An answer?

In a long post a few days ago, I railed against many of the things that most bug me about education - all the misguided ideas and flaws and shortcomings that bedevil it.

But I wasn't able to offer any solutions to any of this (or only a few, just hinted at here and there).

Well, I do have an idea that might offer some solutions - one big idea, with a few subsidiary ideas revolving around it like satellites. And that idea is modularity.

I really like the model followed in the American college system of allowing students to choose from a wide array of short courses, with a fair degree of latitude to explore some areas that are completely unrelated to their 'major' field of study. I'd like to try to apply that to secondary education (and even perhaps lower down than that).

One of my great dissatisfactions with secondary education today (although I largely passed over it in my post the other day) is that students are limited to a fairly small number of subjects of study - and yet devote a somewhat excessive amount of time to each of these subjects.  [This fault is compounded by the fact that the pace of study is often so leisurely these days. When I was at school, individual lessons were only 35 or 40 minutes long; but now, it is becoming more and more common for 60 minutes to be the standard lesson length; or even 70 or 80 minutes, the length of a 'double period' in the old days, a rare extravagance usually reserved for practical work in art or science - and even there it may be doubted if such a generous allocation of time was really necessary. With lessons like that, there is usually far less emphasis on punctuality (students - and teachers - may arrive a few minutes late; and take their time to get properly started!); and there's a lot of 'down time', where not much is being done, or is being done without any very urgent time pressure.]

I believe children really enjoy working at a brisker rate: they like being pushed to complete tasks within a narrow timeframe (and they can accept - it's good for them to learn to accept - that it isn't always possible or necessary to finish something in the given time). They also like quantity: getting the feeling that they are acquiring lots of new knowledge, exploring lots of new topics, encountering lots of new ideas and ways of looking at the world - within a short space of time. And above all, they relish variety: they like to be studying lots of different things.

A fully modular curriculum, with numerous short courses (4-6 weeks should be enough, as a maximum) on offer, would better satisfy these desires, I believe. Students would probably be able to study rather more different things at any one time, or certainly far more different things within a school term or a school year. And they would be exposed to a far greater variety of subjects and topics overall. (Just reviewing course summaries when making their next batch of selections might become a valuable part of the educational process under such a system - broadening horizons, provoking curiosity, opening up new paths of study that a student had not previously dreamt of).

Such a system would not only be more stimulating for students, and cater better to their individuality, but would also allow far more space to 'minority' subjects - particularly some fields of study that are at present marginalized or completely excluded from most secondary curricula: engineering, website design, linguistics, philosophy, sociology, etc. And if this displaces the more traditional subjects (mathematics, "geography", "science", modern languages) from their dominating position at the core of present curricula, I believe that would also be a good thing.

There would have to be some limitations. A certain 'foundation level' of introductory courses in an agreed core of subjects would have to be compulsory for all. But I would hope that this could be largely dealt with in the first year or two of secondary schooling; or perhaps even in the last year or two at the primary level. And thereafter, students could rapidly build out - each effectively creating an individually-tailored curriculum for themself. 

Certain parameters would no doubt have to be set (and students could be reminded of these by a combination of advice from a teacher-mentor and automated notices from a computer program): that they must complete a certain number of courses to a certain level in order to qualify for a graduation certificate, etc.; or that they must follow certain combinations of specific subjects at the higher levels to be eligible to enter a highly specialised university degree/career path such as medicine or software engineering. Timetabling issues would be enormously complex, of course; indeed, they would have been quite insoluble, unthinkable until recently; but with the rise of super-smart computers, such problems are rapidly becoming tractable.

Of course, there are many other practical challenges to be overcome in trying to implement such a radical system - not least in the development of the new graded courses (encompassing so many new subjects and so much new content). But nothing worth doing is easy. I believe it could be done.

