RE: back to basics

Gordon Wells (gwells who-is-at oise.on.ca)
Thu, 14 Sep 1995 10:32:49 -0400 (EDT)

Jay makes an important point, I think, when he urges us to try to understand
the widespread support for back-to-basics schooling among parents and the
public more generally. Stated in terms of the need for all students,
whatever their positioning in society, to master the basic skills needed
beyond the classroom, the call for attention to the basics is clearly
just and sensible. The problem, then is not whether there should be
attention to the basics, but how. (Of course, there is also the question
of what constitutes the "basics", but I won't go into that.) Unfortunately,
in the hands of the more conservative proponents of back to basics,
encouraged by traditional fundamentalists, emphasis on the basics tends
to be equated with a transmissionary organization of classroom
activities and the acceptance of "authority" and a discouragement of
student inquiry and initiative. With this goes a deprofessionalizing
treatment of teachers as mere implementers of programs imposed by
"experts", who do not and cannot have first-hand knowledge of the
previous experience and current interests and abilities of the
individual members of particular classes of students, which should be
the point of departure for local curriculum and lesson planning.

A more appropriate response to the desire for serious attention to the
basics, I believe, must involve teachers and whole school staffs in
systematic and imaginative decision-making, based on their own ongoing
inquiries into the who, what, how and why of learning and teaching in
their local situation. School-wide action research for staff
development and curriculum planning seems, to my mind, to be more likely
to achieve the desired outcome than top-down, prescribed curricula, that
allow teachers little room for manouver.

Mike's proposed substitution of "activities" for "skills" might well be
helpful for teachers attempting to get a sense of perspective. The
central idea, I take it, is that the "basics" are best thought of as the
tools that mediate the achievement of the (emergent) goals of joint
activities to which both teacher and students are personally committed.
>From this perspective, mastering the basics will be seen as a necessary
part of participating productively in the activities - an important
means, but not the end of the work of the classroom community.

A somewhat more elaborated version of this idea, influenced by
Engestrom's (1991) model of an activity system, with its expanded
mediational triangle, underpins our collaborative action research group's
(DICEP) exploration of the roles of discourses (a key aspect of the
basics) in learning and teaching. It is also the basis of my
about-to-be-published paper, "Language and the Inquiry-Oriented
Curriculum" (Curriculum Inquiry, in press).

Reference

Engestrom, Y. (1991) Non scolae sed vitae discimus: Toward overcoming the
encapsulation of school learning. *Learning and Instruction*, 1: 243-259.

Gordon Wells, gwells who-is-at oise.on.ca
OISE, Toronto.