Marking the end of the Kairov Era pedagogy, China’s New Curriculum Reform revitalizes China’s education sector and emphasizes the development of each student. In contrast, Kairov’s pedagogy has no concept of curriculum, no position for children and no appeal for educational democracy. It was the product of cultural despotism and was abandoned long ago by the former Soviet Union in 1950s. However, in China there are still a considerable number of faithful followers in the circle of education theory, who are determined to safeguard it. This is representation of fogyism and self-importance of some bigots, and a necessary result of isolation and blindness deep rooted in the minds of some educators in China. As the world is developing, so schools should develop along with it. Curriculum development is always regarded as a central issue in any educational system. As curricula and teaching materials specifically manifest educational requirements, so specifications of teacher training, setup of teaching facilities and even strategies of administrative management should center on how to implement the curriculum. Therefore, it stands to reason to start from curriculum reform and seek its logic in the new era.
We firmly believe that any curriculum development should work in line with the following three principles: (1) Inheriting and developing the cultural heritage of mankind. (2) Responding to social reality. (3) Satisfying the needs of children’s development. Educational contents should be the specifications of educational goals. Therefore, the “curriculum development” can be regarded as a task that reflects the selection and arrangement of educational contents. Intentionally or not, it manifests the developer’s view on education, knowledge, learning and children. However, the school curriculum is not simply a preset “runway”, but the process of running along the “runway”. That is to say, it is not just a static conventional framework and schools’ educational plan, but also a dynamically generated process in which teachers and students can carry out cultural exploration in certain educational situations. What deserves our attention is that it has already become a common practice in curriculum reforms all over the world to reconstruct the concept of “elementary learning abilities” and teach student to “learn how to care about others”.1 The traditional emphasis of elementary learning abilities on reading, writing and arithmetic has taken on new meanings. What’s more, the focus of elementary learning abilities has been shifted from 3R (reading, writing and arithmetic) to 3C (caring, concern and connectedness). Schools in the new century’s elementary education strive to create an environment filled with care instead of cruel competition. They attach great importance to students’ personality cultivation and pluralistic development, because every student exists as an independent individual with multiple intelligences. If the traditional skills of reading, writing and calculating were pursued in international elementary education courses since the 19th century, then the present-day elementary learning skills stressed in the courses based on “caring ethics” highlight the concept of “learning to care”. To enable students to be familiar with “integrated knowledge” via “curriculum integration” is another major appeal of today’s curriculum reform. “Curriculum integration”, both deconstructive and constructive, is a curriculum strategy and curriculum awareness as well. It follows no fixed patterns and its essence is to excel. Schools are not the places that simply supply knowledge. Their top priority is to develop students whose knowledge is not given by teachers but commanded by themselves. Courses that promote learners’ development are designed to explore the truth, rather than just teach existing knowledge.
Without reforms in classroom teaching, there will be no real implementation of the new curriculum. Classroom teaching is always related with some kind of culture that students are trying to adapt themselves to. Therefore, the question is what kind of “classroom culture” that teachers should create. The traditional teaching mode is a “memorizing type of teaching culture”, in which teachers’ role is to convey information to students whose role, in turn, is to receive and restore the information and act accordingly. Teachers’ instruction has completely taken the place of students’ learning. Teachers are dominating and manipulating the students. Such kind of classroom teaching is no better than a lifeless “slaughterhouse of minds”. Where there is no dialogue, there is no communication and where there is no communication, there is no real education.2 Classroom teaching itself is a practice of vigorous dialogues which guide the students to communicate with the objective world, with others and with themselves. Through dialogues, an active, cooperative and reflective mode of learning is being created in the trinity or “three in one” process of cognitive practice, social practice and ethical practice. Classroom teaching as a practice of dialogues has transcended dualism by stressing the integration of subjectivity and objectivity, knowledge receiving and discovering, knowledge deconstruction and construction, knowledge abstraction and specification, as well as knowledge explicitness and implicitness. We need to seek for a revolutionary transformation of classroom teaching, namely, transformation of teaching from “lecture-centered model” to “dialogue-centered model”, and transformation of classroom culture from “memorizing model” to “thinking model”. In this way, the relation between teacher and learner is deconstructed, to make room for a shared space and time for knowledge construction and creative activities. And so the teaching paradigm has also undergone an innovative transformation, which, ultimately, is a revolution and innovation that transforms the input-oriented teaching into an intake-oriented learning.
