Questions about the educational reality in Iraq

Curricula as a model

Dr. Firas Jassim Mousa

 A few days ago, the World Bank's controversial statement  was issued, presenting the results of a study that indicated that 90%of Iraqi students "do not understand what they read."  Because of years of conflict in this country and structural deficiencies that have led  to an educational system that is unable to provide basic skills to students, andwhich doubtthe basis of learningand skills development. But the Special Representative  of the World Bank in Iraq returned visiting the Iraqi Ministry of Education and met with its minister   ,  retracting the adoption of the results of this study and apologizing  to the  Ministry and educational bodies for its contents, indicating that this study does not relate to   The   World Bank's view  in this regard,  and the United Nations preparedhere is the organization (Trancal), a civil society organization  concerned with human affairs, including education affairs.

The Minister of  Education  criticized the study of the aforementioned system,  indicating that it remained studiedon the students of the second and third grades of primary school, not the student of adolescents in accelerated education, and  not on regular students, and the minister was surprised by the use of five criteria  that cannot be applied to students The primary and secondary stages, even ifthey are appliedat high levels of study, such as the university stage.

Despite the World Bank's retraction from adopting the results of the aforementioned study and the Ministry of Education's criticism of it,  we find that there is a need to investigate the results  of the aforementioned study by reading the state  of "understanding" referred to in the study, and the most important foundationsfor building reading comprehension is the state ofthe curriculum. In view  of the lack of accurate data that we need to determine the state of understanding among the students of the basic stage in particular, we sold the  methodology of  raising questions for each element of the curriculum for which we adopted the modern concept that we will explain later, in the hope that we have the necessary data to analyze and then answerIn order to reach solutions consistent with the needs of students and educational and teaching staff, then to reach an appropriate level of ambition for education in Iraq.

The components  and elements of the educational reality in Iraq are many, including: the state of school buildings, teacher preparation programs, curricula, educational systems and many others, all of which affect the structure of education and its outputs, but there is no room to discuss all these elements in this paper, so we will address in this paper one of these elements, which is (curricula)For its direct relationship to the subject of understanding referred to by the study of the organization (Tranquil), as well as because it contains several educational and educational elements according to the modern concept of the curriculum, we will explain it later, and we will adopt the methodology of raising questions in this paper to be a starting point for subsequent research and studies.

 We shouldnot say that the concept of  the curriculum has changed as a result of the change in the concept  ofeducation, its objectives and functions, so that we have two concepts: an old concept and  a modern concept.  Determine the curriculum with the content of the textbook only, or the modern concept, so define it with a set of synergistic aspects that make up the curriculum are: educational and educational objectives, the content of the book, teaching methods, activities, evaluation methods, meaning that any teaching plan for any subject or any part of it must start from these  elements collectively,  not from the content of thebook alone;To identify the challenges facing the curriculum or the necessary treatments to face them, we must determine the reality of these elements, and we have noticed the existence of processes and activities that change the level of development carried out by the Iraqi Ministry of Education  in cooperation with local and international bodies specialized  in educational activities, as well as these operations - even if at a minimum - were based on the results of research And studies and reports of educational supervision,  and we should in thisframework to identify the foundations identified by the educational and educational literature in the construction and design of the form and content of curricula, the most important of which are:

- The philosophical foundations of the curriculum, which means the principles, goals and general  beliefs in society that are translated by the content and curricula in general through the development of a curriculum that respects the personality of the student and cares about his intelligence, freedom and attitudes and building   a  good student citizen.

- Social foundations: It means the culture of thesecret and society in general, its specificities, alternatives and environment, and curricula should not exceed these foundations by taking them into account in determining and adapting school subjects.

- Cognitive foundations: It is intended to understand the student and the way he understands and the diversity of topics and the requirements for teaching them such as symbolic sciences that include languages, mathematics, expressive arts, taste sciences such as  music and literature, moral sciences that are relatedto values, behavioral guidance and experimental such as physics and chemistry.

- Psychological foundations: It means the  student's psychological characteristics, abilities and preparations.

The question is: Do  the curriculum building committees take into account these foundations, and how they arestoned to include these foundations in the curriculum?

When looking at the elements of the curriculum that we have outlined, we notice that there is a need to identifyand the reality of these elements, we present them as follows:

1- Objectives: We must not indicate that the  educational goals differ from the educational goals, the educational goals are general long-term goals formulated in terms that describe the extreme ends of education, while the educational goals are short-term goals less general describe the outputs expected to appear as a result of the student's passage of experience or educational situation with me n or teach him a course Or a topic with me, as for  the objectives of other types: general objectives andrepresent agoal of the subjects (Arabic  - English - geography - science ...) which are clear and measurable, and behavioral educational goals: and represent the statements that the teacher and his students are trying to  achieve in the classroom, and work on the actual application of the teacher's curriculumand its implementation within the classroom.

The importance of determining the formulation of educational objectives lies in achieving a number ofbenefits, including that:

A. Helps to organize the content of the curriculum and determine the duration necessary forits implementation.

B. Allows the teacher to choose the elements of the curriculum: content, methods, activities and means of evaluation.

c. Yesdo you measure the results of the educational process.

d. Helps the student to identify and directhis activities towards a particular lesson or curriculum.

e. It helps to define the roles of both  the teacher and the learner.

