Curriculum Matters 2 : 2006

This paper challenges the belief that methods of teaching reading are the answer to raising age cohort standards of achievement, and that literacy, in the form of reading and writing, is based on spoken language. It is argued that documents, advising how to raise standards of literacy, have overlooked the way in which education systems work, and their relationship to large-scale testing, and have not considered methods which use real-life writing to establish literacy in young school children. The concept of a configuration of sites is presented as a way of understanding literacy in both its social and individual aspects, and for diverse population groups.

The “literary curriculum” seeks to make curriculum space legible. This requires denying that knowledge has backgrounds that cannot be made legible. Worse still, the attempt to make knowledge legible undermines that which can reasonably be described, and leaves it, if not unusable, then deficient. The difficulty facing those who are concerned with preserving an emphasis on “backgrounds that cannot be made foreground” is that the notion of background evades easy discussion. There are several reasons for this. One is the fact that we—in particular, speakers of English—feel the force of a disposition that urges us to name things and attribute a kind of ownership to them.

This article looks at the current organisation of senior secondary curriculum in New Zealand, and raises some key questions that will need to be considered as we seek to develop a senior secondary curriculum designed for life in the twenty-first century. It asks: Do our current structures, for senior secondary curriculum, support goals and aspirations that have been articulated for twenty-first century senior secondary education, and, if not, what might need to change?

Though they are geographically close, England and France’s underlying philosophies regarding education and, for the focus of this paper, mathematics education, exhibit differences worth considering. The English system, influenced by the humanism school of thought, can be characterised by its desire to treat each student as an individual—and to guide the students in their social, emotional, as well as cognitive developments. In contrast, the French system places less emphasis on affective concerns, but rather focuses on the rational and functional aspects of education for all its citizens—a reflection of the encyclopaedic roots of French education. The results of these distinctive philosophical orientations can be seen in the practice of mathematics education in the two countries. For example, differences exist in their views on “setting”, the availability and use of textbooks, and in the day-to-day school culture. An examination of the strengths and weaknesses of the two European systems suggests potential changes could be made in New Zealand. These changes include: making mathematics an explicit, rather than implicit, gatekeeper; addressing the roles of the teacher; and changing the structure of the school day.

The Cold War, and especially the launch of Sputnik, meant changes in curriculum development throughout the Western world. New Zealand was no exception. Our model, the Curriculum Development Unit (CDU), later the Curriculum Development Division (CDD), was relatively unique, heavily oriented towards teacher involvement. In the 1960s and early 1970s, there was a confident sense of educational progress, and curriculum development was both a driver of that feeling and a reflection of it. Towards the end of the 1970s, and throughout the 1980s, there was a change of mood. There was concern over the ever-rising cost, and society was becoming fractured over moral issues such as sex and social studies education. For six years, Merv Wellington tried to stem the curriculum development tide. That tide was overtaken by a larger wave—Rogernomics. The CDD went out of existence. For a brief period it had been a power-house of education. There are some lessons to be learnt.