Some Developmental Consideration:
Children’s interests, physical skills, linguistic capacity, and ability for abstract thinking and generalisation develop over the span of schooling, from the pre-school period through higher secondary school. This is a period of intensive growth and development, and also of fundamental shifts and changes in interests and capabilities. Hence, it is an important dimension of determining the approach to, and selection and organisation of the areas of the curriculum.
The creation or recreation of knowledge requires an experiential base, language abilities, and interaction with other humans and the natural world. Children entering school for the first time have already begun constructing knowledge of the world. Everything they learn later will be in relation to this knowledge that they bring into the classroom. This knowledge is also intuitive. School provides opportunities to build on this in a more conscious and engaged manner. At the early stage of learning, from pre-school to the primary school years, an important place must be given to language and mathematics in all activities across the curriculum. The division into subjects is not very significant, and the knowledge areas discussed above can be totally integrated and presented to children in the form of learning experiences of the environment. This should include an enriching interaction with the natural and social environment, working with one’s hands, and understanding of social interactions, and developing one’s aesthetic abilities. These early integrated experiences of the natural and social environment would later become demarcated into science and the social sciences in the middle school years.
The upper primary or middle school period may be the place for the emergence of better defined subject areas, taking into consideration the above-mentioned forms of knowledge. At this stage it should be possible to create spaces across subjects in which children engage in the process of data collection, natural, social, mathematical or linguistic, to classify and categorise, and also analyse the same through certain knowledge areas such as ethical understanding and critical thinking. The creation of a space for explorations into social issues and knowledge without boundaries could at this stage go a long way in encouraging rational thinking.
By the time children reach the secondary stage of education, they have acquired a sufficient knowledge base, experience, language abilities and maturity to engage with different forms of knowledge in the full sense: concepts, structure of body of knowledge, investigation methods and validation procedures. Therefore, the subjects could be more closely linked with the basic forms as listed above and the disciplines as they are recognised in higher education today.
The issues of adequate representation of all forms of knowledge, and emphasis on similarities, special characteristics, and the widest possible interconnections between them, become important when the subject areas are more clearly defined.
Children’s interests, physical skills, linguistic capacity, and ability for abstract thinking and generalisation develop over the span of schooling, from the pre-school period through higher secondary school. This is a period of intensive growth and development, and also of fundamental shifts and changes in interests and capabilities. Hence, it is an important dimension of determining the approach to, and selection and organisation of the areas of the curriculum.
The creation or recreation of knowledge requires an experiential base, language abilities, and interaction with other humans and the natural world. Children entering school for the first time have already begun constructing knowledge of the world. Everything they learn later will be in relation to this knowledge that they bring into the classroom. This knowledge is also intuitive. School provides opportunities to build on this in a more conscious and engaged manner. At the early stage of learning, from pre-school to the primary school years, an important place must be given to language and mathematics in all activities across the curriculum. The division into subjects is not very significant, and the knowledge areas discussed above can be totally integrated and presented to children in the form of learning experiences of the environment. This should include an enriching interaction with the natural and social environment, working with one’s hands, and understanding of social interactions, and developing one’s aesthetic abilities. These early integrated experiences of the natural and social environment would later become demarcated into science and the social sciences in the middle school years.
The upper primary or middle school period may be the place for the emergence of better defined subject areas, taking into consideration the above-mentioned forms of knowledge. At this stage it should be possible to create spaces across subjects in which children engage in the process of data collection, natural, social, mathematical or linguistic, to classify and categorise, and also analyse the same through certain knowledge areas such as ethical understanding and critical thinking. The creation of a space for explorations into social issues and knowledge without boundaries could at this stage go a long way in encouraging rational thinking.
By the time children reach the secondary stage of education, they have acquired a sufficient knowledge base, experience, language abilities and maturity to engage with different forms of knowledge in the full sense: concepts, structure of body of knowledge, investigation methods and validation procedures. Therefore, the subjects could be more closely linked with the basic forms as listed above and the disciplines as they are recognised in higher education today.
The issues of adequate representation of all forms of knowledge, and emphasis on similarities, special characteristics, and the widest possible interconnections between them, become important when the subject areas are more clearly defined.
