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Blog: FCAR
Speakout
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Curriculum is key to
schools making the grade
By Marion Brady
*February 22, 2005
It's front-page, above-the-fold news in the Orlando Sentinel: "If Florida's
F-rated public schools don't improve this year, the state could ask someone else
-- perhaps a private company or state college -- to step in and run the troubled
institutions." And that private company or state college will . . . do what?
I'd really like to know. I talk face-to-face or by phone to educators coast to
coast. I read the professional education journals. Every day's mail brings
educational brochures, advertisements, newsletters and miscellaneous educational
promotional materials and propaganda. I subscribe to a bunch of Internet
services serving up daily links to education-related developments in America,
Canada, England, Australia and New Zealand. I maintain e-mail contact with
educator friends in Western and Eastern Europe and Asia. And, yes, I go to
movies and read stories about impressive-sounding educational turnarounds and
"miracles."
I'm not saying that an occasional inspired or charismatic leader can't drag an
underperforming institution up a notch or two (at least for a year or two). And
I'm not saying that spending weeks or months neglecting all else and studying
test prep materials written by the same publisher that wrote the big test won't
improve test scores. But if some private company or state college knows The
Secret to Solid Educational Success, my information sources either don't know
about it or have thus far hidden it from me.
Given the present system, I don't believe there's a Secret to Success, a Key to
Quality, a Silver Bullet, a Miracle Cure. Too many variables.
But the fundamental problem is what the problem has long been, is now, and will
continue to be until some respected, high-profile political leader has the
brains and guts to organize a movement to do something about it: a lousy
curriculum.
The curriculum is education's bottom line. The one now in place was poor when it
was created in 1892 for the small minority of mostly upper-class kids headed for
college, and nothing has happened in the years since to make it any better. It
still has no overarching aim, still ignores the brain's need for order and
organization. Still keeps the door closed to new, important fields of knowledge.
Still doesn't distinguish between what's more and what's less important. Still
doesn't require kids to engage in complex, higher-order thought processes. Still
doesn't have built-in mechanisms forcing it to adapt to change. Still is
inefficient, time-consuming and costly. Still doesn't move steadily and
systematically from simple to complex. Still ignores the integrated nature of
knowledge. Still rarely links theory with kids' everyday experience. Still
emphasizes "fact knowledge" rather than "idea exploration." Still is little
concerned with helping kids build tools for making ethical and moral decisions.
And that's not the end of a list of what's wrong with it.
Here's a radical idea: Those "F" kids flunking the tests are the canaries in the
coal mine; their F-rated schools are an early-warning system sending America a
message.
Kids are by nature curious. They wonder. Inquire. Experiment. Question. Explore.
They want to know, "What's going on here? Why? What does it all have to do with
me?" They want more than anything else to make sense of their lives.
So, what does it mean when they cut classes? Tune out? Turn off? Cause trouble?
Walk out? Drop out? Have to be threatened or bribed, browbeaten or bought off to
keep them in school and on task?
Curiosity, wonder, experimentation, questioning, the need to understand, to make
sense, to find meaning and purpose in life -- does the alienation of "F" kids in
"F" schools mean they're fundamentally different? Have they abandoned or killed
the deep-seated human needs and drives that push the rest of us?
I don't think so. What I see when I leaf through today's textbooks, go online
and read various states' "standards" for math, science, social studies and
language arts, study sample questions from standardized tests, talk to
superintendents, principals and teachers, read letters to newspaper editors, and
otherwise try to get a handle on what and how this generation is trying to
educate the next -- what I see is a system blind to a system problem, a problem
steadily destroying it.
"F" schools worry me. "A" schools -- schools that think jumping successfully
through a series of bureaucratic hoops means they're doing the right thing --
worry me a lot more.
*First published in the Orlando Sentinel. Posted here
with permission of the author.
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