Curriculum

spec for Basic School Skills

usually used to suck all the Context out of them

Nov'2014: Marion Brady on the craziness of still separating schooling into Subjects.

Mar'2012: Grant Wiggins says everything we know about Curriculum is wrong. Let’s see what results if we think of action, not knowledge, as the essence of an education; let’s see what results from thinking of future ability, not knowledge of the past, as the core; let’s see what follows, therefore, from thinking of content knowledge as neither the aim of curriculum nor the key building blocks of it but as the offshoot of learning to do things now and for the future... According to Ralph Tyler, the general aim is “to bring about significant changes in students’ patterns of behavior.” In other words, though we often lose sight of this basic fact, the point of learning is not just to know things but to be a different person (Self Improvement) – more mature, more wise, more self-disciplined, more effective, and more productive in the broadest sense. Knowledge is an indicator of educational success, not the aim. Thus, the conventional view of curriculum and the process of conventional curriculum writing must be wrong. (Goal Of Educating Kids)

Gary Stager (2006): I Know What You’re Thinking: Gary is against “bad” curriculum like the examples above. No, I oppose all of it. Curriculum is the arrogant folly of adults who don’t know the children who will play cholesterol scooter soccer, yet are self-ordained to prescribe what those students should know and when they should know it. Curriculum is the weapon of choice for ranking, sorting and labeling children (Standardized Test). It is indifferent to individual needs, talents or desires. Worst of all, curriculum creates an impermeable barrier between teacher and student. Without curriculum, failure would more difficult as would the assorted pathologies of discipline problems, drop-out rates and violence that plague too many schools.

• Aug'2012: Gary Stager notes: Seymour Papert used to say that School at best teaches a billionth of a percent of the knowledge in the universe, yet we quibble endlessly about which billionth of a percent is most important – the piece we have always taught.

cf Common Core, Standardized Test-ing, Factory Schooling

What you really need to know: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/senior_year

How about taking into account how much will actually be retained?

• ask Father Guido Sarducci https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO8x8eoU3L4