Philosophy, Enlightenment and Education Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words - 1

Philosophy, Enlightenment and Education - Essay Example curriculum is designed and committed to use learning as a tool to stimulate and encourage the best attainable academic progress and results for all students. However, as Aristotle argues, attaining high grades is not the only measure of successful learning. Students at the early learning stages should not be subjected to tests because moral values and character states cannot be assessed through exams. They should, rather, be encouraged to achieve character by practice before intellectual skills are taught. For every subject in each key stage, the study programmes lay out what the students must be taught while the achievement targets lay out the performance standards expected of the students. However, the performance standards do not give any provisions for students with their own views. It would not be right for students to score low marks, denoting a failure, simply because they gave their own views on their understanding of what they have been taught. The curriculum should give roo m for finding a relationship between the learners’ ideas and what is stipulated in the standards. Conversely, its rigidity may only succeed in creating a block of stereotyped knowledge, not considering the flexibility of the learners’ minds. It is only through training mental skills and giving ways of discovery that the aim of making achieving and progressive learners can be achieved. Otherwise, the curriculum is biased towards handing over instruction and thus, presupposed knowledge. It is then up to the teachers to organise their individual curricula and available technology to target individual students’ experience, interests and strengths. The aim of creating confident students, as per the curriculum, assesses confidence by the students’ ability to meet standards. However, confidence cannot be correctly judged by meeting preset standards. A display of confidence would be more accurate if students knowingly followed what they understood from the instru ctions given, rather