Cycle 2: What Should the Content of Curriculum Be?

As we learned last week, curriculum can very much be seen as a journey; a path of learning, growth, and life. We teach to strengthen students’ minds with knowledge that may or may not be beneficial for the students in the long run, but nonetheless, is apart of that grade’s standards and indicators. This week, we took a step further and looked at what exactly do we teach? This is a question that even thinking about it now overwhelms me. There are so many areas of learning that could be taught in a curriculum and so many areas of learning that would benefit students. As I was reading, I thought about all the times in my three years of teaching where I found myself wanting to teach this or wanting to implement that, but when it came down to it, my brainstorming was much larger than the reality of my 6 ½ hour teaching day.  So the real question is… where to begin?

Since the origin of education, there has always been a purpose for why specific content was taught. For years, it was to produce literate men, then women, and then schooling became preparation for a future career. Our current curriculum, as stressed in my last blog, is anything but valuable to our students as it limits their thinking to what can be found on a multiple choice test. While some of the content taught to the students is resourceful and will help them later in life (how to read for meaning, how to add/ subtract/ multiply/ divide, and how to justify their thinking), a lot of it is unnecessary and redundant. As stated in my last blog, the Common Core Curriculum was created because politicians felt that our current curriculum was not doing the students justice. A major factor that sparked a red flag was the fact that students were being accepted into college and then having to take remedial courses because they lacked the knowledge to take the regular freshmen courses. Looking at the differing curriculums in the last twenty years, we treat it almost as trial and error. While this component may benefit the teachers as they can take professional developments and revamp their teaching (certainly not easy, but possible), it is much more intricate for those students who went through a particular curriculum as the guinea pig and it debilitated them academically. The concept of what to teach is so complex, but we need to take a step back and think not what to teach but more so who are we teaching.

In the Corbett article, we witness a New York school that is run by and through technology. Unlike the popular assumption that the students play video games all day, students not only play them, but create video games as well. Students are put in the front seat of their learning and use what they learn in video games and what they are taught by their teachers to create, investigate, and get messy.  As stated on page 2, “Quest to Learn is organized specifically around the idea that digital games are central to the lives of today’s children and also increasingly, as their speed and capability grow, powerful tools for intellectual exploration” (Corbett, page 2) One of the major components when lesson planning is how do I get my students to be engaged in what we will be learning today? Quest to Learn has taken the common hobby of technology and video games to engage its learners, make them want to learn, and then take it a step further and motivate and inspire them to apply their learning into a variety of methods.  We live in the technological era where we rely heavily on technology. Students grew up with technology and therefore, possess a stronger level of competency and literacy to technology.  Therefore, it only makes sense to create a learning environment that is centered on technology.

At my school, we continue to do what we can to promote technology in the classroom. It would be amazing to teach my students in a setting like the one provided in the Corbett article. Students today do not compare at all to students twenty years ago. While we keep making this idea known, we continue to teach students in a way that is very outdated and unbeneficial to society’s current youth.  An example of this idea occurred a few days ago when a question on my students’ homework asked them what the purpose of an encyclopedia was.  As a person who readily used hardcover encyclopedias and Encarta as a child, I was shocked to find that so many of my students didn’t know its purpose. As I was talking to a colleague about this, it dawned on us the fact that they don’t know because they probably have never seen or used one before. The internet provides enough resources to where an encyclopedia seems quite archaic to ever use; another reason why our manner of teaching is behind the times

In his article, Dewey brings up the idea of individual nature vs. social culture.  I find this theory to provide strong reasoning to the idea that students must be taught content that is applicable to their current society.  Students can’t sit in their seats for hours like was done in the yester years and why should they have to? Students should be taught meaningful and authentic information that will benefit them in the long run. Especially with a huge stress to get students engaged in the STEM (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics) realm where they are learning, moving, discovering and growing. It is evident that Dewey feels that children should learn what is most applicable to their natural world and what knowledge they will need to best prepare them for their future careers. As he states on page 108, “It is he and not the subject-matter which determines both quality and quantity of learning.” Meaning, it’s up to the individual student to come to a conclusion on what content is essential to grasp, process, and comprehend.

In contrast to Dewey, Hirsch takes on a very differing opinion mainly stressing the importance of traditionalism in the classroom. A s stated on page 113, “To miss the opportunity of teaching young (and older) children the traditional materials of literate culture is a tragically wasteful mistake… that deprives them of information that they would find later in life…and is a chief cause of illiteracy.” I find this to be quite a bold statement and while I agree that some aspects of literate culture are relevant in a classroom setting: teaching about our country’s history, reading fictional literature, basic math facts, US government etc. a lot of the content lacks appeal to the students and therefore, is irrelevant to teach. 

If I could create my own content to teach with no pressures of students having to learn this or that, I feel I would balance both Dewey and Hirsch’s philosophies. There are many components that can not simply be taught by saying, but rather by doing. Creating an atmosphere of learning that mimics much of the social constructivism elements would allow so many more opportunities for students to experience. Students would be in control for what they learn and what they learn because it is applicable to them and them alone.  In this type of environment, students would find a purpose for learning and self-reliance.

Content will continue to change and that is without saying. If only society would trust its teachers to do his/ her jobs and to teach to benefit their specific students; if only teaching was about individual student growth and not advanced, proficient, and basic; if only students were held more accountable for what they learn and why they learn it.  But alas, the daydreaming of what could be must cease and the reality of teaching must return.

Standardized Testing - Simpsons Style: Not the best quality, but I found this to be quite humorous when looking at the content of our current curriculum and how we teach to the test, leaving little room for true comprehension and retaining of information.

Multiple Intelligences This website goes into detail about Gardner’s theory about multiple intelligences and the idea that every student is a different type of learner; this relates back to the argument that students perceive and learn in different ways.

Learning Beyond Textbooks This website highlights the idea that textbooks are outdated and how there are more efficient ways to provide specific content to students via the internet. This emphasizes convenience and fast results; two ideas that our current society thrive on.

Experienced Based Learning This website brings to the light the idea of experience based learning, how authentic learning comes from practice.