In the field of education, it’s quite frequently the case
that top down approaches are at odds with bottom up approaches. Same thing
happens when you try to bathe here in Ghana. Bet you didn’t see that coming!
In preparing for school this morning I was thinking about
how bathing and education have some things in common here in Ghana, especially in
terms of the top-down approach. For example, when bathing, especially in the absence
of the luxury of running warm water be it a bath or a shower, one must wash
from top down. Additionally, the planning for this approach to bathing takes
some thinking through. First, water needs to be pumped, then some of it boiled,
and the rest added from the tap in the bathing room (again, a result of pumping).
Once all of this has taken a good amount of my time, I’m ready for the warm
water. However, unlike a bath or shower, where it’s easy not to think about any
particular way to go about doing it (OCD folks, just let it go), one must start
from the top and work down. Doing otherwise leads to disaster. Shampooing and
conditioning comes first or there could be real trouble getting it all out
before I’m out of water. Scrubbing in between, just before final rinses of hair
and the feet are the last to get attention. Why? If I wash my feet first, the
dirt and soap/shampoo/conditioner may not be off of them in the end. My
Ghanaian friends have taken it for granted that I would know how to bathe from
a bucket, and who can blame them? It’s a practical skill, but I’m afraid a more
learner-centred approach to the ‘top down’ approach to bathing has educated me
well over previous visits to Ghana.
How does this relate to education, then? In education, we
see top down approaches, decisions coming from higher powers including
government departments/ministries down to districts, heads, and so on. In
Ghana, the top down approach is apparent in schools where children, parents,
communities, and teachers have little say over what they choose to learn, which
is understandable to a point, but where ministerial decisions can have little to
do with the realities of Ghanaian children’s futures.
In examining the reading curriculum at the school in which I’m
volunteering, top down implementation is apparent in the system. I held textbooks
today in which the English curriculum is divided into bits as determined best
by the Ministry of Education and children learn English reading, writing,
speaking and listening, vocabulary, and grammar as distinctive subjects within
English. Class readers are developed to be relevant in Ghana, but in reality,
they are based on the good old Gold Standard of education which is a relic of
colonisation and decolonisation and written in the West. The British know best,
right? Except the British system in use today is not that of the Gold Standard,
having determined that children require more active learning and social constructivism
than the past rote learning and teacher-centred (lectures…yawn) strategies
apparent in positivist approaches. Curricular hybridisation is really the new
British standard, but someone forgot to let the rest of the former colonies
know, or at least it’s not making it from teacher training into the classrooms.
The most one might hope for much of the time is dialogic approaches which do
tend to have some impact on children’s learning, especially with children being
raised in a heavily oral culture. The textbooks in question present very short
reading activities and unrelated English language activities, so there is a
distinct lack of the practical. What child sits in their seat and thinks, ‘I’m
doing this activity now because I will need to be able to do it later?’ The
books simply aren’t relevant to their futures.
I have gone over the idea of the whole language approach
with the English teachers in the school and finally convinced them that we can
aim for a bottom-up approach. Let me, the teacher, along with the pupils,
decide much of what we learn. From tomorrow, once I establish law and order in
each class, we will begin reading the book, Journey
to Jo’Burg (by Beverly Naidoo),a
book introduced to me by one of my Open University students. Within the book,
we will face social issues of Apartheid era South Africa. Poverty is a clear theme
in the work, and poverty is not a foreign experience for the pupils in the
school in which I am volunteering as it is a deprived school in an urban area.
The children and I will begin reading the book, but from it, we will learn reading
skills, grammar, vocabulary, speaking and listening, and writing, combining the
subjects rather than separating out the material. They might even enjoy the
book! The teachers were visibly uncomfortable about moving away from the set
readers, not because they couldn’t teach the material, but because they are
concerned for what will happen if the children do not learn what they need to
pass tests. However, after some convincing, they have decided to give this a go
for one month. They are going to allow a bottom up force, the teacher and her
pupils, develop their learning together rather than rely on a particular set
curriculum which must be taught in a teacher-centred fashion.
I don’t know if any of you, readers of my second post here,
can see the analogy I’ve discussed to this point, but I hope you do. I can’t
help but realise, in coming towards the conclusion, though, that the top down
approach serves its purposes in bathing, perhaps a little more practically than
it does in the world of education. However, in the same frame of thinking, it
is possible to see how if the ‘common sense’ of bathing isn’t followed, then
the bather will have muck on her feet at the end. The same holds true in
education. If some common sense and newly learned information isn’t practically
applied, there will be a different type of mess to clean up in the end. I shall
see what tomorrow holds for my pupils and me.
