BIOLOGY CURRICULUM IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS
IN EGYPT
The 20th century
has been called the century of Biology. It has been marked by two major
events; 50 years ago Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA for
which they earned the Nobel Prize. This discovery of the double Helix structure
of nucleic acid although predicted by some other scientists opened the door
for a total new science of biology and the road to more and more discovery
that helped humanity understand better life 47 years later the human genome
sequence was revealed.
The question that raises itself
now having seen this revolution of biology and emergence of new life sciences
do we prepare our students to meet the challenges of this science?
This paper analyzes, critically,
the curriculum content of Biology in the secondary education in Egypt, and
compares it with other curricula as the American and the British.
The Egyptian education system
includes three stages covering so far 11 years, five primary, three
preparatory and three secondary.
The secondary stage focus of
this paper is divided into two stages the first year that is general studies
than two years of specialization that have a cumulative result that affect
the chances of University choice of studies.
The Egyptian learning system
has been highly affected by the economic conditions of the country. Low
resources have had their fingerprints on the school system resulting in
low investment per capita in buildings faced by an ever-increased demand
for education created by a population that grows at a rate of 2.2% per year.
The net result is an increased capacity of classrooms that reach sometime
80 pupils per class. Such education system failed to develop technology
to the point that Egypt is still a consumer only of technology.
Marsh (1992) defined a curriculum
framework as group of related subjects that fit together according to a
predetermined set of criteria to appropriately cover an area of study. Print
(1993) brings in a series of fundamental questions: What to teach? How to
teach? When to teach? What is the impact of teaching? He also lists important
criteria for content selection: Significance, Validity, Relevance, Utility,
Learnability and Interest.
The Egyptian education system
has been in a state of flux with a lot of changes one of these changes have
affected the secondary education in an attempt to reduce exam-based stress
a decision was taken to have a cumulative total for the last two years reducing
the number of matters per year on one hand and consolidating two years curricula
in one the result is zero gain as the same load still apply the same amount
of information but concentrated in fewer subject matter.
The overall observation is
that it is Academic rationalist conception with Subject centered design
however it is not learnable to the point of being confusing in the second
part, it does not follow a logical build up and it does not respond to the
new life science, objectives are not clear. In the school book this unit
covers 326 pages out of a total of 504 almost 65% of the syllabus is spent
on this combination and only 22% is covering the new science of biology
leaving 13% for changes in living organisms. It is still oriented to old
biology, taxonomy more than cell and molecular biology the building blocks
of this whole science.
