Fermanagh students and their teaching methods under consideration by our columnist

It’s a funny kind of human condition and modern thinking would have that as a trait of some kind of recently invented ‘ism’, or simply due to having too much time on one’s hands.

Whatever the reason, for me, it always raises a smilem because the rebel within me wants to disrupt that.

If you’re ever struggling to sleep, have a look some time at the Northern Ireland Curriculum’s ‘Big Picture’; sheer ecstatic joy for those who are wired that way. 

Does it make any sense? Of course not, but for challenged thinkers who can’t cope without a rule, a category or justification for a subject, then it’s the epitome of achievement.

This isn’t to say its intentions aren’t laudable – they are – and I’ve spent many sessions bored out of my tree listening to its disciples smile with glee with the perfect sense it makes to their public-sector minds. 

That said, in the broader sense, it has the danger of grouping things that aren’t really ‘groupable’, if that makes sense.

Like all good corporate junk, it starts with an aim; a purpose that catches all but is usually so obvious you don’t bother reading it. 

The NI Curriculum is no different, and here we are treated to the poetic, “The Northern Ireland Curriculum aims to empower young people to achieve their potential and to make informed and responsible decisions throughout their lives”.

Reading down, we come to the equally anodyne ‘Curriculum Objectives’; namely, “to develop the young person as an individual, to develop the young person as a contributor to society and to develop the young person as a contributor to the economy and environment”.

I’m no genius, but I think it looks like they want to develop the young person.

The next stage is where it starts to crank up a bit and get a little more interesting, where you are supposed to achieve these objectives “for personal development, home economics, local and global citizenship and employability” through a range of 12 key elements.

These 12 elements include lovely, broad, sweeping areas such as “moral character”, “media awareness” and “education for sustainable development”.

Confusing? You bet; but it gets worse. You now have to ‘infuse’ these with three cross-curricular skills, “Communication”, “Using Mathematics” and “Using ICT” as well as another five “thinking skills and personal capabilities” such as “working with others” and “being creative” and other nuggets of essential learning.

By this stage, the bird’s-eye approach is starting to hone into or close to actual school subjects – almost, but not quite.

For that to happen, we have to continue our ‘12 days of Christmas’ theme and do all these skills and objectives across eight areas of learning; and finally, some subjects to teach.

These are, The Arts, English (or Irish in Irish medium schools), Environment and Society, Mathematics, Modern Languages, PE, Science and Technology and RE. That’s your lot then for Key Stage 3 and 4, so for studying actual GCSEs, you then subdivide a bit further such as French, German and Spanish for Modern Languages and Physics, Chemistry and Biology for science.

The EA have not finished yet though, there are more hoops to jump through, as you have to promote and encourage these areas of learning into 14 learning experiences, using nine forms of assessments for learning and finally, just to fill the page up, as I can’t think of any other reason, you are asked to again, encourage and promote 11 different attitudes and dispositions.

So what are my objections to all this, or where is the problem?

Well, in essence, there’s nothing flawed about the way its thinking is derived, but the major difficulty is that it tries to categorise things that don’t need to be put into boxes. 

In short, it creates a lot of work that doesn’t need to be created.

Let’s take an example. Say you are teaching a Seamus Heaney poem with Year 10s.

You read the poem, you get the children to read the poem silently to themselves, and then go through the themes, talking about language, exploring values, comparing it with what they’ve read so far, and so on. That’s about the way you normally teach.

However, somewhere along the line, some school principal will think it’s a good idea for a teacher to needlessly tick what they’ve measured.

Firstly, as an ‘attitude and disposition’, you could tick a box to show that the kids showed curiosity, had possible concern for others (let’s say the poem was ‘Midterm Break’), under assessment for learning it was challenging and engaging and as a learning experience was relevant and enjoyable.

Let’s for argument’s sake say a teacher had all the time in the world to go through this, on an individual basis, for each class. 

Ticking a box doesn’t show that the children were curious, set individual targets or showed flexibility. It’s all faff and hearsay; all totally subjective and based on the teacher that taught it. 

As a result, teachers that have principals that insist on such administration, have to spend countless hours ticking boxes of made-up criteria just to satisfy their OCD head teacher. 

Yes, guess what? While they’re boosting their principal’s CV by making them look good for inspectors, they’re not teaching your child.

On the other hand, a good lesson will have those criteria already in place, so why do they have to be documented, especially when there’s no punishment for not doing them?

Well, there could be – in the form of a slightly negative inspection report – but such reports are so general, it wouldn’t matter a hoot.

The good news is, I don’t know of any sane principal, vice-principal or school governor who insists on this level of scrutiny, but on the word of other teachers, they are out there. 

The second piece of good news is that most teachers – or at least any sensible ones – apply a huge dollop of common sense to applying all this nonsense.

We don’t need our life categorised to the death, we’ll still learn without that; just because it’s written down, doesn’t mean it’s either taught or understood.