Up in the morning

and off to school

Hindija Vedad
Kurbegović Dino
• Most people in industrialised countries spend a large
part of their childhood and
adolescence and even the beginning of their
adult life in some form of formal
education. Spending on education constitutes a
large part of most governments’
budgets. Qualifications gained in education are often
the key to careers and success.
There is no doubting the huge influence formal
education has on the lives of those who
go through it.
Activity I: Role Play
Group I: Subject centered VS
Learner centered
Some systems concern themselves entirely with the
subject, the material to be taught. They do not take
the learners’ starting-points, needs, and personalities
into account. Lectures tend to fall into this
category. Others, as in many primary schools,
focus on the needs of individual learners or
groups of learners, and encourage them to learn.
Group II: Teacher as contorler VS
teacher as facilitator
Teachers can take up different
roles along the continuum from
controlling everything that goes on
in the classroom to just facilitating
the process of learning.
Group III: Reaction on test cheating
VS No reaction on test cheating
A student is taking his exam at
secondary school and is caught by
copying from a text book. How
does the teacher react?
Group IV: Learning for content
knowledge VS Learning to learn
Learning the dates of battles or how to
solve equations as opposed to learning
study
skills (namely, how to skim and scan a
text, how to take notes, where to look
things
up, etc.).
Activity II: Pair work
Read the story about teachers in
Hungary and then with the help of
questions that you have received,
draw a picture that shows your
oppinion about the situations in
question, in BiH.
People working in education have not been well paid at all in
Hungary. Teachers in
the lower grades of primary schools earn less than secretaries,
semi-skilled workers
or taxi drivers. On the other hand, they are usually in charge of
about thirty
children’s educational and personal development for several
years. These teachers teach about twenty-two lessons a week,
substitute for other teachers quite frequently, are on corridor
duty from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. at least once a week, do a lot of
administrative tasks and take their classes to educational places
like the zoo, a museum, or a theatre performance in their free
time. You really have to love children and be devoted to your
profession to be a teacher in primary school.
Group I: Are teachers appreciated financially and
otherwise?
Group II: What is it like to be a teacher in your
culture?
Group III: What tasks does a teacher in primary or
secondary school have to fulfil?
Group IV: Do students and/or parents complain
if they do not agree with the teaching methods?
Activity IV: Individual work
Write a leaflet giving advice to someone from another culture who
is comming to study in your school. Here are some areas which
you might like to think about (try to help the foregin students
as much as you can)
• Relations with teachers
• Deadliness and punctuality
• Attendance, requirements
• Subjects and what they cover
• Homework
• Types of tests
Activity V: Debate
Read the story and come up with maximum three (3)
arguments that support the point of view that you
are defending. After you have read your
arguments, each team will have three (3) minutes
to try and attack the arguments of the other team.
• A Dutch school teacher tries to explain to a Turkish
immigrant mother that it is in her
child’s best interest to start school at 4. The mother is
aware of the law, but is very
reluctant to “give away” her child at that age.