The development of school curriculum in the new era requires the transformation of teacher education—from “teaching-book-smith training” to “reflective educator cultivation”, so as to realize the “incorporation of practice into theories and theories into practice”. Meanwhile, we should encourage “research methodology for practical purposes”, a notion of learning based on the knowledge-construction and teacher-cooperation. In the past, the technological image of a teacher was his ability to master scientific expertise. However, the connotation of teaching is sophisticated and constantly changing, and scientific theories and technologies that support practice are uncertain. Hence, the point is, we should not simply strive to put the narrowly confined theories and technologies in one academic field into practice, but try to overcome challenging problems by using insights from experience and cognition of “reflecting in actions and acting in reflections” in complex situations. A good teacher is not one who is free from flaws and imperfections, but one who dares to challenge. As rich experience alone does not make a real practitioner of education, so empty theoretical eloquence alone does not make a true practitioner of education either. A good practitioner of education is not made by fighting alone, designing goals and making top-down teaching plans. A good teacher must grow out of a bottom-up grass-root reform. The Ministry of Education of P. R. China issued Professional Standards for Teachers and Curriculum Standards for Teacher Education at the beginning of the 21st century. The aim of these two standards is to shake off the fetters of traditional normal college education system to help teachers develop from “skilled artisans” to “reflective practitioners”. In the practice of teacher education reform, the pedagogy of international teacher education advocates “three laws of teachers’ development” sheds important light on this issue: the more it is anchored in the demand of teachers’ reform, it is more effective; the more it is anchored in the realistic life of grass-root teachers, it is more effective; the more it is anchored in the teachers’ practical reflection, it is more effective.3
The developmental view of the New Curriculum can be summarized as “Children First”. Its starting point and destination are: respecting children, understanding children and developing children. Respecting children means to understand that childhood is a unique period in the life span with unique characteristics and values. Understanding children means that children are human beings with multiple intelligence in their “development” and “relationships”. They are not “young adults” and their education should not follow the model of “adults”. Developing children requires us to believe that children are independent constructers of knowledge and the responsibilities of schools and teachers lie in ensuring their “learning rights”. The implementation of New Curriculum supported by this developmental view of “Children First” curriculum stands in sharp contrast with Kairov’s pedagogy, the dominant theory of education ever since the founding of P. R. China. Kairov’s pedagogy takes Stalin’s ideology as its yardstick and abandons the thought of Dewey and others simply because they are regarded as baneful thoughts from the bourgeoisie. The fatal defect of this theory is its denial of children and the research on children. At the beginning of new China when everything awaited to be reconstructed, learning from Kairov’s pedagogy was the first “ideological emancipation” in China’s education. And now after 30 years of reform and opening up to the outside world, China’s education needs a second emancipation of educational ideology. Kairov’s pedagogy is the result of Stalin’s cultural autocracy in the 1930s. Its educational ideology is also the result of the political hype after it underwent criticism of the 1930s over the “pedology” and “de-schooling” of the 1920s. Therefore, it had only been active for 8 years before it faded completely, doomed to fail for its doctrine of “anti-children” and “anti-education”. It considers teaching as a major concept but treats curriculum as a minor one. The consequence of “emphasizing teaching while neglecting curriculum” is serious in that for many years China’s education administration regarded curriculum reform simply as an improvement of teaching materials and methods or updating of textbooks on the one hand, and low degree of awareness of curriculum and inability of curriculum development on the other hand, with the result of “test-orientation” in primary and secondary education. The concept of curriculum has been narrowed down into school subjects, school subjects down into teaching materials, teaching materials down into knowledge points, and finally teaching down into stuffing knowledge points into the minds of learners. Kairov’s pedagogy is an errant “fortress” of test-oriented education. If this fortress is not pulled down, there will be no fundamental change of educational ideology and system, not to mention constructing a system of quality-oriented education.
If the New Curriculum reform in the last decade laid its emphasis on the top-down design and mobilization of new ideology, the next decade will witness a change of focus on the bottom-up teaching innovation from grass-root teachers. The transformation and innovation will be accompanied by collisions between new and old ideas, and thus initiate a symphony of different voices. It can bring more benefit than harm because the collision and symphony can bring vitality to the curriculum development and teaching practice in elementary education in China. The central part of school reform is its curriculum, and the core of curriculum reform is classroom activities. The primary concern of classroom reform is the professional development of teachers. Based on a series of theories and practices that have emerged in the New Curriculum reform over the last 10 years, this book discusses issues related to “curriculum reform”, “classroom transformation”, “teacher training”, “reflection on theories”, etc. The reform is still going on and our discussion here is but a beginning. However, in these academic discussions, we can hope to shake off the restrictions from the past, summarize all kinds of experiences, come up with new perceptions and discover new hopes. Projects for further exploration will be infinite.
Notes
Nel Noddings, The Challenge to Care in Schools: An Alternative Approach to Education, trans. Yu Tianlong 于天龙. Beijing: Educational Science Publishing House, 2003, 221.
Paul Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. Gu Jianxin 顾建新, Zhao Youhua 赵友华, & He Shurong 何曙荣. Shanghai: East China Normal University Press, 2001, 4.
Fred Korthagen, The Practice of Realistic Teacher Education, Taketa Shinko trans. Tokyo: Gakubunsha, 2010, 65.
References
Fred Korthagen. The Practice of Realistic Teacher Education, trans. Taketa Shinko. Tokyo: Gakubunsha, 2010.
Nel Noddings. The Challenge to Care in Schools: An Alternative Approach to Education, trans. Yu Tianlong 于天龙. Beijing: Educational Science Publishing House, 2003.
Paul Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. Gu Jianxin 顾建新, Zhao Youhua 赵友华, & He Shurong 何曙荣. Shanghai: East China Normal University Press, 2001.