into

the aspects of reality it studies, it uses its own categories more and moreto explain that reality, and gradually distances itself from the reality weexperience in our lives. To jump immediately from the starting point to theend point of the evolution of a science is very difficult for the untrainedmind; the mind must pass through some transitional stations along theway before it can succeed. One such station is what I have called topics.

2. Disciplines tend to focus their attention on the latest achievements of ascientific field. Thus, they typically present the results first and then (ifthere is time) go back and explain how these results were achieved.Topics, by contrast, will concentrate instead on the turning points in the

research process on research that led to discoveries that were used tobenefit mankind. For this purpose, some scientific laws will be omitted, butthe general course of the scientific investigations will be preserved anddwelt on in detail.

3. The current approach frequently presents material using its most abstractsigns and notions. This is very difficult for children at this stage ofschooling. In fact, this type of presentation will remain beyond some ofthem permanently, and will thus remain useless. But even high schoolstudents who choose to focus on a particular science must have itpresented to them in a more coherent form.

Proposed Topics

I will not keep you in suspense any longer; here is a list of 20 topics that Ipropose introducing at the intermediate level of schooling. This list is neithercomplete nor obligatory. Each educationalist may improve it or even completelyreject it. Its only aim is to give readers an idea of what I mean by the notion oftopics.

1. Inventions that changed our world

2. Battles that affected human history3. Conquering the cosmos

4. Caring for our environment

5. Healthy body and healthful behavior

6. First aid and home remedies

7. Healthy food and healthful eating

8. Animals and humans

9. Domestic animals and pets

10. Growing plants

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11. Great voyages and discoveries

12. Ancient civilizations (Egypt, Assyria and Babylonia,ancient Greece and Rome, China, India, Inca, etc.: a short

history of a particular ancient country or culture)13. Museums and home collections

14. Particular architectural monuments

15. Deciphering dead languages

16. Systems of writing

17. Systems of counting

18. Systems of measurement

19. History of clothing fashions

20. History of money and financial institutions

This list is not final and will surely be expanded if my proposal is accepted.The directions in which it will expand depend in part on what we decide to retain ofthe current school curriculum.

Some of the topics in the list include material from more than one scientificfield. For example, systems of measurement is currently divided among a variety ofsciences, and among many school subjects to boot. Similarly, the topic battles thataffected human history is dispersed among many national histories. In fact, manyimportant battles are currently ignored in school curricula because they are not

included in the national histories that are being studied. For example, children in theEastern hemisphere do not learn about the war waged by Hernn Corts against theAztecs (in the beginning of the 16th century), even though his victory over the nativesled to the colonization of both of the Americas and to the upper hand the Europeanshad there from then on. And I wonder whether children in the Western hemispherelearn about the battle of Waterloo, since it did not take place in their territory.

Even more noticeable is that many of the topics included in the list are nottaught in schools at all like museums and home collectionsand first aid and homeremedies. Yet who can deny their significance to the lives of our children?Admittedly, children may not be able to cope with serious illnesses without the helpof medical professionals. But we would certainly wish them to be able to deal with

small injuries and minor indispositions by themselves. And this is something they donot learn in school today, even if they study the school subject called biology.

But the most convincing argument on behalf of the proposed topics is the factthat they will conquer the hearts of the pupils in the intermediate grades. Theirattractiveness, in comparison with long and tedious disciplines, is so obvious, that itwould be a great omission not to teach them to the younger generations.

Disciplines That Cannot Be Removed from School Curricula

Now that the concept of topics is understood, we must consider how theyshould be introduced into the existing curriculum. First, we must take into

account that some of the disciplines that are currently part of school curricula

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Sports and other physically demanding lessons to help keep pupilsphysically fit

Drawing, singing, music and other aesthetically oriented disciplines

National history, national geography, traditional religion, and sometimeseven purely moral instruction for inculcating patriotic views.

Subjects of these kinds (as well as the core disciplines) should be present inevery school curriculum. In fact, they can be introduced either in the form ofdisciplines or topics, as I will discuss below.

Three Levels of School Education and how They must be Organized

It is normal in most countries to divide the school years into three stages:primary school, intermediate grades (middle school), and high school. Thisdivision reflects the gradual maturing of pupils and the consequent expansion of

the expectations of the educational authorities and the public at large. As a resultof these changing expectations, many aspects of the teaching process thecontent, the degree of abstractness of the signs used, and the methods ofteaching are also altered as we advance from one level to the next.

