Why we need to stop doing the Romans!

Poor Romans! They don’t want to be ‘done’ to. And the same applies to Judaism, poetry, volcanos etc. Instead, we need to talk about ‘teaching about’ the Romans and the other units. Why does this matter?  Well, it’s more than semantics. It has implications for how we think about planning, delivering, and evaluating the curriculum.

If we are ‘doing’ as opposed to ‘teaching’ a unit on the Romans, then it can sometimes legitimise using poor quality resources; not necessarily in every case, but there is a real danger of this. When we flip it to ‘teaching about’ we are obliged to pay more attention to the ‘what’ of what we intend to convey and then check for whether our pupils have learnt it.

There is a joke about two men in a bar. One says to his friend ‘I’ve taught my dog to speak French.’ ‘Really?’ says his mate, ‘let’s hear him then.’ ‘I said I taught him; I didn’t say he’d learnt it’ comes the response. There is something important in this anecdote and it is this: that the fact that I have taught something does not mean that my pupils have ‘got’ it. And they are unlikely to have really learnt something unless they produce something worthwhile with the material they are studying.

In the video explaining the rationale for the national curriculum, Tim Oates talks about curriculum ‘products’. When he talks about products, he means the things which pupils write, say, draw, the low stakes tests they complete or the things they make. All these provide insights for the teacher into the extent to which pupils know, understand, and can do something on their own terms.

We are more likely to take this measured, intentional approach if we start shifting the language from ‘doing’ to ‘teaching’.