A recent Salon 360° discussion, led by colleagues Mac Bogert and Jeff Ikler, delved into the nature of problems plaguing our schools and potential solutions to fix an education system that is broken. It was a thought-provoking discussion founded upon the real-world experience of two educators. I learned a lot. While I do not have a formal background in education, I did share my thoughts regarding curriculum development and reform with specific suggestions. These are drawn from my own experiences and understanding about the outcomes of succeeding or failing to provide a good education in the school environment that children are immersed in.
The foundation upon which my suggestions stand has to do with the goals of an education system. During the discussion at Salon 360°, the point was made that the general goal of the current and historical education system is to produce effective workers for society. “Societizing” children by mandating a school education in order to provide a workforce is the principal goal. Thus, students eventually become workers, and presumably, good students become good workers. I propose a different goal. Our education system should foster the growth and development of our children during their time as students. The end result after years of schooling should be happy, unique individuals who maximize their potential and contribute to society. That’s what our educational system should be designed to produce.
These are two different goals. If the goal is to provide a workforce, conformity and consistency makes sense. So, standardized curricula and a way to measure performance against these curricula makes sense. This ignores the reality that test score achievement does not correlate with work performance. Teaching to standardized testing has been soundly criticized as a way to stifle children’s creativity. Maximizing students’ creativity and having flexibility in designing and implementing different classroom approaches comprised much of the Salon 360 discussion. Excellent and proven approaches, such as collaborative learning, would support the goal of producing happy, unique individuals who maximize their potential and contribute to society.
Many excellent ideas about how we currently teach and how we can teach differently in order to transform the classroom and the educational experience into a better learning environment were suggested.
But what is it we want students to learn? My suggestions are not focused on how we teach but on what we teach.
Here is a list of life skills that every child can be taught over their years of schooling:
- Critical thinking
I won’t elaborate much on this but it seems to me that we would want our education system to teach children to think on their own. As a subset of this, helping students understand how advertising and propaganda work to shape what they think would be very useful. I include problem-solving skills in this category of curriculum development.
- Practical skills
These include things like budgeting and time management. Expanding on home economics training, basic cooking skills, and how to shop at the supermarket are useful life skills. An entire semester could easily be devoted to this category.
- Cultivating healthy relationships
This would need to be adjusted as children mature into young adults. Since the quality of our lives is strongly dependent upon the quality of our relationships, shouldn’t this be an essential part of a school curriculum?
- Understanding and dealing with conflict
Here, I lean heavily on Marshall Rosenberg’s excellent work on nonviolent communication. Children can be taught about unmet needs as being the source of conflict. And they can be taught how to communicate around needs to help resolve conflict.
- Communication skills
This goes beyond conflict resolution as previously mentioned. This topic for curriculum development was not on the original list I presented. It came from listening to other discussants. The key word here is listen. Effective communication requires not just good listening skills but an awareness that nonverbal communication is important to recognize and understand.
- Managing emotions/Stress management
I have lumped these two together because there is a lot of overlap. For one thing, the learning part of the brain shuts down when emotions predominate. It’s hard for a child to learn if they are emotionally upset. Healthy emotional regulation is a useful life skill. Stress is predominant in our culture and society. Learning the basic tools of stress management would go a long way in achieving the end goal I previously articulated.
- Forgiveness
I’ve written chapters about forgiveness in two different books. There are well-established ways to teach people how to forgive. Not only do individuals who have received forgiveness training enjoy happier health lives, but they also experience a reduction in chronic pain, better sleep, lower blood pressure, and a host of other benefits. There is solid research backing up these claims as well as research on improved work performance and productivity, so it makes sense to include this as required coursework even if the goal is to produce a more effective workforce.
- Understanding the interface between individual and collective needs and wants
Perhaps this is being addressed in civics and social studies curricula; although, I suspect the basic understanding of this interface is not the focus. Every individual and every society has a long list of needs and wants. How these needs and wants are met or not met, the nature of compromise, the responsibilities to oneself and to society, values, politics, philosophy, and economics all can be looked at through this lens. It might be idealistic to have this item on my list but I think curriculum development and exposure around this core idea would be an important part of a reformed educational system.
- Setting and respecting boundaries
While this certainly intersects with some of the categories previously listed, I think the subject matter can be approached separately. It’s a useful way to help develop a skill set that benefits personal and workplace interactions. It is a skill set that I have observed many adults lack. The resultant pain and suffering is avoidable with proper education and training.
