A couple of days ago, some public secondary students were complaining about something that has been recurring for a while: all teachers feel free to investigate the English sessions. I remembered that my class suffered the same problem when we were at a private secondary school.
In fact, this seems to be a general belief: you can always “use” the English session! The major excuse is that the curriculum considers languages as minor subjects for the secondary school. Yet, the investigation was contagious for the Arabic teacher too!
Well, I don’t know where the gap is. This problem exists in both kinds of schools, and it has been there for many years.
It’s a problem because even the students are sensing it. One teacher told them, “I’ll use the English session to do the exam; I NEED my own sessions!” The students said, “We NEED the English sessions!” The teacher answered, "This is MY work!!"
I think we need to have a better insight into this.
They do that since they believe that there is no need for english, and if they take an english session to explain a math rule they will be using time more effectively, but if they don't really know the importance of this language session , why they put it from the begining in the schedule.
ReplyDeleteThat is despicable to consider the languages inferior to other subjects! We are seeing day by day how important it is for a person to be fluent in English. This language is becoming a worldwide language and if our schools keep in underestimating it then serious decisions must be taken to really change this behavior and mentality!
ReplyDeleteit is an important topic to be discussed. languages reflect cultures and the languages or English courses are in the same level of importance of all other courses. i think it is the role of English teachers to show the importance of this major.
ReplyDeleteHanaa this is very true and the same thing goes on for the French sessions too. I believe that each teacher should be responsible to arrange and organize his schedule to fit the time given without having to make the language sessions their compensation. English and languages are they key for other content materials and I think that we should not fall within the cracks of teaching content. A solution to the problem of ‘coverage’ is that we don’t have to teach everything, teachers should prepare the students with the skills that enable them to understand and master the concept and let their students look for knowledge and facts that are easy to access by a click and surf of the web!
ReplyDelete