In the last lessons the word "contents" has been mentioned more than once, implying that some activities might not have "enough contents" or didn't deal with the "right or usual contents" for the primary or pre-primary classroom. I have also heard some of my classmates complain that we haven't been "taught" enough during the degree, that our teachers could have taught us so much more than what they have. Not enough contents, it seems.
On the other hand, now, more than ever, contents are everywhere, just a click away. So, what do we need contents for? Why do we need to store them in our minds? Which contents? How many? What are contents, after all? Are contents the matter of which knowledge is made of? A proof that learning has been achieved? A means to build learning?
Many questions, and little answers; that is what I have. But one thing I have learned so far: learning how to think and learn is the most important learning; maybe the only learning we should pursue in education. Those who know how to think and how to learn will sure find the appropriate contents for their purposes. As far as I see it, contents are often by-products of knowing how to think and learn. I am not very interested in contents as such, but in what is behind them. The official Basque curriculum we have worked on several times during our degree states it clearly: skills or competences are our goal, and contents are aspects we work on in order to achieve those skills. Their purpose is to offer opportunities to develop last longing skills which will remain even after the details of specific contents are somehow forgotten.
To me, this blog is a tool to store contents in such a way that they will be easy to retrieve for me when I forget their details. Those contents have been in my mind and left a trace in my actions and my thoughts, but I cannot have them all in the front of my brain with full detail at the same time. I find that the blog is a great tool to "extend my brain" as it were, because it is organised in a way which makes sense to me. It reflects my interests and my values; my struggles and my conflicts. At the end of the day, it illustrates my learning process, as those who know about this sort of tools say.
Yet, it is true that a teacher needs to know some contents; those which are relevant to their profession. Contents will be regarded as relevant if they are included among the required knowledge by those who design the education system and curricula, also if they are deemed to be of importance to our teachers, and each one of us will be free to choose contents which seem relevant to ourselves, depending on our interests and values. So, relevant contents for teachers are set at different levels, and each teacher has some autonomy on the matter, as well as some requirements to fulfill.
But we cannot rely on contents being at hand. For example, if inclusion is important to us, we will need to know what kind of grouping favours inclusion and follow those criteria at the specific moment of deciding on grouping in a classroom. We will not be able to look it up later on. So, some contents need to be integrated into our thinking, into our decision making; otherwise, they will not be useful at all. But some other contents are not essential, as I argued when I mentioned the
Reggio Emilia style project where the teacher learned about nature along with students. Of course, if the teacher knows about nature they will be able to guide students much better, but even if they don't, as long as they know how to promote learning about dealing with things one doesn't know about, it will be fine.
I found a piece of news which fits perfectly into what I am trying to explain, that gave some examples of
questions that undergraduate students taking admission interviews at Oxford have to answer to. Questions such as: "An experiment appears to suggest Welsh speakers are worse at remembering phone numbers than English speakers – why?", or "How much of the past can you count?", or "If you could save either the rainforests or the coral
reefs, which would you choose?". These questions are designed to see how students respond to something which is unknown to them, to assess their thinking skills. You can read
some of the answers interviewers would expect.
Does that mean that Oxford undergraduates are not supposed to know "regular contents"? Well, of course not. Apparently,
students applying at Oxford and Cambridge will be required to score two elite A* grades at their A-level exam, but besides proving they know their contents, they will also have to prove they can use them in a creative way. I must say I can't agree more with the approach, although there is a very worrying fact mentioned in the last article, which reports that public school students in the UK (that is, students from very prestigious and expensive private schools) do much better that state-funded school students at these admission tests. Provided we fix that big problem, I'd say that is the sort of learning I would like to promote among children (and adults, of course).