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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'm going to take the opposite position and insist that schools shouldn't be wasting time on gym at all. I don't think the point of school is to provide children everything that we think is "good". Schools should not be thought of as substitute parents with a broad mandate to produce good student life outcomes in general. Schools should be narrowly focused on basic instruction in reading, writing, math, and science.
I also don't think there's any place for literature in the curricula of any non-elective classes in middle school to high school. Literature is entertainment. It can be used as a vessel to teach reading and writing, but you could just as well do that with nonfiction. So you might as well be teaching them about things that are actually true or things that actually happened. This is doubly the case for older literature (e.g., Shakespeare or anything from the ancient world), which is not something that is easy for modern readers to understand or be interested in. Frankly, I think the emphasis on it borders on snobbery in many cases.
I understand that the point of literature has been completely lost in the regular world, but it is very blackpilling to see not one but two motters consider it entirely useless and fit for the rubbish heap.
Culture is what unites us. Our literature and plays and films and songs allow us to communicate with each other through metaphor and allegory, and when people can communicate prosodically they think more alike and don't have to spend all their time explaining in jokes and slang, or adding throat clearing in deference to the people who refuse to participate in the culture.
You can't do that with non fiction, because people get really upset when you use them or their family as examples, not to mention removed relatives and very common names. Beyond that, real life doesn't play out like stories, which makes it much harder to work into teachable lessons, fables and parables, and those are the tools with which we teach morality.
As for older literature - for starters why do you care what modern readers can understand or are interested in? You got rid of 50% of the school library on the basis it was entertaining. Why not make them suffer The Tempest or The Odyssey? Seriously, I would be much more on board with you guys if you said "only old shit they won't find entertaining", partly because they would actually find it entertaining, if not at first (and I really think you haven't thought through the implications of removing all entertainment, so students have no respite from studying fucking fractions at the rate of the class' slowest students) but mostly because it would rebuild an understanding of the world that would allow us to communicate across generations, instead of intra-generational like we have now.
Also that last line about snobbery makes me think this is more personal than you are letting on.
I totally get that and don't disagree at all. I just don't see how reading plays from 400 years ago or novels from 150 years ago does much for that. We all effortlessly absorb our culture by simply growing up in it and living in it.
I'm not I understand. You're saying that people would be upset about, say, learning about the Irish potato famine or Newton or the causes of WWI or the invention of the telegram because some students might be related to some of the people involved in these incidents? I'm genuinely not trying to strawman or make you look stupid, I'm just totally lost. Maybe we're talking about different things?
Why should a high school teacher be teaching morality? That makes me bristle.
I do see some value for very young kids being taught simple stories, which is why I went out of my way to specify middle and high school.
Because if students can't understand it and aren't interested in it, it's going to be harder to teach them whatever you're using it to try and teach them (e.g., grammar, reading, metaphors, whatever). Additionally, they're going to have a rather dim view of the magnificence of their own civilization if that tedious and stodgy sludge is what we put in front of them as the supposed crown jewel of it.
Yeah, I harbor quite a bit of resentment for English class, and I don't care who knows it.
You only say that because you have been saturated in a culture which bases 75% of its popular storytelling on remaking plays and novels from centuries ago. Without Shakespeare we don't have 10 things I hate about you, She's the man, west side story, the lion king, ran, brave new world, and way more than I can list here. Not to mention all of the phrases and sayings and aphorisms we use every day, like it's all Greek to me, love is blind, in such a pickle, heart of gold, cruel to be kind, pound of flesh, and wild goose chases. I mean for goodness sake, we even get for goodness sake from Shakespeare!
Yeah I'm saying you can't fashion allegory and metaphor out of real people's lives without upsetting people. Well you can for positive things of course, but not negative things. Like, pretend Helmedhorror is your last name. But it turns out the most vicious guard at Auschwitz was a distant relative also named Helmedhorror or some guy named Helmedhorror was a soldier in a war who got scared and ran away, getting his squad killed. Kids are vicious, and they will use that to ruin your school life.
They literally always have and always will. At least if they are using old books and plays to do it they can't exclusively jam a bunch of current year bullshit down their students throats, and if some try their students will be able to find smarter and more sensible writing on the subject.
I feel like you missed the point of this by skipping the next sentence. You removed all the fiction from the school because it's 'entertainment' and now you are worried they're going to get bored?
Also please list three works from the past five years that you believe demonstrate the magnificence of our civilisation better than King Lear or A midsummer night's dream.
So what? Why does anyone need to know where phrases came from or who popularized a particular trope or whatever?
We do teach nonfiction, even if it's not focused on as much as I'd like, and yet I don't have the impression there is an epidemic of kids bullying other kids for sharing a name with a bad person they read about. Since I don't expect there to be a way to resolve this difference in intuition, I'm quite comfortable letting the other readers decide for themselves which of us is most likely correct about this.
So use old nonfiction books.
No, I'm not worried they're going to get bored. I removed the boring fiction books, remember?
Who said that a demonstration of the magnificence of our civilization needs to come in the form of fiction?
I don't know, why do we need to know what air is or how it works? I'm assuming you know how air works here, but I think it's a safe assumption. Hell, I'd bet on it.
Also you appear to be contradicting yourself. If you totally understand and agree with this -
Then you shouldn't need me to explain why it is necessary to maintain a connection to the artifacts a culture is based on.
For starters I was, as I said, talking explicitly about when crafting metaphors and allegory, which we don't do with non fiction. Even when we do, like the Chernobyl miniseries, or Oppenheimer, we fictionalise elements which can potentially hurt others. But also I would note that almost everyone related to Hitler and Stalin changed their surname.
That's funny, but still a poor argument. You said we shouldn't teach stuffy old Shakespeare because kids won't understand it or be interested in it. Setting aside the fact that Shakespeare is performed to this day (indicating both understanding and interest), interest and understanding didn't matter to you prior to that part of the argument.
You did. You still are it seems. I just asked you to name three works from the last five years better than King Lear or A midsummer night's dream, I didn't say they had to be fiction.
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