History of Education - Assignment Example

Download file to see previous pages  Curriculum, textbooks, written predominately by James Calile and provided free were written in English, and teaching methods also changed significantly during this time spurred by the Powis Commission, the Belmore Commission and the revised national school program that resulted in much unhappiness by teachers and affronting everyone involved engaged with education. Irish was only permitted as an additional subject and according to Coolahan was “in line with the cultural assimilation policies” of the time.

Mention is made to a number of ‘religiously neutral’ textbooks written by James Carlile resulting in an implicit manipulation of the curriculum, but no further information in relation to the books is provided; it raises the questions as to which subjects and how many levels were incorporated; were all subjects compulsory or were some optional, and whether or not he developed the successful commercial set of graded readers.

Later, in reference to the revised national program introduced by Starkie in 1900, mention is made to the 3 Rs and new subjects. It is interesting to note that the new subjects were listed in such a way as to infer gender separation; for example were compulsory household management subjects specifically for females and was this the beginning of the stereotypical ‘math and science’ for boys and ‘cooking and sewing’ for girls?

Some schools incorporate a system of teacher aides who work alongside classroom teachers, thus it seems that such a system is remnant to the monitorial and simultaneous systems; such systems may be useful in developing countries where class numbers often exceed 80. It is not recommended that these systems replace existing teaching methods or approaches but merely to annex them.   ...Download file to see next pagesRead More