A letter to the teachers of English: 82Curriculum revision: some lessons to learn (1) [Archives:2005/834/Education]

Dr. M.N.K.Bose ([email protected])
Associate Professor of English,
Faculty of Arts, Ibb.
Dear Fellow teachers,

This and a few letters following this are addressed to my colleagues teaching in the Universities, as they focus on some issues related to the teaching of English in the universities. This doesn't mean that my teacher friends in schools will not find them useful. The teaching of English in the universities and the teaching of English in schools should compliment each other and the biggest problem in the education system of this country is the lack of coordination between the two levels of teaching. This is what I have highlighted in my last few letters on Language Teacher Education and Training.

There have been frequent noises against the present English curriculums used in the Faculties of Arts and the Faculties of Education in this country; many students feel the inadequacy of these curriculums. I have made suggestions to the Faculty of Education curriculum in my earlier letters and I hope they reach the right people and right actions are taken to modify the curriculum.

Recently, I heard about the revision made to the Faculty of Arts curriculum in one of the Yemeni universities. These revisions have been made, I understand, by a committee of experts some of whom from abroad. The revised curriculum, however, does not fulfill the needs of the learners, I am afraid. This is what I gathered from the teachers teaching the curriculum and the students 'suffering' the curriculum. Sometimes what we do with goodwill misfires because we do not take into consideration all the factors involved in teaching English in an institution; this revision seems to me an example of this. I feel that teachers involved in the teaching of English in the universities have some lessons to learn from this revision.

A curriculum should necessarily reflect the needs of the learners. The needs of Yemeni learners of English are very simple and pragmatic; majority of them (more than 90% of the learners) need English to find lucrative jobs and those who go for higher studies or go abroad to work or get into diplomatic services constitute only a minority (10% of the population). Any curriculum revision, to be useful, should be able to achieve a balance that will help the majority without frustrating the minority; unfortunately, the revision I am talking about has erred on this count, I'm afraid. I am in no way belittling the expertise of the people involved in the revision; I am only worried that the revised curriculum is going to be a bigger burden to the students than the old one, pushing them from the frying pan to the fire, as the proverb says.

Though I haven't read the entire curriculum fully, the initial reactions from the teachers and the students make me feel that it is a 'bewildering' curriculum. The earlier curriculum was considered to be overloaded with linguistics and literature courses, which are not very useful to the learners to make them employable; some of us suggested that there could be more skill courses such as reading, writing, study skills and job-oriented courses such as English for tourism industry, hotel industry, office management etc, so that the graduates pass out with skills and language that make them employable. The revised one, I hear, has courses that are far-removed from the needs of the learners. I wonder how the courses such as Pragmatics, Discourse Analysis, Ideational politics of Literature, Advanced Literary Criticism (some of the courses in the revised curriculum) are going to be useful to the majority of the students.

I will continue this discussion in the next letter.

Yours fraternally,

Dr.M.N.K.Bose.
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