- Introspection
Teaching children to cultivate an interior life might seem far-fetched to some. I would argue that this and the last item on my list are the two most important things to focus on in curriculum reform. Matriculated students’ lack of self-understanding is, in my opinion, a stunning failure of our current education system. I quote Socrates here: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Realize that Socrates was accused of corrupting youth. Shouldn’t we be teaching our children to examine their lives through the lens of introspection? It makes sense to me.
- Self-love
Self-love is the most potent form of self-care. If we want our children to be capable of self-care, it seems essential that we include this last item in the school curriculum. In my twenty years of education, spanning grammar school through medical school, this subject never came up. Yet, I know that this subject is often addressed through therapy. Why not address it prospectively instead of retrospectively? I believe the quality of life for both individuals and for our collective society would be dramatically improved if this subject was taught at every level of education.
There are many failures in the current educational system that pertain to what is/is not taught and how students are taught. While my suggestions might be aspirational, they do not represent rocket science. Nothing that I have suggested for curriculum development and reform is difficult to lesson plan. At the core, I challenge the goals of the current system and the desired outcomes of the current approach to educating our children. Since the existing education system is broken, and our children represent our collective future, what are we going to do to address this?
Charlotte,
So true! Children model what they observe. Sometimes, I have the notion that many parents simply want to outsource the responsibilities of teaching to teachers. We are all teachers and role models whether we embrace that reality or not.
On the other thread where I previously posted, you made an additional good point about lack of parental awareness rather than abdication of duty. You are right that that contributes. It is true that you can’t teach what you don’t know.
Victor, at risk of being presumptuous, I offer a slightly different take on your generously sympathetic post by modifying the first sentence of your last paragraph like this:
“There are many failures in the current family system that pertain to what is/is not taught and how children are taught.”
If we wait until children are in school — then make it the responsibility of the education system (system being the operative word in all its bureaucratic connotations) to teach children what they should have begun to learn at home — then we’re committed to addressing education retrospectively, rather than prospectively.
The political implications of this are enormous, of course. But as I suggested on the Friendship Bench, if we don’t have the political will to identify the disease (the devolution of the nuclear family and its responsibilities) we’re like so many salmon lacking the will to swim upstream, aren’t we?
P.S. The value of this conversation and its taking place aren’t lost on me. Thank you.
🟦 Mark O’Brien, Your points are well taken. Education is, of course, not limited to the classroom. The educational environment and responsibilities are different at home than in school. There is overlap and there are failures in both environments. I contest your assertion of the disease being ‘the devolution of the nuclear family and its responsibilities,” as too broad a brush. The same list of topics I provided can be taught at home but it is difficult to teach things parents and family members themselves are not knowledgeable about. One can argue that the education failures both at home and in school existed when nuclear families were still nuclear.
As always, my friend, I appreciate your thoughtful comments and insights!
And THAT, Victor, is evidence of the value of this conversation. If we’re capable of finding the roots, we’re capable of healing what they yield.
Thank you, my friend.
Victor, you nailed this.
Approaching these questions (they are legion) about fundamental change from a perspective of capacity and practice rather than curriculum and knowledge is powerful. At commencement, what our children can do, and rise to, counts a whole lot more than “1492.” Right? Wonderful, my friend.
Kudos and such.
Mac
Thank you, Mac! In many respects, I am outside looking in. As a teacher, one that I’m sure I would have loved to have in school, you are both inside looking out and outside looking in. I always make fun of being taught trigonometry, a subject I have never used. I am not saying it has no value to me, but the time spent learning it, and the time spent by the teachers who taught it, could have been used to help me learn some of the things I put on the list.
Victor: Excellent suggestions, and sensible aspirations, all of them. Thanks for writing these up, and for the great insights offered at Salon. One suggestion, perhaps under #10, encourage more writing, especially a bit of exposure to poetry. My guess is that, like me and many others, you write to explain the world to yourself. Our kids could use that skill as well.
Thanks again.
As always, Byron, I appreciate your input! Given the chance to go back, I would have selected different things to study. Art and poetry would be two of those subjects.
Thank you for making this write-up, Victor, and for expanding on your thoughts from Salon360.
Seeing the illustration 🔆 Dennis Pitocco had chosen for your piece, I also sent a thought to the difference between teaching and learning. And to the old adage “More is caught than is taught.” We can teach along these principles to our heart’s desire, but if we – the adults surrounding the children – don’t exemplify by living by the same creed, it may be hard for them to learn.