WE HAVE A CURRICULUM - BUT WHERE'S THE EDUCATION?

Back in 2007 the Cabinet of Ministers in Azerbaijan adopted a document called "The National Curriculum". This was a long-term strategy which was essentially a completely new and fundamentally different concept of education than the one we were used to in the 70 years we were a part of the Soviet Union, and which by inertia continued to operate for a number of years after its collapse.

The results of this outdated system are plain to see. The standard of education has been deteriorating year on year and the quality of the knowledge gleaned has left much to be desired.

The education of education

So, three academic years have gone by since schools in Azerbaijan switched to this infamous curriculum. I say infamous because the actual concept of this system remains double Dutch not just to pupils and their parents, but even to most teachers. Basically, of course, the concept of a curriculum is a perfectly necessary and reasonable one. As the Ministry of Education claims, the national curriculum is aimed at shaping the individual as the main driving force of the development of society and providing the appropriate level of education and skills required to solve problems and take decisions independently. At the same time, it makes allowances for the exceptional significance of the talent and capabilities of each individual at a time of the globalization and diversification of socio-political, cultural and public life, the increasing role of information and communications technology and the intensification of competition.

A creative approach to the process of education, respect for the individuality of a pupil or student and his all-round development have always been applied in the developed countries. To Azerbaijan, as part of the former Soviet Union, which had been accustomed to an outdated and "straitened" approach to education and the complete deprival of any semblance of individuality in pupils, the new system came as something of a shock. 

Of course, it is difficult to expect quick and immediate positive results from the new innovations which weigh like a crippling burden on the fragile and still-weak backs of the pupils. Today many parents are unhappy about the too-heavy workload and vast number of subjects that first-year pupils have to study and the huge amount of teaching material which is hard for six- and seven-year olds to cope with.

This is what Sevda Movsumova, a parent and mother of a fourth-year girl, says: "In Soviet times children in the first year had seven subjects, including physical education. There were four lessons a day. Now, first-year children have 11 subjects, including three languages. They have 5-6 lessons a day." At the same time, she says, there are many other subjects in the programme which are merely brushed over in the first-year class which the children study in more depth many years later.

Alia Haqverdi, the mother of a class-10 girl, believes that basically the main subject programme is not difficult, but learning three languages from the first year is much too tough for children of six or seven. Alla Mammadova, the mother of a first-year girl and herself a teacher, agrees: "Before studying a new language children need first to master at least one." Besides, Mammadova thinks, first-year pupils have an impossible task - they study one new letter a day. For a child not used to such a pattern that is very hard.

The quality of textbooks also leaves a lot to be desired. As well as being crammed with learning material, the material itself is often presented in a very indigestible form. Clearly, the authors of these textbooks also know little about the concept of the curriculum, like all the rest. But one could forget all this if the textbooks themselves were not full of mistakes. Here, I'm talking mainly about translated textbooks.

The complexities of education and the absence of a clear system are, indeed, the drawbacks of introducing the new strategy. The lack of specially trained staff only aggravates the problem, and it's the children, who are not even given an hour's break, who suffer. And it only gets more stressful. How often do we hear: "I need a tutor for a first-year pupil"? You can imagine how hard it must have been for infant-school children in the old days when, as well as the regular lessons at school, they often had to have extra lessons with tutors. This was hard on an immature child's body which was being undermined and overloaded. And permanent stress, which strikes older children, leaves an indelible mark on their nervous system.

What motivation?

Parents were not inspired by the news about the transfer to 12-year education and also the extension of the now familiar "truncated" academic year. But, talking to R+, expert Rufat Aliyev, the head and facilitator of many education projects, who has worked in the education system for over 30 years, said there is nothing terrible in increasing teaching hours if you look at what happens in Europe. But it all boils down to quality of education. The education process must be based on the psychology of children.

