Education: Think Beyond Curricula

Our thinking of education, now, is different and so is our thinking of its challenges. Teaching now reaches beyond our classrooms and inter-relates to more disciplines than before. The quality of the What and the How of learning no longer bases its criteria on pre-structured disciplines. In the schools of today, this quality is governed by laws of sequence, consequence and continuity of thinking.

When we discuss education, we ultimately bring to the forefront merely academic items and we relate it less effectively to other inter-related fields as socioeconomics and geopolitics. This is wrong and is proven to be counter-productive.

In education, schools structurally try to promote social norms and values so every individual is more prepared to contribute and engage positively in his or her community. In our classrooms we learn to be punctual, competitive and active. We also learn to accept laws and rules that regulate us into our wider society. This should be relevant to every Moroccan school and should direct the thinking of every Moroccan teacher of his or her classroom. Otherwise, Our work would have no significance, and these values would not step beyond our shelves. The productivity and efficacy of our Moroccan schooling system requires an intensive study of a set of elements that relate to education. Learning nowadays is perceived to be an occurrence of instructive and administrative practices and should equally be highly influenced by subtle elements such as personality, leadership, aesthetics, hygiene, motivation and more significantly workers’ choices and the quality of their lives.

In 1954, Abraham Maslow, the American psychologist and the author of Toward a Psychology of Being, published his book, Motivation and Personality. Abrahams’ ideas that were developed and introduced in his model, “the Hierarchy of Needs” are today more relevant than ever and remain valuable resources in the fields of motivational psychology. His classification of human needs should allow us better understanding of our own unique potentials and model us a more positive work climate. A climate where working conditions have equal standing to technical elements such as programming and assessment in the workplace.

In 1959, Frederick Herzberg, a behavioral scientist and researcher proposed his Two-Factor Theory and introduced us to broader definitions of work productivity. For Herzberg, the consideration of salary structure, administrative policies, benefits, physical working conditions, status, interpersonal relations, job security, recognition, sense of achievement, growth, promotion, responsibility and accountability can contribute significantly to the success and development of the working individuals. Consequently, this would reflect on the quality of the work itself. In this respect, education cannot be an exception. Actually, his approach is more relevant to the field of education more than any other field.

Within these contexts, John Stacey Adams, a behavioral psychologist, introduced his Equity Theory on workplace psychology and job motivation. His model of interpretation of behavioral phenomena extends beyond the individual self and integrates the influence of wider contexts in the workplace. Adams chose to focus more on the practices of fairness and qualities of justice in work setting, encouraging a stronger awareness of equity. This directive forces us to ask ourselves: Do our schools operate under such influence? Do Moroccan teachers work in fair conditions and receive fair rewards? Unfortunately, the answer is no, and this is what is alarming.

The focus, now, should be on the quality of our awareness and on the tensity of our sensitivity as educators to these relevant factors and also on our abilities to see beyond this concentration on programs and what technically works and what does not. On the same token, attempts have been made by many educators to better know the ins and the outs of the academic formula of success, and to more precisely detect what control the rate and ends of this success. Our duty now is to contribute to these attempts by bringing more influence to our academic debates and discussions and to advance a more positive thinking of education. Here, social media can play a key role and open us larger windows of discussions.

This article was inspired by the work of Colin J. Marsh, Key concepts for understanding curriculum.