Returning to this blog after many years. It was a wonder to find that it is still alive. Re-reading my previous posts still made sense to me - though both my son and I may have evolved in our learning. However, mostly, I felt the need to return to this blog because I have to say Years 7 - 10, the years post-primary and pre-HSC, in an academically selective school with good resources and (mostly) great teachers, still hasn't been an altogether easy experience.
Of course, this isn't a panic post - mostly, he is a fine young man, curious, thoughtful, reflective, quite humorous and cheeky at times, plays piano beautifully, runs cross-country at the state level, and loves academics - especially math and physics (and some parts of chemistry). So, overall, the teenager is doing just fine.
But, this rumination and return to the blog is about a larger problem - concerning not just my son, but all of his friends, and all of his friends' parents, who are all either dealing with the problem by sending the kids to tutoring outside of school, or going to school again with their kids, like me. This primary large problem can be stated in one sentence as: The Curriculum and its execution is extremely strange. When I mean curriculum, I will not be talking about the humanities subjects here - it may sound presumptuous on my part, but even if you have a poor history or English syllabus, it is relatively easy to madly read hundreds of books, and make yourself fairly proficient (unless, and upto the point, you go into formal training to be a historian of course). I will be talking about the Math curriculum and the Science curriculum.
The first time I went to school was in India. Sometime around Years 10, 11 and 12, children in India are acutely aware that their Year 12 (HSC equivalent) mark is going to be insufficient to get them into the best universities and schools. Thus, just for context, kids in India study more than and more deeply than what is specified in the curriculum because they need to sit these extremely competitive and difficult entrance examinations to the best schools and universities after Year 12. There are a lot of downsides to this model, but one of the upsides for me was that I did a whole lot of fairly advanced physics and mathematics - maybe undergraduate level stuff, in years 11 and 12. (Disclaimer: this is many, many, many years ago).
My relatively simple understanding of a good curriculum is that
(a) it lays down clearly, exactly what is to be learnt, and
(b) it is staged appropriately - the learning content is built like a pyramid, where more complex topics are handled at increasingly advanced levels as the earlier levels address the advancing basics.
However, in this second experience of going to school, this time in Australia - I was often left confused as a parent. We didn't know what was being taught in the school, how it was organised, the staging, or the content. I also lament the loss of textbooks - all of primary school happened with no textbooks, and from Years 7 - 10, there were textbooks, but not for all subjects. Most importantly, there was a single "Science" textbook, which was not laid out as three subjects - as I was used to - Physics, Chemistry and Biology. Instead, there was a single book for Science, and the content was fairly descriptive and narrative based, instead of building important bridges between mathematics and the sciences. The way science is done in the real world is very mathematical. The way mathematics is done in the real world is also, well, very mathematical. But, sadly, Years K - 10 in Australia does not achieve this in the school curriculum.
As a result, parents are almost always running blind, trying to second-guess what is being covered at school. In my case, it has led to using the second-guessing process to fill in a massive number of knowledge gaps - topics that are simply never ever covered in the syllabus or the school. Or some topics that are covered in shallow ways, and need deeper exploration, with a lot more time being spent on each topic (as opposed to doing lots of new topics).
I will not be using this blog to critique a lot - it is always being done constantly, going by the number of news articles in all of the leading newspapers (recent ones focussing on declining PISA results and curriculum critique). To me, as a parent, that critique is not very helpful in actually assisting me to help my child learn well and be prepared for University later (because he would like to study further, and despite the experience above, still loves math and science (and now economics)).
Instead, we have to think of some solutions. These solutions would be parent-led - I see a lot of discussion between education experts, practicing scientists and mathematicians, university educators - I am not formally trained in teaching school aged children, but I do not think of this as a major handicap. I believe all we need to teach and learn really well is an approach where we pay very close attention to the what and the how of learning. Of course, I make no apologies for the fact that even though I have not studied mathematics or physics formally at the university level, I am still rather in love with the year 12 experience (somewhat accelerated for me) of these two subjects, which means I'm still in love with these two subjects, and even if I am not proficient in them, I think I have the capacity to pick up some good books, teach myself, and then teach and help my kid along (and perhaps a few others). I find this confidence in the fact that whenever I have needed to learn a new bit of math for my own work (unrelated to this blog), I have been able to do so.
I would be using the blog space to document how I go to school with my son this second time around. This is going to be as much a learning journey for me as a teaching journey. In sharing this story, it might lead to some helpful tips for other kids and parents who constantly report being the same boat.