In most pedagogic discussions of these stages, you will find the assertionthat it is easier to define the best approaches to primary school and high schooleducation than it is to define those of the intermediate level. I will quote onesource as an example of this viewpoint: a special report to the Sector for GeneralSecondary Education, a group affiliated with UNESCO, called, "The Content ofSecondary Education Around The World: Present Position and StrategicChoices," which was written by Roger-Francois Gauthier, a well-known specialistin the field of education, in 20071:

"Primary education for young children concentrates on literacy and theacquisition of skills defined without giving rise to any controversy, while highereducation aims at specialized knowledge. What kind of education should beprovided between these two stages? The predominant feeling at present isthat this stage is of capital importance since it is the stage at which the futureworker, citizen and adult must be trained.Who, then, can deny that it wouldbe a grave mistake to overlook the issue?"

2

I completely agree with Gauthier that the middle stage of school is the one

for which it is the most difficult to define the appropriate content and methods ofteaching. Moreover, I think that, if we handle this problem effectively, the solutionwill set the stage for managing the teaching content at schools from this stage onthrough high school. That is, while my suggestion about introducing topicsinstead of disciplines concerns, first and foremost, the intermediate stage ofschooling (approximately from the 4th to the 8th grades), it may become thestarting point for solving the general problem of the content of secondaryeducation. It is in the intermediate stage that our pupils are not yet matureenough to master the material in the form of school disciplines. It is this stage inwhich we cannot introduce the issues we teach from the most advanced

1

At: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001475/147570e.pdf (retrieved in November2012)2

Ibid., p. 23

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developments in the corresponding sciences. It is this stage in which we ought toconcentrate more on the gradual development of particular issues than onenumerating all the relevant scientific rubrics and their ramifications. In short, thisis the stage at which only the worthwhile aspects of the sciences will be

approached with understanding and enthusiasm by the pupils themselves.Moreover, as I mentioned above, this change in our approach will make it

possible to solve all the relevant issues related to the whole of secondaryeducation. This is because the intermediate level is the link that connects thechain of schooling from primary school to high school. The primary school willthen provide the initial skills for further schooling. The second, intermediate levelwill use these skills for mastering the initial levels of the knowledge that isneeded for practical purposes in everyday life. Those pupils who desire toimmerse themselves in the depths of the theoretical and abstract implications ofcertain scientific specialties will find a suitable framework in high school. And ifeven that does not satisfy some of them as their intellects mature, they willcontinue their studies in an institute of higher education.

To clarify what I mean, I have created the diagram below:

Three School Levels (primary, intermediate

and high school)

1. Leading disciplines,

primarily

2. Leading and specializeddisciplines and specific topics

3. Leading disciplines andscientific or theoretical

disciplines that are relevant to

the particular interests and

characteristics of the class

1

2

3

The diagram shows the three consecutive levels of secondary education:1. primary school, 2. the intermediate level, and 3. high school. In different

countries, these levels vary in terms of duration, study contents, and learningmethods, but they share the same basic properties, which are summarized brieflyon the right side of the diagram.

Primary school education will mainly consist of the teaching of the coredisciplines the leading disciplines and subjects devoted to upbringing andcharacter development. They are implemented by the infusion of basicknowledge in various subjects, knowledge that will be sufficient for mastering theskills and methods needed to understand simple logically coherent texts underthe guidance of teachers and, sometimes, even by pupils themselves. Theteaching ofleading disciplinescontinues throughout all the years of schooling.

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The content of the intermediate stage as it is taught today consists of thesesame leading disciplines augmented by specialized subjects, like physics,chemistry, and botany. It is at this stage that I propose introducing the specifictopicsI described above into the curriculum. Introducing them will, of necessity,

be a gradual process, as it will take time for the topics to be created andintroduced into the teaching process and for the teachers to be prepared to workdifferently. Hence, at first there will be more specialized subjects than topics.Over time, however, the topics will gradually supplant today's disciplines and, ifthe disciplines continue to exist at all, they will be altered in some ways by thetopic-oriented environment. Topics, both because of their inherent characteristicsand because of the role they will fill, are simply more suitable for the intermediatestage and will ultimately occupy the central place in its curriculum.

Unlike the intermediate grades, the high schools must, in my opinion, begeared to specialization. By the time pupils enter high school, they must be readyfor the branching of secondary education; they must be ready to enter one of theexisting school tracks, in which they will study specific material of a humanitarian,technical, or mathematical nature. The reasons for the branching are two-fold: onthe one hand, the age of the students already allows them to choose what reallyattracts them, and, on the other hand, no school plan can include all the scientificmaterials available at their current high levels, even in a very concise form. Thus,at this stage we can only give pupils specialized courses of a more or lesshomogeneous character supporting their own choice of the track. After theirchoices are made, each high school must build its curriculum accordingly. Thecurriculum at this level must consist of leading disciplines, adapted to thedirections the pupils have chosen,and some specialized disciplinesof the type

that are already taught today.

