Revised Curriculum: Field Reality & Challenges
Md Bayazid Khan :
The pace of change in the world is accelerating faster than we could ever imagine and the changes have been happening in every aspect of our lives, from technology to social norms. The 21st century is going to be confronted with multifarious challenges because of the constantly evolving changes.
Concerned Nations must adapt to the changes and find ways to navigate the challenges. Regarding this, the educational system must be revised with a view to prepare future generations for the challenges to be faced and addressed effectively.
Education must be need based and well-timed. But the existing education system has visible skills gaps between what society and the labour market need and what learners are achieving from the formal education system regarding fulfillment of aforesaid needs. Countries like Bangladesh have to confront challenges in the 21st century.
Bangladesh is a densely populated country with huge numbers of workforces to be accommodated into the labour market. But the 21st century’s labour markets will be vulnerable to ensure employment of the massive number of workforces due to the gradually increasing rate of intervention or replacement of automation and machine, artificial intelligence and digital technologies in industry, agriculture, commerce and business and even office management.
On the other hand Bangladesh and some other countries around the world are facing natural disasters every year that resulted in loss of human lives and livestock with damages of crops and resources.
This is because of poor or no knowledge on climate change education and also lack of skills in taking climate-adaptive measures to protect or reduce the severity of damages and losses from climate change effects.
Another sort of challenge that Bangladesh and most of the countries are facing nowadays regarding establishment of the culture of peace and non-violence in the society.
War, civil war, internal conflict, violence, sexual harassment, showdown or aggression by influential section of the community/countries over small or disadvantaged communities/countries, disrespect to others opinions, rituals and religions, absence of applying civic senses, morality and positive attitude in the daily life, committing monetary and intellectual corruption etc are the premier causes towards cultivating a culture of peace and harmony in the society.
The Covid-19 pandemic has transformed the way we live in, work and learn. In the education sector, it forced the education to embrace online learning through using platforms like zoom, google meet etc and applying digital technology based remote teaching-learning methods as the emergence of a new era of education.
But due to lack of digital devices, existence of no-tech or low-tech areas abundantly and absence of digital literacy among teachers and students, huge numbers of students didn’t have access to online or remote teaching-learning processes in Bangladesh and other countries of south Asia and Africa.
Considering the above mentioned challenges to be faced as well as addressed in the 21st century, educators and policy makers need to develop or revisit curriculum with a view to ensure learning and adaptation simultaneously. Revision of curriculum might take place considering the introduction of smart education.
Smart education consists of Peace Education, Climate Change Education, Skills Developing Work-based Education, Digital Literacy Education and obviously Subject-based Education. The goal of smart education may foster learners’ learning and adaptation skills to meet the needs of work, life and society.
Introduction of smart education might be mandatory for students of primary and secondary tiers of education. Curriculum developers need to develop textbooks, teachers’ guides and teaching-learning materials (TLM) by identifying grade wise learning areas for students in aforesaid five spheres of smart education.
There might be sufficient laboratory or practical works, attachment or internship, home based assignments beside classroom teaching-learning whilst identifying the process of learning.
Effectiveness of implementation of the revised curriculum, in most cases, depend on the initiatives taken by the policy makers such as ensuring dedicated laboratory facilities, providing sufficient logistics that include teaching aids, teaching materials and equipment and finally, quality teachers/instructors in each and every educational institution.
Attainment of tomorrow’s learners’ need based integrated learning and development of required adaptation skills simultaneously meet job seekers’ demands. It enables society to adopt peace education, climate change education and work-based education.
Digital literacy education along with subject based integration is not the utopian one. Rather this is the necessity of facing and addressing the challenges of the 21st century.
The government might introduce smart education for future learners for ensuring their smooth access to the competitive and challenging labour markets as well as ensuring their safe and peaceful existence in the society. This sort of education also helps them develop their adaptation skills to face and survive during catastrophic and pandemic like disasters.
Moreover, acquired learning and skills from smart education make them competent to take climate resilience measures during natural disasters and also enable them to literate digitally for utilizing the digital advantages such as e-learning, remote work, e-commerce etc during Covid like pandemic and other man-made disasters.
(The writer works for primary
education sector).
