The statements of the Minister of Education, who said that he does not agree with the introduction of new subjects in the students’ timetable, but also those regarding the need for “friendlier” textbooks, did not remain without an echo. The headmistress of a top high school in the capital told “Adevărul” that the curriculum is indeed very busy, and Daniel David’s idea to combine certain subjects is more than welcome.
David and Goliath. The Minister of Education, face to face with the Education Reform. Archive
High school principal: “Certain subjects must be combined.” What more hours would mean
Daniel David recently stated that he does not agree with the introduction of new subjects in the students’ timetable: “It seems to me a mistake to have separate Environmental Education and Sustainability Education, and Legal education. All these are important, but not as new subjects, because we also complain later that the children have too many hours. We can have learning units focused on these themes.” The statement also comes in the context in which both students, teachers and many voices from civil society have insisted on a school like outside, with disciplines that prepare children for the future. However, these subjects, many of which are only optional, and others are not taught at all in schools, cannot become independent. The reason? I don’t fit in the schedule. But what could be done to reconcile both the goat and the cabbage? Combining them in certain areas or integrating them into established subjects. “If we look in the catalog and count the subjects, we will see that there are 13, 14 subjects. You cannot remove them, but you can gather them under different curricular umbrellas or integrate them into each other. For example: Health education can enter as a separate chapter in the Biology discipline, Financial Education can find its place in the Social and Human Sciences”, is the opinion of Prof. Andreia Bodea, director of the “ILCaragiale” National College from Bucharest.
Marian Staș, an expert in education, finds, however, a logical error in the minister’s statement regarding the extra number of independent subjects that would burden the students’ timetable. And that’s because the law clearly says: middle school students can’t have more than 25 hours a week, and high school students can’t have more than 30 hours a week: “The idea that students would have more hours if they had more subjects is wrong. What could happen instead? Once crammed into the timetable, these new subjects could reduce class time. Basically, the number of subjects would increase, but the number of hours would remain the same. And then we would end up in the aberrant situation that the class time would no longer be 40, 45 minutes, but 30 or even 25 minutes”.
Marian Staș, education expert and promoter of pilot schools in Romania. Archive
Friendly manuals vs useful manuals
As for the textbooks that high school students learn from, Minister David believes that they are not “friendly” enough with the students. “Indeed, textbooks are designed decades ago and can no longer keep up with the times,” comments prof. Andrea Bodea. “I am a French teacher and I will refer to the textbooks I teach according to. They were developed in 2004 and I consider them to be “friendly” to students who studied them 20 years ago. When Romania was not in the European Union, when children didn’t have to know in French how to buy a soda – because they weren’t going anywhere – or how to get a train ticket. They were learning grammar instead. Matches upon matches. Generally speaking, textbooks contain a lot of information that migrates to the periphery of students’ actual needs,” it also says this.
Students, the teacher continues, must study for updated books, which will provide them with the knowledge and skills they really need today: “In a free labor market they must know how to speak two, three foreign languages, because you never know where life will take you. 20 years ago, the problem was not posed like this. I didn’t even dream of it. I don’t know exactly what the minister means by friendly textbooks, but it is clear that the ones that students are currently learning from must be replaced.” The teacher refers to the fact that nowadays information is just a click away, and the Internet is accessible to everyone. Therefore, we must try to keep up as much as possible. “How can a student be interested in a textbook that is 20-30 years old when he has information available to him almost instantly when he opens his phone or tablet?”, asks the teacher.
As for the school textbooks that have appeared in recent years in the form of auxiliaries, they seem to be designed, rather, for teachers, not for students, believes Marian Staș: “Authors write for them so that they have something to be proud of. Look what a book I can write! Rather, they are conceived out of an inferiority complex. Today’s textbooks are to a very small extent built on what the idea of real support for children means.
The textbooks, continues Marian Staș, should not necessarily be student-friendly, but useful. When the child goes through them, let him understand them. The expert declared that, from this point of view, there are two major constraints in Romania: “First of all, this kind of inferiority complex, the desire to show the world what you can do, and a financial constraint related to prices. We try to deliver as much information as possible, but condensed, crammed into as few pages as possible”. But for these textbooks to be really useful, they need to present the information as clearly as possible, “just so that the student can absorb what he has learned in that area.”
Therefore, if the new high school textbooks, which will be printed with the implementation of the new framework plans, will be developed in the same style, “I didn’t do anything”the expert also believes.
Andreia Bodea, director of the “ILCaragiale” National College from Bucharest. Archive
Teachers should always be one step ahead of their students
The Minister of Education also highlighted a priority aspect of his mandate: the training of teachers to be taught how to teach in an effective and attractive way: “On many international tests, our content overlaps very well with the test items, many times better than the overlap we have in Finland. And yet, our performance is weaker. Why? Because we do not teach those contents well and our action will be here. Let’s teach things a little differently”, Daniel David also specified. In this context, the minister announced that he will “create opportunities for training, for new ways of teaching, modern ways of teaching”.
However, Professor Andreia Bodea believes that some aspects should be clarified here: “The trainer must be a very well trained person. Let’s not do some projects just for the sake of doing them. We make a copy-paste, we show up to the course, attend some classes and with that, we ticked off another refresher course”.
The teacher confessed to us that, nowadays, there are a lot of useless courses that the good teachers don’t even go to anymore. “Many, many of them are mandatory, and you have to show up, even if they teach you practically nothing. However, these courses do not add any added value to the way of teaching in the classroom. So let’s make them attractive, efficient, useful and above all anchored in what a professor in class. If we do them for the sake of doing them or because there are some funds that come from somewhere and need to be spent, absolutely nothing will happen.” the teacher added.
Andreia Bodea is of the opinion that teachers must learn throughout their entire career, because generations change, and with them the times we live in change. “We have to be aware of the novelty, the innovative methods of teaching and assessment. We don’t have to keep up with our children, we have to be one step ahead of them”, Prof. also pointed out. Andrea Bodea.
