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A Proposed Coherent Curriculum
Introduction Our current system of public education is under fire on several fronts. Social activists complain that underprivileged children are not lifted up by their education. Public funders complain that schools cost too much. Parents and community members worry that schools are not safe. Kids complain that what they’re asked to learn isn’t relevant. And, most damning of all, universities and employers complain that new graduates are not adequately prepared. I believe that our system of public education, conceived by Thomas Jefferson and useful for centuries of the industrial era, needs radical revision to remain useful in the culture of the information age. I propose that we work together to develop a really new approach to public school curriculum. Three concepts are core to my proposal: an integrated thematic approach, coherence, and developmental appropriateness. The integrated thematic approach means that children’s skills in several areas (like reading, writing, math, etc.) may be developed simultaneously while addressing a central theme. Coherence is the term used to mean that curriculum unfolds logically, applies to real life, and facilitates students making connections between lessons in traditionally separate subjects. Woven into these two core concepts, I suggest that we orient our curriculum to facilitate and to monitor our children’s development. Assessment and curriculum are inextricably intertwined. Although it may seem counterintuitive, assessment shapes curriculum. Therefore, our first effort must be to examine and articulate the attributes that we value in our students and that we intend to assess as measures of our students’ success. What do we intend the outcome of "graduation" from our system of public education to be? I propose that critical thinking and the ability to solve novel problems are the most valuable attributes in our culture presently and will be even more so in the future. Educational outcome will be addressed in detail in section 1. How do we facilitate and monitor our children’s development of critical thinking and problem solving skills? In adult life, the description of problems and the consideration of solutions are frequently conducted in four ways: verbally (written or spoken), mathematically (using numbers and numeric relationships), graphically (using pictures or visual symbols), and engineering (using models). Language, mathematical, engineering, and graphic skills are valued in education today, but not emphasized as different modes of problem solving. Howard Gardner has articulated "multiple intelligences" but I do not find all of the "intelligences" that he articulates pertinent to this discussion. I propose that we facilitate and monitor our children’s development of language, math, graphic, and engineering skills. I would like to demonstrate that attending to children’s development of these four types of skills through an integrated thematic curriculum makes children more effective critical thinkers and solvers of problems than a more traditional curriculum would. The development of these four modes of problem solving will be discussed further in section 2. The integrated thematic approach to curriculum suggests that any theme could provide material that students might address in all four of the ways listed above. For example, rain forests could be a theme for study. Students might read and write about rain forests. They might calculate and estimate characteristics of rain forests. They might draw or find pictures of rain forests. And they might make models of rain forests. (The use of the integrated thematic educational approach is articulated by Susan Kovalik in ITI: the Model.) However, coherence is created only if our children increase their understanding of what rain forests have to do with their lives. Critical thinking is promoted as children learn how to solve the problems of rain forests. While any theme could be used to teach the four core skills, the themes we value ought to be examined and articulated. I propose that we address themes that are important in the adult world and developmentally appropriate in our children’s lives. This would bring coherence to the curriculum. I suggest six themes for elementary school, six for junior high, and six for high school. The six elementary school themes are health, self advocacy, psychology, commerce, civics, and ecology. The six for junior high are agriculture, child rearing, government, communication, service, and manufacturing. The six for high school are human resources, public relations, physical plant, research and development, information systems, and finance. Each thematic content area would be used to advance students’ use of language, math, graphic, and engineering skills. Completion of each thematic study would be demonstrated in a project that would showcase each student’s use of all four skills. Such projects would comprise a student’s portfolio. The scope and sequence of themes will be addressed in section 3. We have elegant descriptions of the development of language and mathematics skills embedded in our current curricula and in testing materials. Unfortunately, similar descriptions of the development of graphic and engineering skills are not currently available. In order to create the rubric for evaluation of students in the areas of graphics and engineering, normative description must be developed. Schools that operationalize this curriculum will have the ideal laboratory for the observations upon which that description would be base Section one: More on Outcomes The purpose of this section is to consider the mission, goals, and desired outcomes of our system of public education. The public education system in this country is evolving slowly and is somewhat inconsistent across regions, but, roughly speaking, spans the first two decades of life. What is it that we expect of the young adult graduate of our system of public education? If