Let me explain.
Acclaimed US psychologist Professor David Geary has distinguished two basic kinds of knowledge.
The first, he calls ‘biologically primary’. We acquire biologically primary knowledge without it being directly taught. Our brains have structures specifically set up for the job.
The clearest example of biologically primary knowledge is oral language. Very young children naturally learn the language that’s spoken around them without anyone directly teaching it to them.
Geary called his other category of knowledge, ‘secondary’. This is the knowledge that human beings have developed throughout history. It includes, among many other things, the knowledge traditionally taught in schools – reading, writing, mathematics, history, science and so on.
Secondary knowledge does have to be directly taught. We won’t reliably acquire it if it’s not.
The New Zealand Curriculum includes both primary and secondary knowledge. It calls primary knowledge, ‘key competencies’, and secondary knowledge, ‘learning areas’.
The key competencies include thinking, self-management, and social interaction. They are at the forefront of the curriculum. This risks teachers over-prioritising the key competencies and thinking they need to teach them directly.
Naturally we want children to learn to think, to look after themselves and to treat others well. Schools do have a role in supporting them to acquire this kind of knowledge. But because these things are biologically primary, there’s no point in trying to teach them directly. And doing so detracts from time that should be spent learning secondary knowledge.
The best way to foster children’s thinking is to teach them facts and concepts, and to model productive ways of discussing and questioning them. Healthy personal and social behaviour will be established in a structured and orderly school environment in which such behaviour is expected and modelled.
The learning areas are in the back half of the curriculum. They are very scant on detail and structure. But these are the very things that teachers need to be given much more support to directly teach.
The curriculum should specify secondary knowledge in much more detail than it does. It should help teachers sequence their teaching, so that children are always operating from a solid foundation for further learning.
Our national curriculum doesn’t do this. It’s no wonder our education system is failing to make young people even basically literate.
It’s time for a new curriculum that puts secondary knowledge at the forefront.
It’s time to turn the New Zealand upside down.
Dr Michael Johnston has held academic positions at Victoria University of Wellington for the past ten years. He holds a PhD in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Melbourne. This article was published HERE
The clearest example of biologically primary knowledge is oral language. Very young children naturally learn the language that’s spoken around them without anyone directly teaching it to them.
Geary called his other category of knowledge, ‘secondary’. This is the knowledge that human beings have developed throughout history. It includes, among many other things, the knowledge traditionally taught in schools – reading, writing, mathematics, history, science and so on.
Secondary knowledge does have to be directly taught. We won’t reliably acquire it if it’s not.
The New Zealand Curriculum includes both primary and secondary knowledge. It calls primary knowledge, ‘key competencies’, and secondary knowledge, ‘learning areas’.
The key competencies include thinking, self-management, and social interaction. They are at the forefront of the curriculum. This risks teachers over-prioritising the key competencies and thinking they need to teach them directly.
Naturally we want children to learn to think, to look after themselves and to treat others well. Schools do have a role in supporting them to acquire this kind of knowledge. But because these things are biologically primary, there’s no point in trying to teach them directly. And doing so detracts from time that should be spent learning secondary knowledge.
The best way to foster children’s thinking is to teach them facts and concepts, and to model productive ways of discussing and questioning them. Healthy personal and social behaviour will be established in a structured and orderly school environment in which such behaviour is expected and modelled.
The learning areas are in the back half of the curriculum. They are very scant on detail and structure. But these are the very things that teachers need to be given much more support to directly teach.
The curriculum should specify secondary knowledge in much more detail than it does. It should help teachers sequence their teaching, so that children are always operating from a solid foundation for further learning.
Our national curriculum doesn’t do this. It’s no wonder our education system is failing to make young people even basically literate.
It’s time for a new curriculum that puts secondary knowledge at the forefront.
It’s time to turn the New Zealand upside down.
Dr Michael Johnston has held academic positions at Victoria University of Wellington for the past ten years. He holds a PhD in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Melbourne. This article was published HERE
8 comments:
The current New Zealand education system has nothing to do with children learning or thinking.
It is set up to indoctrinate and for that literacy is an enemy, hence why literacy has become a casualty for school-age people.
Teach them to read when you know all they'll want to read is strictly edited propaganda.
New Zealand will need to carefully replace the complete system and most of it's personnel to change this back.
Phil Blackwell
Do you hear National advocating this?
No - instead, they consult with Iwi .
I have read about these concepts before.
The sad part of the new NZ curriculum is that the secondary knowledge being taught isn't actually knowledge.
It is fraudulent lies based upon corrupted omission.
NZ children are being taught nothing except what the regime wishes and this leads to them to stop developing their innate ability to think for themselves.
Not sad, scary!
A bigger problem is the racist indoctrination which is core to both primary and secondary knowledge in the NZ schools curriculum. Racist indoctrination of children is child abuse. It is very sad that NZ children receive such a poor education, but it is a greater tragedy that they are being indoctrinated in racist thinking.
But that would require recruiting to favour the objective type of teacher not disposed to frittering hours of time on maori twaddle and currently largely for that reason very much discouraged from teaching, despite the holidays and salaries. It would represent a real threat to the current maori superiority brainwash campaign being accomplished through the education system in preparation for general takeover via co governance. Provided mix of extreme student ability levels are avoided, and teachers are recruited to the standards of yesteryear, it is easier to teach a defined secondary subject than the woolly stuff.
Pupils are taught what to think and not how to think. Critical thinking has been replaced with indoctrination. The product of this is clearly on display as they chant their latest dose of climate change brainwashing from morally corrupt programmers.
What will happen to young people when they go out into the world with a pure NZ education and discover they are full of meaningless twaddle of no interest to anyone?
Honesty,I think one answer could be a separate schooling system organized around parents taking turns to educate groups of children, Teachers have not been taught how to actually teach directly secondary area subjects for decades now.It is a lost skill.They have also been so indoctrinated into believing constructivism is best, I just don't see them being able to change. Teaching a child to read and do arithmetic is not actually a big deal given the right materials. When you don't waste time unnecessarily teaching primary area subjects students can cover a syllabus in a few hours each day.
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