Some Recommendations for the Implementation of my Plan

At this point I would like to discuss how I propose to implement theinnovations I wrote about above. This aspect of the proposal is no less importantthan the innovations themselves, as I want my project to be put into motion andnot to just to remain on paper. I also do not want my suggestions to beintroduced by force, by a decree from above; I have lived through too manyrevolutions to want to initiate another one. The changes should be naturally andsmoothly incorporated into today's educational practice, as I explain briefly in this

section.Before I begin, I must add one extra note: the discussion in this section

relates predominantly to the intermediate level of schooling. To be sure, theextensive changes that will be made at that level will influence the other stages ofeducation, but a detailed discussion of these repercussions seems superfluous atthe moment. The chief reforms should be implemented in the curriculum of themiddle grades, and I shall dwell on these at length. In essence, the gist of mysuggestions concerns how best to go about introducing topics into the middlegrades of schools, and how to ensure that the current school disciplines and theproposed topics coexist amicably.

To begin, I propose that the topics I delineated above (or any other set of

topics that are chosen) be prepared in electronic form. An office should be set upthat will be responsible for collecting and storing the materials related to each

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topic. This office, which I call the center of distant education, should be part ofthe ministry of education of the country in which the plan is implemented. Theoffice will locate appropriate specialists for writing scenarios of the topics. Thesescenarios must be methodically organized and have a very specific designated

audience (for example: "history of money for the fifth grade" or "national alphabetfor sixth-graders"). After they are prepared, the topics will be made available insome electronic format and presented to the ministry of education for evaluation.If they are approved for use in the relevant grade, the ministry will announce thatthey are available and recommend them for introduction into all the suitableeducational institutions in the country. Nonetheless, there should be norequirement that every class work with every recommended topic; every teacherwill have the right to choose which ones, if any, to use in his or her courses.Moreover, this decision may even be left up to the pupils themselves.

This brings me to the most sensitive point of my proposals. I believe that,regardless of whether my plan is implemented or not, a global revision of schooleducation is about to take place. School education will soon be reorganized toincorporate self-education into the structure of formal education. The presentstate of communications technology and infrastructure is such that we canalready start to combine formal schooling with self-education by our pupils. Mostpupils already have their own computers and are using them for internetexplorations. But they do this instinctively, without knowing exactly what isnecessary for their intellectual growth. We, educationalists, must guide them intheir blind incursions into the ocean of information collected in the internet, and,conversely, we must also prevent them from gleaning harmful information from it.That is why I propose using the topics I invented to officially identify and certify

material that is appropriate for incorporation into school activities.In light of what I just said, I propose allowing pupils of the intermediate levelto work independently on topics that are approved by the educational authorities,to master them, and even to be tested on them and get formal school credit forthem. The tests can be administered in the schools and then sent to the center ofdistant education for evaluation. The marks can then be entered into thematriculation documents of the pupils. In this way, towards the end of theintermediate school level, before they enter high school, pupils will be able toaccumulate a lot of additional grades along with the standard evaluations that arenow given at schools. Not only will this independent work help infuse studentswith the skills and habits of self education, the additional grades will give us a

comprehensive picture of each individual's educational activities during the entireintermediate period of their schooling. This may help us to see:

Whether a student is eager to study at all; whether he or she isdetermined enough, or simply swims passively in the educational current

What each student's learning preferences are and, consequently, whatspecializations would be appropriate for him or her in high school.

All of these points are of great significance for the further advancement ofsecondary education. Nonetheless, the main advantage of my proposed plan isthat it may greatly enhance pupils motivation to take part in educationalactivities. It will give them the chance to choose to learn what most appeals to

them, to do it in their own way, and to get rewards for it in the form of additionalcredits for their efforts. In this way, we can also solve the most acute educational

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problems of our time: the problem of how to enable pupils to quickly acquire thelearning skills that match their own preferences and inclinations, and the problemof school curriculum overloading. Our pupils themselves will decide, whether tostudy additional material in the form of non-obligatory topics. In short, with one

stone we may kill two birds.To achieve these ends, the centers of distant education will have to do a lot

of preparatory work. They will have to prepare many different educational topicsthat are diverse in content and geared to various types of schools and levels.They will have to get approval for them from the ministry of education, receive itssupport for implementing them, and get its permission to disseminate them toschools. They will also have to compose tests for each topic and set criteria formarking these tests. Finally, they will have to publicize information about thetopics that are available and explain how they can be accessed and used.

This is a project that will take many years to set up and bring to fruition. Still,in the long run the resulting topics will be of practical use, either for independentwork by pupils or for teachers to utilize in a classroom setting. As the catalogueof available topics grows, related topics may be collected to create completedisciplines or incorporated into subjects that are already being taught in theschools. In the distant future, we can imagine the standard school curriculum willinclude both kinds of teaching materials disciplines and topics. But this is justconjecture, far distant from the initial step of creating centers for distanteducation, which is what I suggest be done in many countries as soon aspossible.

November 2012

How to Reform Secondary-School Education

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Transcript of How to Reform Secondary-School Education