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I’m going to do a write up of how I think education curriculum should be reformed. For context: I went through highschool in Ontario, Canada. The way it worked was from kindergarten to grade 8, we’d have a set curriculum every kid in the grade followed, with lots of english and math classes, some science classes, history, geography, French, and gym, and one each of art, music, and health classes a week. Then starting in grade 9, which is highschool, we are given two elective choices, where we choose a minimum of one between art, drama, and music, and the second may also be a general technology course or a general business course. Each year of high school there are more electives choices offered and fewer mandatory courses, with the priorities of what the school system requires us take being the same as elementary school. There were also choices between more difficult and easier options for some classes like math, english, and science as well. Universities and colleges would also require higher level math and sciences for STEM programs too, and there is a standardised literacy test needed to graduate.
I think a lot of people when talking about school want to just add more requirements without thinking about what to cut. It’s very easy to say “all kids should learn to program” or “all kids should have PE every day”, but if you’re adding you either have to keep kids there longer, or cut something. First, I think the elementary school program is basically good, I wouldn’t change anything there. Maybe take a little of time out of science and add it to more PE.
For highschool, I would start more drastically reworking it. First, I would basically replace English with history in the mandatory curriculum for everyone who is literate. Learning about Shakespeare and studying themes in classic novels, while not completely useless, is less useful than learning about real historical events. You gain the same “critical thinking” skills analysing what motivated the people in WWI to conflict as you do analysing what motivated the people in Hamlet to conflict, plus it actually happened, giving it substantially more value. The same english classes will be kept as optional electives, like how history is optional in higher grades now. Science will only be mandatory in grade 9, and computer science will be mandatory in grade 10.
Gym class will be mandatory every year. There is a crisis in how unfit people are today. I recently joined the military. They have drastically reduced requirements, shortening basic training from 13 weeks to 8 weeks, and the weighted march from 13km to 5km. Because people weren’t fit enough to pass. A great many jobs, even today, still require physical fitness, and gym class offers more professional preparement than just about any other possible class other basic literacy. On top of that, being healthy is just healthy, and that’s good for every single person.
There will be extra emphasis on making sure every single person who graduates is literate and numerate. I wouldn’t really require anything else to hand out a highschool diploma, but if they can’t do basic reading, writing, and arithmetic, they don’t get the diploma. They’re stuck in adult night classes until they can or they give up. Ontario high schools also require 40 hours of volunteer community service which I like and anywhere else that doesn’t have that should implement it.
It might be a good idea to have a class on how to get the most out of AI too because it’s looking like that’s becoming an ever more important skill, but it’s changing so fast I don’t know.
I think I have the biggest beef with this. You want to study history without direct exposure to culture. This is a fools errand, and will only allow "experts" to further lie about the past, and demonize your ancestors and your cultural birthright. Exposure to primary sources is the strongest antidote to this.
You know it's funny, I love reading about history, and I love reading generally. I loathed history and English/literature class.
History was always boiled down to memorization of dates, a fact or two about a dozen historical figures, and also memorization of way more geography than was relevant. I had a singular history teacher in 12 years of public school who taught history as a story. I fucking loved that year of history. I don't know what the rest of them were doing. I took AP History, the only AP class I didn't pass the AP test for, and once again it was taught as memorization of trivia. The teacher would meander through irrelevant nonsense. Then she'd give a test on which nothing discussed in class was on it. I'd just read 3 straight chapters from the textbook and hope for the best. Usually got a B.
English was hit or miss. I had teachers that mostly forced us to read emotive, introspective nonsense that was boy kryptonite, and write essays parroting back their correct opinions about it. I had teachers that allowed us to read whatever we wanted, and I'd delve into Dune, HG Wells or Ray Bradberry. I actually enjoyed Shakespeare, 1984, Heart of Darkness and Brave New World which were all required reading. I even enjoyed The Iliad and The Odyssey, though it was difficult for me in middle school. I loathed the 6 months I had to spend on "diverse" authors and racism polemics. I loathed that it increasingly crept into the summer reading, growing from an option out of two dozen books I could read, to a subcategory I had to pick a book from. The autobiographical ones were the worst, because all I saw were terrible anti-social choices to do drugs, commit petty crime, and ignore their education. And then the discussion would all revolve around "systemic racism". I'd just check out completely, it made so little sense.
I don't know how typical this is. My grade school education primarily occurred in the 90's in the US. I no longer trust the education system to be capable of reform. School choice is probably the only possible means of moving towards anything better. At least then people could try different things and see what works, versus this top down enforcement of pedagogy and curriculum that is a Gordian Knot of corrupt politics.
That's wild, given the low priority the AP history tests place on dates (generally just wanting students to know the general order and timeframe of events). Absolutely setting her students up for failure.
My understanding is that at a lot of American high schools they'll hire people for the purpose of coaching then shove them into teaching history courses because those aren't part of state standardized testing.
I was lucky enough that most of our teams were such a low priority that it tended to be the other way around, with teachers getting roped into coaching something.
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