So help me, I actually had that question on a history test once. I raided a near eidetic memory for the dry facts (August 6, 1945, Enola Gay, Hiroshima), wishing there was room to note that the bomber had been named after its commander's mother and that Hiroshima had deliberately been left completely alone by American forces so as to measure how much damage one nuclear weapon would actually cause.
Personally, I find those parenthetical remarks more interesting than dusty dates. I would have been more interested still if we had had an in-class debate, pretending it was six months before mission date. Should we drop the bombs, yea or nay? I would have been extremely interested to hear the Japanese side of the story. Why were they fighting in the first place?
That information was never given to me; I was left to scavenge for it on my own time. I would have been flabbergasted to learn that the Japanese were considering surrender before Little Boy was dropped.
I'm still learning things about August 6-9, 1945. Just yesterday I learned about a man who survived both bombings. There were an estimated 165 "double survivors"; one of them was actually telling his co-workers what to do in case they saw a blinding blue flash when there was a blinding blue flash.
To me, education has several purposes. Socialization, the most important of them, is best accomplished by encouraging empathy, and empathy is best encouraged by providing numerous opportunities for students to get into other people's heads. The best books will do that, but so will movies, plays, debates--even written assignments wherein you're asked to take up a contrary position.
Who, what, where, when--all of marginal importance, surely. It is absolutely critical to know that Hiroshima was devastated on August 6th, 1945? Or is it sufficient to know that its payload and that dropped three days later effectively ended the Second World War? I think "how" and especially "why" are much more relevant questions, almost always, and sadly, they're the ones most often ignored in the media. Why does a serial killer do what he does? You can say "because he's crazy", and of course that's true...but he doesn't think he's crazy. How do we determine who's crazy? Is it morally right to arrest psychopaths before they commit a crime?
My favourite classes were the few that considered these sorts of questions. I think most students remember those classes far more than they do the dry and boring facts they were force-fed.
Okay, so...empathy as a core curriculum value. What else? Well, what values are we looking to instil into students? I'd suggest honesty is a good one. So is accountability. Healthy skepticism is always welcome (unless you're the kind of parent who wants to raise carbon copies of yourself).
How do you get those values into little heads? Model them. Model them by your actions; model them in the curriculum. Show some consequences of dishonesty. But also encourage critical thought. When is it okay to lie? When is it necessary? What would happen to the world if we had easy access to a 100% reliable lie detector?
Accountability--for the last several years, there has been no punishment meted out for students who turn their assignments in late. I'm told for many years now, children have been told to spell words the way they sound, rather than the way they're actually spelled. This strikes me as utterly bizarre. I was among the last generation that learned to read using phonics, which undoubtedly is one good reason I was spelling at college level in grade five. Back in that ancient day, if you spelled something wrong, it was corrected. If you repeatedly spelled many things wrong, you'd fail your grade and be kept back a year...something else that doesn't seem to happen any more.
My problem was procrastination. Like many kids, I was lazy, and unless I was really interested in a project, more often than not I'd slapdash it together at the last minute. Until fifth grade.
My grade five teacher was Mr. Sackville. I don't remember what the project he assigned was, though I think it had something to do with computers. As usual, I'd left it to the last minute. Beyond the last minute, actually: I didn't even start it until after it was due, and I turned it in four days late. I will never forget how it came back to me: 96% at the top, in that red ink teachers always used. "A+." "GREAT JOB!!!!" I distinctly remember, count 'em, four exclamation marks. Below that... -15% x 4 days late = 36%. And that was circled.
That hit me where I lived. I never turned in another project so much as a minute late ever again.
I wasn't taught skepticism, healthy or otherwise, until university. I had one prof named Lewinsky--he taught literary criticism, or LitCrit as we called it (as opposed to ClitLit, which was Feminist English). Anyway, we covered a different school of literary criticism every week, and every week he would come to class every week a completely different person. For the feminist perspective, he came in drag. Every week, he'd dismiss the philosophy he'd argued the previous week as a pile of crap. That class was tremendously liberating, and I wish I'd had others like it before.
You'll notice I haven't covered what many people think is the only reason for schooling: to prepare students for the work world. That's because I just don't think it's all that important. I believe that apprenticeships should begin--for many jobs, not just the trades--towards the end of what is currently high school. By that point, in my system, students would be as literate and numerate as they'll ever get, and hopefully, through inhabiting the heads of people in many different professions and being exposed to many different ways of seeing the world, the vast majority of them will have found something that interests them. I'd set aside an entire year for students to try out various careers. Those who show an interest and aptitude for one would then enter specialized training that might last six weeks or six years.
While keeping the core values in the curriculum as much as possible, I'd suggest there are many things schools should be teaching that they don't bother with at present. Here are a few.
- Home economics. Yes, I believe everyone should have a solid grounding in nutrition. They should also know at least the basics of cooking, sewing, and--important, this--budgeting. Also parenting. That last should actually be its own required course.
- A greatly expanded civics program, covering your rights as a citizen, how to protest effectively, what to do (and what not to do) if you are accused of a crime--and (again with the healthy skepticism) how to parse political bullshit. I'd actually call that last segment exactly that: How To Parse Political Bullshit". That'd get the kids' attention.
- Life Skills. Currently this is a program for kids with special needs. I think it's a great name for a catch-all course that covers things you'd learn in Scouts and Guides. How to tie knots. How to navigate. Emergency preparedness. Comprehensive first aid. And so on.
- Avocational School. Everybody should have at least one semester in which their interests are probed and cultivated. For instance, I have been composing music since I was four years old, but even now I have no idea what to do with that particular skill. I know someone who cross-stitches well enough to live off it, but she doesn't. Some kids might grow up to be professional athletes. Whatever course they're interested in, they should learn its channels and its shoals beforehand.
What would school in your world look like?
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