And here are some (of the many) peripheral changes - and advantages - that might be associated with this modular study approach:

1)  Fully realising student autonomy

Or realising it as fully as it ever can be. We can't do away with school completely. And we can't make it purely voluntary. And I don't think we can move to having schools run too far on the principle of 'self-directed study'. (I have not been all that much impressed by a lot of what I have seen of such 'project work', where students have been given complete freedom to come up with a topic of investigation in history or science or whatever. Most seem to be severely unambitious - raiding their ideas from the Internet, and selecting one that seems likely to be least demanding of them.) But if students are able to exercise choice almost every day as to what subjects they are studying (and, to some extent, whether they are studying them in a group or alone, in class or at home - see my further points below), they will feel genuinely empowered - in control of their educational experience. That's been a 'Holy Grail' of educational theory for years now; but, apart a series of lurches towards more of this project work, there hasn't as yet been any progress towards achieving it. At present, students are generally offered only a rather limited range of subject choices, and mostly only in the upper years of secondary schooling. My proposal is to try to make choice fundamental and ubiquitous throughout the entire secondary school experience.

2)  Achieving real student differentiation (without marking!)

If we could build as much variety into the subject offerings as I envisage, almost no two students - or very, very few students, anyway - would pursue exactly the same set of courses, with exactly the same results, across their whole school career. The effective differentiation between individuals that universities and employers so crave would be achieved by the fact that every student's academic record was virtually unique. And this could be done without reference to individual marks on every separate course component; the differentiation would now be established simply by the number of courses taken (and completed), the levels reached (and at what age), the variety of courses chosen (and the changing patterns over time, perhaps revealing a gradually emerging primary specialist interest, or a continuing lack of one), and the commonalities evidenced in the majority of highest-level courses taken in the last year or two at school. 'Performance' in individual courses (of which there would eventually be some hundreds over the period of a high school career, perhaps as many as as fifty or sixty in a single year) would not really matter: they could simply be classified as 'Pass/Fail', or - preferably - 'Complete/Incomplete'. It might be possible, and useful, especially for courses at the higher levels, to provide one or two levels of 'distinction' for particularly impressive work. And course supervisors would still - hopefully - provide detailed written feedback on each student's experiences on a given course. But 'assessment', of individual tasks and of the overall course, could become entirely formative; and, I fondly hope, it could dispense with marking scales and the rank ordering of class members altogether.

3)  Breaking away from the single-site school (and diversifying methods of study/teaching)

The much greater breadth of possible classes this model entails would naturally tend to undermine the position of a single school as the centre for all of a child's study (and I believe this would be a very good thing). Much of the course delivery might be done - would probably have to be - via online formats (which could be pursued by students at home, or in designated 'study centres' such as a local library or Internet cafe, rather than on the traditional school campus). And some courses might require attendance at different schools in the area.

4)  Breaking away from traditional notions of the class group, providing more social variety

I believe this modular study approach would offer students a much greater variety of classroom environments and of study peer groups. They might not see many, if any, of their fellow students in every single class they are undertaking at any one time. And many of their classes might place them among total strangers. Some classes, I hope, might require their attendance at teaching/learning venues outside of their main school. And many, if not most classes, particularly at the higher levels of difficulty, would include students with a wide range of ages, not all drawn from just one year-group. And I would like to see the fostering of informal 'study groups' (I think the nature of these courses and their manner of delivery would create a powerful incentive for this) for collaborative work outside of class, which might again cut across the traditional silos of class, year-group, and school.

