Retorts

Science Curriculum

In response to Neale Pitche's comment [Retorts, Dec/Jan], I would like to challenge Neale Pitche to identify in the new science curriculum a structure of basic scientific principles. Clearly process cannot be learnt other than through content, but in the new curriculum the content is incidental.

Secondly, it is the nature of evangelical movements that they have at least some features to recommend them. What makes them evangelical is that they reject the useful features of other practices. So it has been with whole language, discovery learning and so on. I do not doubt that children learn to read words in the context of sentences and stories. That idea was around long before whole language. Similarly that children's previous ideas must be taken into account before planning instruction is attributed to a new constructivist teaching methodology but has been around at least since Plato.

I am sure children learn to write more imaginatively when they are encouraged to use invented spelling. It is when teachers are urged to discard the ideas of phonics or the suggestion that children might at some stage have to learn (by rote even!) how to spell correctly or to use a dictionary occasionally to get the precise meaning of a word, that these fads become destructive. As for rejecting the idea that the prime movers of the "whole language" movement are not evangelical, I suggest that Neale Pitche has not participated in a two day workshop given by people like Ken Goodman and observed the religious-like fervour developed in the less cynical participants.

I would also like to point out that the handbook Developing Science Programs was published by Learning Media late in 1995, almost a year after teachers were required to implement the new curriculum in science and two years after many schools had begun to teach it. This handbook has only 20 pages of general advice, 14 of these being in appendices and even the minimal six-page initial section reproduces large chunks of the curriculum documents. The major part of the book is limited to five briefly described learning experiences for level 1-4 and four for levels 4-8 together with a few case studies.

The handbook appears to have an underlying philosophy similar to the curriculum itself in that processes are illustrated by a few examples from which teachers are expected to deduce general principles of program development to apply to their own classes. The curriculum suggests that students learn a few fragmented pieces of science (which are incidental to the science processes, but you cannot teach process without some content). However it is virtually impossible for the science-bound student, for whom it is especially important, to deduce any structure or even the general principles of the subject. This is what most scientists would argue should be the main objective of a school science curriculum for future scientists. The utility of the handbook in teacher planning will be for teachers to decide but I suspect that it has been a great disappointment to them.

Lydia Austin, Education Department, University of Auckland