3 Reasons Why Your Subject Does Not Matter

Teachers, your subject is almost irrelevant to your profession, and the content of your lessons is the least important part of your teaching. 

To prepare our students for their life-long learning journey, we should focus on their understanding, on pedagogy, put their curriculum aside, and shift perspective for a minute. 

1- Delivery vs Subject Knowledge

A colleague of mine once complained about the visit of an OFSTED inspector. The reason was that the inspector remarked on the importance of the subject knowledge. For my colleague, the subject knowledge was the least important as textbooks contained the information both teachers and students needed. 

It was in the early stages of my teaching career, and although I had remained silent, I strongly disagreed with him. To me, the teacher must be an expert in his subject. It is non-negotiable. He has to be able to answer all questions students would ask. 

After almost two decades of teaching, I put a lot of water in my wine. I still believe that a teacher should be an expert on his subject, yet it is not an absolute necessity as long as he is honest and willing to learn. It is common for teachers to be asked to teach a subject they are unfamiliar with. A language teacher might also have to teach maths and a science teacher, English. It takes tremendous effort to manage the learning curve; this is where teaching skills come in handy, as teaching starts with learning and is an ongoing process. A PGCE is a Postgraduate Certificate of Education. It stipulates that you are a qualified teacher and have learned the skills of teaching. Consequently, you are able to deliver any lesson (with a minimum of preparation).

If I met my delivery-focused colleague again, I would not remain silent. Although a teacher must have a minimum of subject knowledge and will embark on a learning journey, his ability to deliver is equally, if not more important, and should be nurtured and crafted to excellence. 

2- Pedagogy vs Curriculum

All subjects come with stereotypical beliefs, such as “history has too many dates to learn,” “French has too many grammar rules to learn,” and “maths has too many formulas to learn.” 

These stereotypes might have reflected education a hundred years ago, but education has evolved, and students are not expected to memorize blindly.

Yet curriculum remains the commandments teachers must follow. It hovers over the classroom, imposing a fast pace to tick all the boxes before the end of the year, but the to-do list approach cannot benefit all learners. 

Instead of teaching the curriculum to our students, we could teach them what matters. And what matters is the ability to face and solve problems with the available tools. 

Do you remember the movie To Sir With Love? Thackeray (the new teacher) throws out all the textbooks at a turning point and undertakes to prepare the teenagers for life by tackling issues they will soon have to face as adults. 

I doubt principals and inspectors would appreciate seeing curricula at the bottom of a bin. However, there is primordial teaching in that scene. Let me explain it by taking you to a maths classroom. 

Maths teachers provide students with the tools needed to solve problems. Yet, solving a problem is not the only intention. Remember, it is not the destination that matters but the journey. Real learning is when students inventory and select the tools they have at their disposal to solve the problem—pausing, observing, and choosing the best course of action; this is the life skill taught in a maths class. 

Our focus shouldn’t be to teach the curriculum as it is but to use the curriculum in order to teach broader concepts and useful skills. 

And this leads me to a topic dear to my heart: student-led learning.

You must have heard the saying “give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Similarly, we should teach students how to learn, which is what student-led learning does. If you want to find out more about the way I use the curriculum as a base to create independent learners, check the following post: 4 Steps to Create a Student-led Classroom.

3- Understanding vs Retrieving

We often complain that education has not changed over the last hundred years, yet we all rely on the same old assessments. All of them require our students to remember a set of information and to be able to retrieve it. The MFL GCSE offers a great example of absurdity. Students learn a prewritten text by heart. We don’t assess their ability to express their ideas on a specific matter but their ability to remember a prewritten and teacher-approved text by heart.

We shall once more take a look at maths classrooms. They are, after all, a hub for innovation. 

The Singapore Bar Method has taken over everyone’s heart in the UK. The method involves visualizing, organizing, and representing mathematical quantities and relationships within a problem. The focus is on understanding the concept to apply the skills.

I remember my years at school, where I learned how to apply a division method—drilling without understanding. When, at age 33, I had to teach maths using the Singapore Maths Method, I had to refresh my long-forgotten maths skills, and visualizing a division was a divine revelation. It gave meaning and sense to the process. 

Could we reflect on what we teach and, more specifically, how we teach? Shouldn’t we focus on understanding why we work on a specific topic and, why we work on a particular skill, why we do things in one way and not another; understanding concepts is critical to qualitative learning. 

Takeaways

Teachers’ subject knowledge is no longer the most critical aspect of their profession. Instead, they should focus on their delivery and teaching skills and how they teach concepts and skills that will be useful throughout their students’ lives.

Teachers should also shift their focus from teaching the curriculum as it is to use it as a base to create independent learners. Additionally, assessments should focus on understanding rather than just retrieving information. By doing so, teachers can prepare students for their life-long learning journey and help them become problem-solvers with the available tools.

Teachers should clearly understand the content of the curriculum to look at the bigger picture. Only then can they detach the concepts and adapt their teaching method accordingly. One effective way to do it is through narration. Subscribe to my mailing list if you’d like to be notified as soon as my post about narrating a course of work to engage the students is published.