Pedagogical and Didactic Aspects of the New Hauptschule

Northrhine-Westphalia, with 17 million people the largest of the eleven Länder (states) of the Federal Republic of Germany, issued revised curriculum programs for all its schools between 1966 and 1968. The most interesting changes occurred in the secondary school for those children (about 60% of the age group) whose parents do not enroll them at age 10 in a Realschule (semiacademic) or a Gymnasium (academic). These children formerly remained in the Volksschule for a total of eight years; but now the upper half of this school, expanded by one year, is called Hauptschule and is designed to offer more substantial education than previously, including a foreign language (English). The same pattern is followed in all the other West German Länder.     

School and Society,July 1, 1979, to June 30, 1980

The Elementary School [Folkeskole]

In the past year, the folkeskole has been better material for the media than any time in the past, and its circumstances, its tasks, its content, and its results have been commented upon and discussed in both the national and the local press. In the school year 1979-1980, there were 740,000 pupils enrolled in these schools, including kindergarten classes (Jyllandsposten 4/19). The number of children is decreasing as reported by central authorities from the Minister of Education, for example, in Politiken, 1/16, which at the same time reports that the development of the school has therefore become difficult to control, as many municipalities have reported, e.g., Frederikshavn Avis 3/13.     

PUKHA: a new pedagogical experience

Society needs responsible leaders and entrepreneurs. CDIO (conceive, design, implement and operate) is a framework for engineering education based on outcomes, more than on contents, that has been adopted by a growing number of engineering educational institutions for producing the next generation of engineering leaders. In order to support engineering students to become entrepreneurs and to bear other concerns than merely technical on today's rapid changing world, the authors believe the CDIO syllabus needs to be improved, and therefore propose a pre requisite to a useful CDIO perspective: IdEF, standing for Identify, Evaluate and Formulate real problems and needs. Based on this concept, this paper describes a new pedagogical project framework (PUKHA - to project, to undertake, to know how to achieve). Within PUKHA projects, more than 300 students have trained and checked their will, risk, responsibility, communication, leadership and entrepreneurship over the last three years.     

Pedagogical Innovations in the English School System

In July 1977 the secretary of state for education and science, together with the secretary of state for Wales, published the Green Paper — the report Education in Schools — which contained the outline for future school policy in England and Wales. (1)     

Editor's Introduction

The documents in this issue of Chinese Education were published in China in 1979 and 1980. They appeared originally in Renmin jiaoyu (People's Education), Hongqi (Red Flag), and Guangming Daily, and cover a variety of topics.     

The Legitimation of Curricula Through Legislation

I. On the Significance of Curriculum Formation for the Educational System

Many of the problems that in past years have precipitated struggles in the areas of educational theory and policy today fade in importance before the question of what is taught in the schools and how it is taught: for example, how schools are organized, what qualifications those who create schools must have, what participatory rights students, teachers, and parents enjoy, and so on. A central aspect of any school system is what is taught in it. (1) Moreover, the methods by which the content of instruction is produced, given general validity, and translated into school reality are thus the most important instruments for controlling the content of the school system in general, as the German Education Council has stressed many times in the last few years. (2) This is not just a recent problem. Historically, the school system has not infrequently seen debate on the content of work in the school and on the methods used to transmit that content. (3) In the end, however, such differences of opinion have terminated with the state — formerly represented by the sovereign and more recently by the educational authorities — handing down a final and binding decision with which all involved in school life had to comply. Decisions on the school concerning content, that is, how schools are to organized and with what content, will continue to be required, even though such decisions may be continuously subject to revision. Since the mid-sixties, however, a broad scientific and political discussion has been conducted as to how traditional curricula may be replaced — both in terms of content and in terms of method of development — by instruments that are adequately adapted to actual sociocultural and economic conditions as well as to the requirements of a social and democratic state based in law.     

Be Revolutionary Education Workers

After my article entitled "How I Corrected Discrimination Against Workers' Children" was published in Chung-kuo fu-nu [Chinese Women] and Kuang-ming jih-pao [Kuang-ming Daily], I heard some comrades say: "The reason Yao P'ei-k'uan could do this is that she comes from a good family." I reflected seriously on the comment and found that it was only partly true. I have not always been lucky. As a matter of fact, I have had deviations and have learned my lessons. Now let me begin this article with why I chose to be a teacher.     

Introduction to Technological Education

Professor Tamborlini is the Director of the Centro Didattico per la Scuola Media in Rome, one of several national centers established during the 1950s to promote new programs and practices on all levels of education. He was a key figure in the school reform movement that culminated in the national law (of 1962) replacing the old Latin-oriented middle school and the vocational school — both for the 6th-8th year — with a new scuola media, common and compulsory for all, and no longer strictly preparatory for the (academic) liceo.     

Erratum

On page 12 of Chinese Education, XI:2-3 (Summer-Fall 1978), it is incorrectly stated that the University of Chicago lends its Renmin jiaoyu holdings. While it will not do that, the Far Eastern Library of the University of Chicago will furnish photocopies or microfilms of the JMJY holdings on request.     

Earnestly Study the High School Physics Syllabus for the Full-Time Ten-Year School System (Trial Draft) and Strive to Improve the Quality of Teaching

The newly published High School Physics Syllabus for the Full-time Ten-Year School System (Trial Draft) (hereafter the Syllabus) has set forth for the high school physics course the purpose, principle, content, guideline, and methods for teaching it. With this the broad masses of physics teachers will have something to go by in their future teaching work; it is precisely what they urgently need.     

