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.     

Effects of Self-Regulated Strategy Development for POW+TREE on High School Students with Learning Disabilities

High school students with learning disabilities often have difficulty expressing their thoughts in writing. At the secondary level, writing becomes paramount to successfully navigating the curriculum and expressing knowledge. In this study, the effectiveness of Self-Regulated Strategy Development for POW (Pick my idea, Organize my notes, Write and say more) + TREE (Topic sentence, Reasons—three or more, Examine, Ending) for persuasive quick writes with four high school students with learning disabilities was investigated. Results indicated an increase in the number of response parts written and increased stability in the number of words written. The participants who deemed the intervention as positive provided social validity.     

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).     

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.     

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)     

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)     

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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

Tomorrow's Secondary Education

The publication Archiv für das schweizerische Unterrichtswesen, which the Conference of Cantonal Directors of Public Instruction has edited since 1915, appears this year under a new title, Politique de l'éducation: Annuaire de la Conférence Suisse des directeurs cantonaux de l'instruction publique, and in more modern form. This represents a turning point for the Conference of Cantonal Directors of Public Instruction. While it has functioned in the past as a kind of parliamentary body, it now assumes the role of an agency for educational policy making in Switzerland in partnership with the Confederation.     

Introduction: Primary-School Reading Texts and Teaching Methods in the Wake of the Cultural Revolution

This issue of Chinese Education is devoted to selections from post-Cultural Revolution elementary school primers. These are, so far as we know, the only samples of primary-school reading materials that have come out of China this past decade.     

A Network for Popularizing Socialist Education

In Nanan hsien, schools are run in front of the doors of the poor and lower-middle peasants, in the remote mountain areas, and on the off-shore islands, as demanded by the poor and lower-middle peasants. This has changed the former irrational distribution of schools. Besides, sparetime schools and political evening schools of various types have been set up throughout this hsien by such means as are appropriate to the local conditions. In this way, popular education for school-age children and teenagers is basically achieved and 80 percent of the adult commune members can also take part in the study. Experience of this hsien shows that it is entirely possible to popularize socialist education so long as we conscientiously carry out Chairman Mao's "May 7 Directive" and fully arouse the masses.     

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.     

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.     

Higher Education Framework Law: An Analysis

For six long years the Hochschulrahmengesetz has been the main point of discussion on educational policy in the Federal Republic of Germany. There are three major reasons for this: an attempt was made for the first time to provide legislation for all universities in the Federal Republic; only by amending the Constitution in 1969 was the federal government empowered to establish a "framework" within which the Länder (federal states), who are directly responsible for the universities, both legislatively and executively, are to operate in the future. Furthermore, the Federal Coalition Government and its supporting parties (Social Democratic Party or SPD, and Liberal Democratic Party or FDP) are anxious to push ahead with higher education reform. And then, of course, the regulations introduced for university entrance have also become more and more an important topic of discussion over the past few years.     

University Reform and Skeleton Legislation on Higher Education in the Federal Republic of Germany

This article, Part II of a two-part study by Professor Teichler, has been translated from Pädagogik und Schule in Ost und West, November-December 1972, No. 6. Part I appeared in Western European Education, Fall 1972, Vol. IV, No. 3.     

The General Reform of Primary-Secondary Education (La Réforme Haby)

On July 11, 1975, the French government adopted La Réforme Haby, an education act that authorizes a general reform of primary and secondary education. Named after René Haby, Minister of Education in the cabinet of President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, the act is to be implemented progressively over a three-or four-year period beginning in September 1976 or 1977, depending on the speed with which the mechanics of the reform can be set in place. The new baccalauréat, which, as in the past, will be conferred at the end of grade 12 (la terminale), is not expected to be introduced before 1979 at the earliest.     

Studentenwerke — Their Work and Their History

Anyone entering college or university today is immediately confronted with a number of new terms. Studentenwerk [student organization] is one of them. Although the Studentenwerke have had an established place in college and university life for a long time and without them a policy of equality of opportunity and an opening up of higher education are inconceivable, only here and there have they so far been able to penetrate public consciousness with their services.     

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.