Cycle 2: What Should the Content of Curriculum Be?

Reflection

There's nothing new nder the sun. That thought entered my mind while I read "Learning By Playing" in the New York Times, on the technology andvideo-game centered school Quest to Learn. I wonder if our investment in schools that focus on gaming is a shorter term trend set to die out. The following thought feels dangerous and rebellious;perhaps it shouldn't.

What if we blurred the lines between academic subjects and reimagined the typical American classroom so that, at least in theory, it came to resemble a typical American living room or a child’s bedroom or even a child’s pocket.

I read this week's readings on my iPad. In order to do so I downloaded the PDF files to my iDisk "cloud-based" MobileMe (check out that Wikipedia article link) hard drive that I can access from my laptop and computer at home, my work computer and work laptop, my iPad, and my iPhone. I took notes on my iPhone as I read these articles. I was not doing this to prove a point: it was the easiest, most natural way for me to read the material. So I acknowledge times are changing, both in my thought process and philosophy, and in my actions. But I am skeptical of the virtue of schools focused on video games. It doesn't feel right. Perhaps mobile e-mail and internet did not feel right earlier either - I don't know, because I'm too young to rememberThe following quote reminded me of Kirch's criticism of school as "vertically and horizontally segregated". More on this later.

The traditional school structure strikes Sale as “weird.” “You go to a math class, and that is the only place math is happening, and you are supposed to learn math just in that one space,” she told me one day, sitting in the small room at the school that served as Quest to Learn’s operational headquarters.

The author of Learning by Playing acknowledged that research is sparse. I was interested to read:

Brain researchers have found that playing first-person shooter games like Call of Duty does seem to have some neurological benefits, including improving peripheral vision and the ability to focus attention.

I found the following book through Good Magazine while I was researching outside sources. The book is "Reality is Broken" by Jane McGonigal; her thesis is that video games are good for us! I wonder if any of you came across her work in greater depth than I. She has some ideas about how to ensure video games remain a source of good, such as to limit the number of hours of video games played per week to less than 21, and to choose to play with friends in person, instead of through the internet. She also appears to insist that violence is not a particularly helpful aspect of any video game. I'd like to read her book.

In the Cleveland County School District, teaching 21st century skill is understandably a focal point. I wonder if video games are less of a 21st century skill, and more a hobby.

All this goes back to the debate over what constitutes “21st-century skills.” How do schools manage to teach new media without letting go of old media? Is it possible to teach game design and still find time for “The Catcher in the Rye”?

John Dewey caught my attention and my passion. I really liked this reading, from "The Child and the Curriculum". I took many notes, and want to share what I see as his most relevant and insightful thoughts. Dewey believes that w need to allow the child - and presumable we should extend "the child" to mean any student - to realize the world contains the same facts and truths as his experience in the world. This resonates with my own experience. I need for something I am learning to be relevant, even if in a small way, to my life. Otherwise learning about something is foreign and unsatisfying, to me like a crossword puzzle.

I found Dewey's contrast between the scientist and the teacher very insightful. Dewey wrote that the scientist is concerned with adding truths, and using the body of knowledge a his disposal to solve problems. Teachers are only concerned about the subject matter as it pertains to a level of development of experience. I love this line from Dewey: "Teacher's only concern is of inducing a vital and personal experience." He continues that teachers are not concerned not with subject matter as suchbut as part of a total and growing experience for teacher's students.

A failure of the school system is that a child gets a vague middle ground, and neither the complex, nuanced adult subjects, nor the child's innocent, naive curiosity and instinct. This next line floored me, because it capture both my own experience, and the experience of so many of my peers and students.

An interest in the formal apprehension of symbols and in thier memorized reproduction becomes in many pupils a substitute for their original and vital interest in reality. The subject matter does not appeal - the appeal becomes all the discopline that throw the wandering mind back on course.

That is to me the most true statement in my experience as a teacher, as my teaching pertains to rote curriculum. Dewey says that the "way out" is for us as educators to "psychologize" content, in order to bring it into life terms for our students. Finally, Dewey concludes that curriculum is a guide for teachers, that can show the potential achievement of our students. Dewey's "The Child and the Curriculum" made me want to focus all my instruction on relevant, curious, engaging science topics. I felt for a brief period of time I would give up on the strict Standard Course of Study, only until the following reading!

E.D. Hirsch wrote the opposing reading from this week, "Cultural Literacy". Hirsch believed the chief problem to be in faulty underlying theory. Hirsch wrote that our failure to teach content area, and to teach the classics, was leading to a collective loss of our cultural memory. As I mentioned earlier, schools are fragmented by subject area, and by grade level. This makes our education more discontinuous, non-linear, and maybe even nonsensical than it should.

Hirsch describes the 1893 Committee of Ten; he believes that a return to these traditional, content-based principles would benefit our school system. In 1918 the Cardinal Principles made education perhaps more pragmatic and individual based. For example, spending leisure time well is the sixth Cardinal Principle! Hirsch argued that the Committee of Ten from 1893 was more democractic: Hirsch writes that if a student can stay in school, he will be given the same education as every other student. Hirsch goes on to explain that tracking students onto different paths, from college-bound to occupational, is a product of the less-democractic Cardinal Principles of 1918.

Dewey and Hirsch are seperarted by their deeply-help, opposing beliefs.Dewey strongly believes in "psychologizing" and making relavent and appropriate material so that it is suitable for the children in front of us in our classrooms. Dewey and Hirsch are united by their flexibility, despite their beliefs. Both strongly believe in the democratizing effect of education. For Dewey, this translate into material that is relevant to the diverse population of learners in our schools. For Hirsch, this belief means that all those in school receive the exact same education. If they can be present in school, they will be educated like every other student. Dewey acknowledges the importance on the pillars of knowledge. He also respects the "adult" subject content-areas for their sophistication. Likewise, Dewey believes that material should be relevant, but also connected to a more standardized curriculum.

What should curriculum be? Here is the mission of the district in which I am employed:

"Cleveland County Schools will equip all students with the knowledge and skills to become productive citizens in a globally competitive world by partnering with our community to provide appropriate educational experiences."

I came across interesting Module 2 related content: Good Magazine implores educators to teach Jules Verne, because his work applies to lovers of the TV show Lost, as well as budding scientists spurned to work from President Obama's call for a "Sputnik Moment" in the United States. Good writes:

So, c'mon schools, don't just toss Jules Verne onto some random summer reading list. Add his novels back into what's read during the school day.

Also from Good Magazine, their editors asked readers on Twitter and Facebook whether video games teach important lessons. There were some interesting responses relevant to our Module 2 topic; most readers were sympathetic with the idea that video games are good for us. This may support Professor Greenwalt's belief about the trajectory of education in America:

I want to suggest that we might now be entering a time where the pendulum of American education starts to swing back away from mass standardization.

For example, in North Carolina we eliminated the End-of-Course exam as an exist standard! Whether this is good or bad is for another module!

Resources:

http://www.good.is/post/why-schools-should-still-teach-jules-verne
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/good/lbvp/~3/arQzC2IyhqM/
http://www.clevelandcountyschools.org/index.php/about-us/our-mission

http://www.clevelandcountyschools.org/index.php/about-us/core-values

http://clevelandcountyschools.org

http://www.amazon.com/Biology-MasteringBiology-WebCT-Access-Generic/dp/0321585127/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1297395568&sr=8-1

http://www.inc.com/hardware/articles/201004/ipad.html

http://www.notablebiographies.com/De-Du/Dewey-John.html