Exploration,Innovation, Participation,and Practice : A Preliminary Probe of High School Environmental Education

This bibliography is intended to serve as an aid to those pursuing the study of Mao Tse-tung, Maoism, and education in China. Efforts have been centered on recent materials in European languages, primarily English, not covered in other available bibliographic works, some of which are listed in Section I: Bibliographies and Reference Works. Excluded from the present list are the many translations of primary Chinese materials to be found in periodicals such as Current Background (Hong Kong), Issues &; Studies (Taiwan), Peking Review (Peking), and Chinese Education (USA).     

3 A Further Discussion of the Basic Problems in the Reform of Chinese Writing

In the January 1956 issue of Zhongguo yuwen [Chinese Language], my essay "Lun Makesizhuyi lilun yu Zhongguo wenzi gaige jiben wenti" [Marxist Theory and the Basic Problems in the Reform of Chinese Writing] was published in the form of a criticism; and at the same time, the editors of the journal brought together eighteen comrades to discuss my proposal. According to the editors' statement, they did so "in the hope that the discussion would clarify satisfactorily certain incorrect opinions about writing reform."     

The Beginnings of Curricular Reform: The Reports "Fifteen to Eighteen" and "Half our Future"

Late in 1959, the Ministry of Education published a report on the situation of youth between the ages of 15 and 18. (89) The focus of the study, also known as the Crowther Report after the chairman of the committee authoring it (90), was the age group that was past the compulsory school age, a large segment of which was already gainfully employed with no further contact with formal education. The report, which contained important reform proposals on the organizational and curricular restructuring of the secondary school system, focused upon the following task, spelled out by the minister: "to consider the education of boys and girls between ages 15 and 18 in relation to the changing social and industrial needs of our society and the needs of its individual citizens, and in particular to consider the balance between these ages at various levels of general and specialized studies and to examine the interrelationship of the various stages of education." (91)     

The False Intelligentsia (1927)

Since the beginning of May 1974, our hsien, led by the higher Party committee, has initiated, on a trial basis, spare-time correspondence education for educated youths who have resettled in the countryside. The institutes of higher education in Shanghai provide us with teaching materials. Aside from this, our hsien has undertaken full responsibility for organization and tutoring. In connection with the needs of the Three Great Revolutionary Movements in our hsien, five subjects were initiated for the first term of correspondence education: "Selected Readings from the Classics of Marxism-Leninism," "History," "Writing," "Breeding of Fine Strains of Paddy Rice," and "Agricultural Meteorology." We have engaged 23 part-time teachers and enrolled 30 students for each subject, totaling 150. The students are organized according to subject into 30 study groups. These groups are distributed over nine communes and state farms where the resettled educated youths are relatively concentrated.     

Changes in a Curriculum on the Way from Its Author to the Child

1. The So-called Dissemination Problem

The reform of the school learning process is proving more and more to be a difficult business. In the past ten years, a number of efforts have been made under the catch phrase "curriculum reform" to improve the goals, forms and content of the formal school learning process. In the past, disputes centered for the most part on whether planned innovations are in fact better than traditional instruction, and if so, according to what criteria. Now, however, increasing doubts have arisen as to whether these efforts have led to any actual changes at all, or whether they have not simply been absorbed in the classroom.     

Editor's Introduction

The articles on physics, chemistry, and mathematics that we are publishing in this issue of Chinese Education illustrate the significant changes in educational policy that have taken place in China since the death of Mao Zedong and the overthrow of the Gang of Four in late 1976. Most of them were selected from the journal Secondary School Science Teaching and deal with the newly compiled uniform textbooks for high schools in the full-time ten-year system. (The ten-year system includes five years of elementary school and five of secondary. In rural China, where the great majority live, schooling is usually offered for seven years or less, and often on a part-time basis. It is usually financed by the local populace with some help from the government.) The uniform texts, which began to appear in late 1977, replace the locally written instructional material produced during the Cultural Revolution period, 1966-1976.     

Higher Education Policy Formation in the Federal Republic of Germany: A Closer Look at Neglected Aspects

This article does not attempt to deal in comprehensive terms with educational policy formation in the Federal Republic of Germany. Nor is it a venture into institutional history. It is an effort to state some preliminary findings about relatively ignored aspects of educational policy formation, largely refracted through the recent experience of one institution, the University of Duisburg — planned over 400 years ago, established in 1655, closed "on many grounds, particularly the problem of unfavorable political circumstances in 1818," reincarnated the same day and year as a Pädagogische Hochschule (1), and most recently reformed as a comprehensive university (Gesamthochschule) comprising "die Abteilung Duisburg der Pädagogischen Hochschule Ruhr und die Fachhochschule in Duisburg."(2) Some materials will be drawn from recent forays of German social science into related fields, and from journal and daily press accounts of educational politics.     

Editor's Note

This issue of Chinese Education completes the translation of Hung Ch'i, 1970, No. 8, the first part of which appeared in the previous issue. It also continues the series of translations from the book Comrade Mao Tse-tung on Education Work begun by the previous editor of this journal. All of the articles in this book have appeared at one time or another in English translation - most of them in the Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung. The purpose of republishing them here is to bring them together for easy reference. We are, however, departing from the practice of the previous editor of retranslating these articles, and will instead present them as translated by the Foreign Languages Press in Peking.     

On Drawing a "Dividing Line"

Some comrades advocate drawing a line of distinction between "the sanctity of a teacher's right" [shidao zunyan] and "respecting the teacher and abiding by discipline" [zunshi shouji]. This is because, it is said, following the call to break away from "the sanctity of a teacher's right," the students "consider the teacher as being beneath their notice," and even go so far as to "willfully make trouble and make fun of the teachers." This is a very interesting subject, and I would like to offer some opinions.