Under the Auspices of the Press House, the Teacher Creativity Center implemented ten meetings during July and August of this year with different groups in Gaza Strip governorates to analyze the new curriculum for the primary stage from fifth to seventh grade. This comes within "a Step towards Better Education" project.
The initiative, one of four initiatives supported by the Press House within the project activities, was designed to analyze the new curriculum from the perspective of students, teachers, parents and educators of both sexes through holding discussion sessions with approximately 200 participants. They were reached through cooperation with a number of civil and educational institutions operating in Gaza Strip.
The initiative focused on analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of the new curriculum stressing out its inadequacy. While the feasibility of the achievement file that the Ministry of Education has recently added to the curriculum has been examined. One of the most important recommendations of the participants in the discussion sessions is that the curriculum needs to take into account the minds and abilities of students and their individual differences and that it is intensive and carries a large amount of information such as Arabic language, Islamic education, and science.
The initiative seeks to know the extent to which this curriculum is applied to the principles of liberal education, which aims to expand learners' perceptions and encourage them to research, innovate and imagine, and to share information without receiving it. Since the old curriculum was adopted and depends clearly on indoctrination and the role of the student in the participation and researching is weak and is only limited to the reception of information from the teacher and curriculum.
At the end of these meetings, the initiative will present a report explaining the results of these meetings and the participants' opinions and recommendations, which were presented to decision-makers in both formal and informal educational institutions. In order to contribute to the improvement of current and future curricula and pressure to promote and implement the principles of liberal education supported by the project. It is worth mentioning that the "a Step towards Better Education" project comes in partnership with the German Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, which aims to highlight the problems and challenges of education in Gaza Strip and to promote the principles of liberal education.