A Top Down Approach
In the field of education, it’s quite frequently the case that top down approaches are at odds with bottom up approaches. Same thing happens when you try to bathe here in Ghana. Bet you didn’t see that coming!
In preparing for school this morning I was thinking about how bathing and education have some things in common here in Ghana, especially in terms of the top-down approach. For example, when bathing, especially in the absence of the luxury of running warm water be it a bath or a shower, one must wash from top down. Additionally, the planning for this approach to bathing takes some thinking through. First, water needs to be pumped, then some of it boiled, and the rest added from the tap in the bathing room (again, a result of pumping). Once all of this has taken a good amount of my time, I’m ready for the warm water. However, unlike a bath or shower, where it’s easy not to think about any particular way to go about doing it (OCD folks, just let it go), one must start from the top and work down. Doing otherwise leads to disaster. Shampooing and conditioning comes first or there could be real trouble getting it all out before I’m out of water. Scrubbing in between, just before final rinses of hair and the feet are the last to get attention. Why? If I wash my feet first, the dirt and soap/shampoo/conditioner may not be off of them in the end. My Ghanaian friends have taken it for granted that I would know how to bathe from a bucket, and who can blame them? It’s a practical skill, but I’m afraid a more learner-centred approach to the ‘top down’ approach to bathing has educated me well over previous visits to Ghana.
How does this relate to education, then? In education, we see top down approaches, decisions coming from higher powers including government departments/ministries down to districts, heads, and so on. In Ghana, the top down approach is apparent in schools where children, parents, communities, and teachers have little say over what they choose to learn, which is understandable to a point, but where ministerial decisions can have little to do with the realities of Ghanaian children’s futures.
In examining the reading curriculum at the school in which I’m volunteering, top down implementation is apparent in the system. I held textbooks today in which the English curriculum is divided into bits as determined best by the Ministry of Education and children learn English reading, writing, speaking and listening, vocabulary, and grammar as distinctive subjects within English. Class readers are developed to be relevant in Ghana, but in reality, they are based on the good old Gold Standard of education which is a relic of colonisation and decolonisation and written in the West. The British know best, right? Except the British system in use today is not that of the Gold Standard, having determined that children require more active learning and social constructivism than the past rote learning and teacher-centred (lectures…yawn) strategies apparent in positivist approaches. Curricular hybridisation is really the new British standard, but someone forgot to let the rest of the former colonies know, or at least it’s not making it from teacher training into the classrooms. The most one might hope for much of the time is dialogic approaches which do tend to have some impact on children’s learning, especially with children being raised in a heavily oral culture. The textbooks in question present very short reading activities and unrelated English language activities, so there is a distinct lack of the practical. What child sits in their seat and thinks, ‘I’m doing this activity now because I will need to be able to do it later?’ The books simply aren’t relevant to their futures.
I have gone over the idea of the whole language approach with the English teachers in the school and finally convinced them that we can aim for a bottom-up approach. Let me, the teacher, along with the pupils, decide much of what we learn. From tomorrow, once I establish law and order in each class, we will begin reading the book, Journey to Jo’Burg (by Beverly Naidoo), a book introduced to me by one of my Open University students. Within the book, we will face social issues of Apartheid era South Africa. Poverty is a clear theme in the work, and poverty is not a foreign experience for the pupils in the school in which I am volunteering as it is a deprived school in an urban area. The children and I will begin reading the book, but from it, we will learn reading skills, grammar, vocabulary, speaking and listening, and writing, combining the subjects rather than separating out the material. They might even enjoy the book! The teachers were visibly uncomfortable about moving away from the set readers, not because they couldn’t teach the material, but because they are concerned for what will happen if the children do not learn what they need to pass tests. However, after some convincing, they have decided to give this a go for one month. They are going to allow a bottom up force, the teacher and her pupils, develop their learning together rather than rely on a particular set curriculum which must be taught in a teacher-centred fashion.
I don’t know if any of you, readers of my second post here, can see the analogy I’ve discussed to this point, but I hope you do. I can’t help but realise, in coming towards the conclusion, though, that the top down approach serves its purposes in bathing, perhaps a little more practically than it does in the world of education. However, in the same frame of thinking, it is possible to see how if the ‘common sense’ of bathing isn’t followed, then the bather will have muck on her feet at the end. The same holds true in education. If some common sense and newly learned information isn’t practically applied, there will be a different type of mess to clean up in the end. I shall see what tomorrow holds for my pupils and me.