It is important that the classification of these goals should be comprehensive and  cover and measure various areas: cognitive, such as knowing the student's abilities, including: achieving understanding through the ability to reformulate information and apply what he has learned in new situations and others, the emotional field by measuring his abilities in reception by directing the student's mind to an event and responding through his participation in the educational situation and values by accepting a certain value that he has acquired, and the psychological field /Kinetic or skillful This field refers to the skills that require coordination between the muscles of the body, as in sports activities to perform a certain performance or design a  specific body,  as in science.

The question is: Do goal setters take into account all these areas and meetin setting and formulating goals?

2- The content of the textbook: The content has general criteria in choosing its topics, most notably:

A. The relevance of the topics to the objectives set for each subject and for each topic.

B. Authenticity of content: the correctness and  accuracy of information and keeping abreast of global discoveries first-hand.

c. Connectwith cultural and social reality.

d. Balance between depth and comprehensiveness, theoretical and practical, academic and professional.

e. ObservePratt and previous student information.

F. Taking into account thefuture needs of the individual and society.

G. Arranging the topics  of the content in the light of determining a specific criterion, such as the criterion of continuity, which means the vertical relationship between topics according to grades or the criterion of integration such as linking mathematics with science and history with geography or the criterion of  autism such as merging the branches of the Arabic language: grammar, construction, dictation and others in one subject.

H. Guides for various subjects: It helps the student and the teacherin following the executive steps ofthe subject.

Here we put a question: Have the curriculum building committees ensured thatthese standards are observed in writing the content of the book?

3- Teaching  methods and strategies:  The teaching methods and strategies vary  greatly, and they are many that abound in educational literature such as  traditional methods, including (lecture) inits standard and inductive style, and  modern strategies such as problem solving strategy,  self-questioning strategy, and mind map strategy One  of  these methods and strategies is determined  according to  factors,  including: the nature of the subject, the school stage, the appropriate school environment, the nature of the student himself, as  well as the  efficiency of the learnerand other factors. But all these methods share the same  goal of achieving student reading comprehension, which is the goal ofeducational work.

There are factors that affect the achievement of reading comprehension among  students, including:

A. Factors related to the student: including his level of intelligence, cultural educational level, background, previous experiences, the student's linguistic responses, his control over the reading world, his general health (hearing, sight, organic and psychological ability), and  his tendencies and interests.

B. Factors related to the read text: whatever its subject, ease of vocabulary and information, the degree of its prevalence and conformity with the student's abilities and experiences, the way ideas are presented, the font size, the type of printing, colors and illustrations according to the stage of study, the artistic output of the content and the use of illustrative means and others.

There are also factors that motivatereading comprehension, including:

- Emotional factors: self-perception and the influence of the teacher and the study material.

- The impact of the socio-economic status of the student and his family as well as the teacher.

- Poor motivation of teachersand students.

- Inappropriate education for the student and the preparation that is not suitable for the student.

It is worth  noting that the reading comprehension levels hierarchical starting with superficial or direct understanding in the sense that the student at this level identifies the main ideas  and the main aspects of the subject and arranges the events or the world of mathematical and other  mechanisms through deductive understanding in which he has the ability to extract the trends of the writer and so on according to the subject of the material, up to  To the critical understanding through which there is no comparison between the minute and the imagination,  reality and fiction, and  so on with regard to the humanistic  approaches and the errors that can permeate mathematical problems and the universal facts until the creative understandingreaches what it canAdd alternative endings to texts or solve with different mathematical laws, for example.

In this resource, we wonder whether the educational and educational bodies in Iraq took into account these factors as well asإن  adapting the lessons to the mentioned levels of understanding.

4- Activities: Activities have become a complementary element  to the elements of the  curriculum and are intended to be the activities and workassociated with a  specific subject  assigned to students inside and outside the classroom,  the aim of which is the student's understanding ofthe subject of  an applied understanding  that enables him to apply scientific experiments in more than one educational situation, for example to eatStudents form a group of them tomake a representative presentation of a story they read in the reading lesson on the school theater  - if any - or to apply a practical experiment they studied in the chemistry lesson in the laboratory and so on.

The question is: Do all our schools adopt these school activities?! Are these activities codified within the classroom in a way that achieves the objectives of the curriculum?!

5 - methods of evaluation: It is concerned with  issuing a judgment on the extent to which the educational process reaches its goals, and its achievement of its satisfaction, and  to check the various  obstacles and obstacles that prevent access to it, and to propose appropriate means in order toavoid these impediments, the methods of evaluation must be comprehensive and measure all degrees of experience, skills,  abilities and knowledge acquired by the student during theEducational and does not focus on knowledge only, as well as should take into account the stages of learning  to include the pre-calendar before the process of education and structural in  the course of and the final after the end of the year, and should vary between the calendar written and reading and skills and educational and applied situations to be the degree of the student expressive of all that he has obtained as well as express the  extent of his understanding of these experiences, as well as that aassessment methods should be linked to the objectives to measure learning outcomes and to know the extent to which the goals are achieved.

The question wehave here is: Are these methods developedtotireof everything in thisaxis in a way that achieves the goals set?

Needless to say:  the  treatments leading to the improvement and development of curricula, and thus the development of understanding among students,  begin at the moment of answering these questions, to prepare comprehensive programs in the development of all  these elements combined in conjunction and parallel, because the  development of each element individually does not achieve the desired goal and the desired benefit.e.