But over my shoulder I hear alternative voices of those who argue that the
disciplines are what matter. That in the disciplines reside ways of
thinking and conceiving the world - the tools of our culture - that we must
cultivate in schools. That implies that students should do mathematics as
mathematicians and follow the topics that have conceptual/historical
significance within the mysterious discipline of mathematics. They must be
faithful apprentices, regardless of how esoteric the practices of the
expert mathematician might seem.
I once had a research student who tried, in the district surrounding a high
school, to discover the relationship between what happened in school and
what happened in the local work-places where most of the high school
graduates got jobs. He observed in the factories and offices, and observed
in the high school classrooms, and tried to find similarities between the
two. There were very few similarities. Most of what the workers did by way
of mathematics, writing, etc., they had learned in elementary school. The
high school subject that seemed to have the closest fit was history,
largely because the interpretive and meaning-making activities that were
required in the high school history class were closest to the interpretive
and meaning-making activities that workers needed to make sense of their
workplace. But that was stretching it a bit.
As an aside, he found that the workplace managers had almost no conception
of what their workers actually did, except in the most abstract and
conceptually vague terms. Which did not stop them from complaining loudly
about how little students learned in high schools.
Which leads to the conclusion that the debate about the high school
curriculum is a self-contained art-form having little connection with the
lives of students.
Thanks
Graham
Graham Nuthall
Professor of Education
University of Canterbury
Private Bag 4800
Christchurch, New Zealand
Phone 64 3 3642255 Fax 64 3 3642418
http://www.educ.canterbury.ac.nz/learning.html