The switch should not be mechanical; in other words, you can't just increase the number of hours, the expert claims. The final stage of the general education school should be about nurturing the motivated children (I mean children, not faceless pupils) and completely new. "The usual priorities of today's school-leavers are to go on to higher education," Aliyev says, "whereas the higher education system cannot take more than 30 per cent of all those who want to go on. First and foremost, the structure of vocational-technical colleges should be re-imposed, which would offer young people another development option rather than going to a higher educational college, and at the same time would not leave them out in the cold." Rufat says that in the developed countries the ratio of vocational education to the general flow is very high. In Finland, for example, 47-48 per cent of school leavers choose to go to vocational-technical colleges.

The world-wide trend today towards early development is either not understood at all or is understood in a distorted way, Aliyev believes. A child's brain is still developing up to the age of 22-23. It is only after that age that he acquires the ability to anticipate events and analyze them. Today's parents, and that includes in Azerbaijan, are not aware that early development does not mean cramming him with lessons as soon as he can walk. Early development is the harmonious development of a child, providing him with freedom for development and realization.

The curriculum, the expert says, is not an academic programme but a strategy of teaching. "It is actually linked with a form of economic thinking; it's marketing and management," Rufat Aliyev says. "In the West, where market relations are developed, people learn to think in economic categories from childhood. Because of our history we have no such experience."

But here an important question arises: why is such a brilliant idea proving so hard to develop and causing such rejection on the part of parents and pupils, never mind teachers?

"Flawed methodology"

The whole problem lies in the methodology of education. The actual teaching of methodology raises many questions, Malahat Mursudlu, an expert in education, head of the Association of Free Teachers, says. He believes that most teachers still do not understand the essence of the curriculum and the fact that it is basically a different approach to the process of education: "Back in 2007, after the approval of the concept of a national curriculum, ten-day training courses were organized for teachers. But the teacher himself has to want to improve himself and understand that demands on teachers have changed and that the approach that teachers applied to pupils in Soviet times is now irrelevant." However, it is very difficult to change the outlook of people who have taught and been taught all their lives in the confines of an old education system just by sending them on a ten-day training course.

Everyone knows that we have to transfer to a new system but no-one knows how. Teachers today have difficulty imagining a way of teaching other than the one they have been used to. With the curriculum the emphasis is not on pressure and constant monitoring of the pupil and the knowledge he is acquiring, but on shaping the way he thinks, his ability to make decisions and express his opinion - in other words, the priority is on the individuality of the child.  There are a number of examples of such a system in the world. Despite the strategy of the curriculum, schoolchildren today continue to slog away and fill their brains with all subjects, including P.E. and music.

Gunel Cuvarlinskaya, an Azerbaijani living in Norway, the mother of two schoolchildren, the younger one who is 4, says: "The academic year here goes on for longer than we are used to - the children are studying almost the whole of June - and they return from their summer holidays in the middle of August. But, no homework is given, everything is done in school, and no appraisals are made in school right up until year 8, in order to avoid undue pressure and control over the pupils. Of course, some parents want to know how their child is getting on at school, and so every quarter parents receive written reports about their child's performance. Besides this, a lot of attention is given to a child's self-expression and they are taught to express their opinion on each subject. But the children themselves are never criticized or scolded."

Another example, cited by Rufat Aliyev, could be a well-known book by Masaru Ibuka, one of the co-founders of the Sony company, "Kindergarten is too late!" In this book he says a child's brain forms up to the age of three and in that time it is able to grasp huge amounts of information which could take an adult 20 years. The problem is we, too, grasp this book in a perverse kind of way, setting a child meaningful tasks virtually from the age of two. At the same time, the main message of this book is the idea of "learning through play" and "giving a child the opportunity to understand the world, surrounding him with objects, books, musical instruments and paints and giving him the chance to develop by himself". It is in this subtle, almost playful way that the process of education should be carried out (it is relevant to recall here the pre-school education system), but it is the path of education itself that presents the main difficulty.

It takes more than a year to train teachers. "Crash courses" in the form of ten-day training courses for teachers are insufficient, but the main thing - despite the fact that the national curriculum is a concept of education that is already seven years old - there is not a single body or structure to see that it is being run properly. As usual, it is the pupils who are the victims of this system, or rather, the lack of it…