Teaching Beyond the Curriculum

Abstract

The drive to imbue university curricula with ‘relevance’ to the workplace and contemporary trends is not without its pitfalls. The dangers inherent in such an enterprise include the conflation of corporate training with education, the failure to perceive the value-laden nature of policy and corporate watchwords, and the failure to appreciate that the cultivation of some of the skills and qualities demanded by the ‘real world’ may be better pursued outside the arena of formal education. In this paper, I will discuss how, in a bid to avoid the aforementioned dangers, I brought my training in history to bear on the development of a course for the ‘Self-Management and Wellness’ component of the core curriculum of the Singapore University of Social Sciences. The ‘Self-Management and Wellness’ courses are centred on the themes of resilience, adaptability, and personal effectiveness. The neoliberal and corporate resonance of these themes may be obvious to some educators. It is also reasonable to ask if a quality such as ‘resilience’ can or ought to be taught in the classroom. I will show how I squared the need to engage with unavoidable watchwords with the need to avoid the dangers mentioned above by emphasizing in my course materials the practical and personal value of understanding the historical context of our contemporary obsession with ‘resilience’, ‘innovativeness’, ‘future readiness’, and other ‘marketable’ qualities. This was a more academically satisfying approach than claiming to be able to teach and assess these qualities within the standard setting of a university course.