5)  Allowing for more independent study

'Homework' has become a bit of a dirty word in teaching circles in recent years; but the only thing I can find to be said against it is that is has traditionally been done at home, in what should really be a student's leisure time. I generally quite enjoyed homework as a child, and I am sure I did my most productive schoolwork in this format; I just resented the fact that it occupied so much of my time that I might have preferred to spend reading or watching TV. I think these very short but very intensive courses, requiring a lot of independent work (whether collaboratively or solo) and relying extensively on online resources, would naturally suggest a timetabling model where a significant amount of time is set aside for 'private study' (as we used to call it in my school days), even in the late-primary/early-secondary years: 'homework' during the day. Internet technology makes it possible - indeed, easy and enjoyable - for nearly all students to work at home these days (alternative study venues might be established for any for whom this might be a problem; ideally, such centres should be only very lightly supervised, and located outside of regular school campuses). And teachers - or monitoring software - can check in occasionally, to see if students are logged into and interacting with recommended resources; or, at the very least, proof of work carried out on a regular basis should be able to maintain a fairly conscientious approach in most cases (I wouldn't want to create an atmosphere of cyber-surveillance on out-of-school study; I really believe that 99% of the time, kids could be trusted to use this time reasonably sensibly). Children, I'm sure, would quickly adapt to this new way of working; but, of course, good pastoral care monitoring by teachers would be especially important in a transitional period, and would continue to be crucial for any students who find it difficult to maintain any self-discipline in unsupervised study.

6)  A further degree of 'freedom'

I would hope that this new approach to working - highly flexible timetabling, a lot of self-directed work, a lot of work occurring unsupervised and outside of the school environment - could provide an additional opportunity for the exercise of student autonomy: the right to skip a certain number of classes or courses each term or year. Of course, this would have to be sensitively monitored by individually assigned teacher-mentors, to try to be sure that not too much work was being missed, or that there was not some serious emotional or health issue - bullying or boredom or a personality clash with a teacher or whatever - triggering the 'opting out'. But I'd like to see this work, in effect, like the idea of the 'duvet day': an unquestioned 'day off' - or 'week off' - every once in a while, when the individual feels they need it. With such a plethora of courses being undertaken (and such flexibility to pursue a stepped sequence of courses on any timeline the student pleases), it won't much matter if someone fails to complete a few courses here and there, especially in the earlier years of secondary school. And, ideally, there should be scope for students to substitute online work for what they would have done in class.... or perhaps to re-take a course later on in catch-up sessions (which might perhaps be provided during weekends or vacations, or delivered purely online). Indeed, with the large amount of time set aside for 'private study', it should be possible for students to sometimes squeeze in an extra course or two - if they want to, and appear able to cope with the workload - during their regular working week.

7)  De-specialising the teacher

I have always thought it a bit ridiculous that a university degree (and a 'good' degree from a 'good' university, at the more rarefied private schools) is considered the main prerequisite for a teacher, who is never likely to teach in high school at anything near an undergraduate, let alone a post-graduate level. Indeed, I am rather suspicious of teachers whose academic qualifications are too elevated; I think they are more likely to be out of touch with the needs and interests of their much younger, less knowledgeable students. (Disclosure: I may be particularly grumpy about this because I was once told at interview that it was already pretty much decided they were going to appoint a friend of mine from teacher training college in preference to me, even though he hadn't yet been interviewed, purely because he had a doctorate and I didn't.) And it is a more widely accepted criticism of the 'teacher' as traditionally conceived that an excessive aura of authority attaching to him or her can intimidate and alienate students, and works against the ideal of 'student-centred learning'. I have always preferred to view myself as a facilitator or encourager.... and, as often as possible, as a fellow voyager on the learning journey. I love being able to say, "I don't know!" - and then going and finding out, in the company of my students. The great diversity of subjects/topics envisaged in this modular curriculum will necessarily mean that staff leading a class will find themselves more in this 'facilitator' mode rather than taking a more traditional 'teacher' role: often, they may have no prior knowledge of what they are "teaching" at all, and may even sometimes be volunteering to teach something that lies well outside of their own subject specialism. Most teachers would no doubt be absolutely terrified of this, at first; but I think that they would soon come to relish the dynamism and variety of this new style of working.

Ah, there is quite a lot more I could say on all of this; but I think this is quite enough for now. I may return to the topic at a later date....