The world of 2012 is far different from the world of 1870. Yet while technology, culture, art, and media have utterly transformed America during those intervening years, the American education system has remained disappointingly stagnant. Despite advancements, the system still relies on traditions of class lectures, age divisions, and summer vacations. Going to school in 2012 is only a television or two away from being the same as it was in 1870.
But there’s one critical issue that both critics and supporters of American nationalized education disagree vehemently about: curriculum.
Curriculum is, quite simply, the content of what children are learning. While there is general agreement on maintaining the three R’s—reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic—many wonder if children are simply wasting their time by listening to lectures filled with facts.
Shouldn’t children with specific talents or predispositions be exposed to a more challenging curriculum than others? Shouldn’t struggling children without diagnosed learning disabilities be able to “catch up” with a customized curriculum?
The truth is, the current education system is indeed outdated, and the modern curriculum reflects that. But to understand the problem, we first need to explore what’s wrong with the current curriculum.
Do Kids Learn the Right Things These Days?
Education—from literacy to math and beyond—is undoubtedly important. Having a basic curriculum standard for each individual student is not a bad idea.
However, once you move beyond the “Three R’s,” things get a bit murky. For instance, what are the benefits of teaching music to children who have no interest or aptitude for it? Some argue that including music in a curriculum is essential for making sure children are well-rounded. After all, they argue, what good is an education if it isn’t comprehensive?
Learning music isn’t the issue; the problem lies in what children aren’t learning. For example, how many of these basic life skills are part of the core curriculum in the K-12 American education system?
- Personal finance
- Loan and money management
- Car/home maintenance
- Basic survival and emergency preparedness
- Socialization and networking
While a comprehensive education from Mozart to Means, Medians, and Modes is important, why are these essentials so scarcely focused on? Under the guise of providing a well-rounded education, many supporters offer a partial system that does not fully prepare young people for life after school.
For example, how many high school graduates are unable to change a tire? How many have plunged themselves into credit card debt? How many would be woefully unprepared to handle a natural disaster, an injury, or a sustained power outage? How many lack the social skills that can harm their long-term career prospects?
The answer, for all of the above, is “too many.” This happens because many basic and essential life skills are not part of the curriculum. Learning facts about the Civil War, while important, does not make one a fully-functioning adult—and it hardly qualifies as being truly “educated.”
The Doing vs. Hearing Problem
Perhaps one important element missing from this discussion is that schools in 2012 are still based on the lecture model: one teacher explaining things to children, assigning homework, and offering feedback on student performance.
This is the “hearing” model of learning: if you tell students a fact, they should be able to retain it.
However, real-world learning doesn’t work like this. It has to be interactive, proactive, and sometimes even messy as students make mistakes. How many people still struggle with new experiences for the first time, no matter how much they’ve been told about it? The only true way to learn is through action—actually performing a task and correcting mistakes as you go. This was even understood in Aristotle’s time when he said, “To do is to be.” Students who aren’t taught to “do” are being conditioned to live passive lives.
It’s not regular practice that consumes today’s student’s time; it’s the inaction of listening to a lecture. Even learning experts will tell aspiring teachers that students retain only about 20% of what they hear, meaning 80% of the time spent in school is largely ineffective. Yes, traditional schooling includes homework, but homework is by definition unsupervised and lacks interaction between student and teacher.
How can this be addressed in the curriculum? It would require an overhaul of the entire education system since so many teachers are trained to educate students in a particular way.
Introducing New Curriculum
The issue of how to solve modern education’s problems through a change in the curriculum is not as complicated as it might initially seem.
Sure, modern education is deeply ingrained. Entire generations of teachers have been trained in the same way. But opening the school system up to flexibility and competition could change how each school treats its students, introduces new curricula, and interacts with parents. The only way to introduce a new curriculum—and determine which one is ideal—is to free schools to make these changes.
This means loosening restrictions and reducing reliance on standardized testing. For some, this presents an insurmountable challenge. However, if schools were freed to perform in the private market, they would have the freedom to innovate and the incentive to outperform their competitors. It is this competition—and accountability to parents—that could ultimately lead to a curriculum shift that benefits students in the long run.
At the very least, this kind of modernized system would bring schools out of the dark ages and help them explore the new possibilities of the 21st century.
One Response
Thank you for writing this article. It means more than most could know to be able to realize that I am not going mad. Teachers are throwing all of these very very very complex systems of mathematics, science, and other systems of “education” to students without any relevant or useful, or frankly even any realistic reasons to back up their claims. There is no usefulness anymore. I remember back in elementary and middle schools where I would actually learn things. Not in high school.