Curriculum Forum


Vol. 10 No. 2, Pages 60 - 75, 2001

3,7,9 or 21 - It''s All in the Mind. Curriculum That Children Want and That Hong Kong Needs. Out With the Old and In With What?

Jeffrey DAY

Abstract

The current debate about Learning to Learn emphasizes process over content, yet the various syllabuses and subjects taught in Hong Kong schools have come to emphasise content almost to the exclusion of teaching students the processes of affecti ve learning, application of knowledge, analysis and synthesis. Clearly learning requires something that is to be learned, but much of current syllabus content is irrelevant to modern life, and knowledge, apart from in the areas of numeracy and literacy ha s a high level of impermanence. Even language is changing so fast that generations of parents find that children's language use in chat-rooms or on ICQ is unintelligible to them. This article bases the question of "worth" of content in a historical and ph ilosophical perspective and then develops a reflective criticism of current education reform documents; to suggest how the new curriculum might be developed without falling into the traps from which piecemeal curriculum reforms of the last 15-20 years hav e frequently ailed to retrieve themselves.

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