we can answer this question well and then focus our efforts more narrowly and clearly, the current criticisms of our system may be answered successfully. The clear articulation of desired outcomes is critical. The goals that we articulate determine the assessment that we design. The assessment that we design determines the instructional effort that we employ. And the instructional effort that we employ determines the required training of educators and the curricular materials necessary to carry out our mission. A national test of educational progress brings out a very different educational system than would a goal that all children would remain in school until their 20th birthday. The incentive for educators in the system of national standards is to facilitate low achievers to drop out. The incentive for educators whose goal is to prevent dropout is to maximize the successes and relevance of the curriculum for individual students. Thus, the goals we set for ourselves make all the difference in the efforts we exert to attain them. Who must a young adult be? What must a young adult be able to do? What must a young adult know in order that we feel we have served him or her well in our system of public education? These three questions may seem equivalent—more semantic play for dramatic effect than actually substantive—but I mean to consider them separately for some reasons I consider critically important. Our American culture prides itself in our individualism. It would be anti-American to suggest that our educational system should produce graduates that fit any one mold. We would never agree to producing only Jewish, liberal, homosexuals interested in providing social services. Nor should we agree to excluding production of those people. Let us be on guard then against the production metaphor as a model for education. "Who must a graduate be?" then, is the wrong question. On the other hand, a slight variant of that question is interesting. "Who should the graduate have permission to be?" would be much more the American question. The short answer is, "Anyone he or she wants to be." We presume Rousseau’s line here, "Each person should have absolute freedom so long as his (or her) exercise of that freedom does not encroach on the freedom of another." In America, we welcome Christian evangelicals, Muslim mullahs, Jewish Zionists, Buddhist monks, and even Unitarians. We welcome Hummers, Porsches, Neons, and even tandem bicycles. So, if we were to articulate the desired outcome of the American public education system, it would be: The graduate should be capable and conscious of making free, informed, and reasoned choices about life. In short, the graduate should be able to think for her or himself. The second question around which to frame outcomes is, "What should a graduate be able to do?" Although this question lends itself to some direct answers, it also leads to some important additional questions. Facetious answers come to mind. A graduate must be able to cook, clean, do laundry, shop for groceries, balance a checkbook, and diaper a baby. We could enjoin a lively debate about whether obtaining a driver’s license should be required of a person before graduation. The question is about doing rather than knowing—about application of skills rather than familiarity with some content material. The content versus skill distinction is essential. Skills develop over time with practice in a generally predictable way. Content is not developmental in the same way. It really doesn’t matter whether we learn the distinction between cirrus clouds and cumulus clouds in second grade or 11th grade—the fact is the fact. I will suggest later that we design a system of assessment of students that tracks their development of skills. At the same time I intend to set aside content curriculum from the measurement of students’ progress. The question of skill development then takes on two aspects: What skills do we want kids to develop? and, How good at them do they have to be in order to graduate? If we return to our earlier discussion, the answer to our first question (Who should graduates be?) was "They should be able to think for themselves." If we want people to be able to think, we have to help them develop thinking capacities. Please reflect for a moment on how you, and others you know, think about problems. Are you likely to journal about them? Does a song come to your mind that inspires you? Do you go tinker in your shop? Do you use a spreadsheet? Clearly, different problems call for different thinking strategies. I would like to highlight four core modes of thinking: language, mathematics, graphics, and engineering. I intend here to distinguish modes of thinking from what I see as content about which one might think. These four modes of thinking are separate capacities of each person which develop over time if used and practice. Further, they are modes of thinking that can be used pretty generically to address any subject. Driving a car is a skill that is an end in itself. Linguistic skill can be an end in itself, for example, for a poet, but, for the student in our system of public education, language serves other purposes. I am interested here in identifying those skills or modes of thinking which one needs to address content areas, that is, to think critically and solve problems. My answer then to the question above "What skills do we want kids to develop?" is language, mathematical, engineering, and graphic skills. I’m particularly interested in the development of skills partly because I am a developmentalist by profession, but, more importantly, because I believe that students need ongoing feedback about their progress in order to remain invested in learning. Imagine for a moment that we are going out to shoot some hoops. You are a pretty good player so we agreed to make it harder by blindfolding you. You’re able to dribble by the feel of the ball, but you lose your orientation of direction and distance to the basket. I will be your coach. I will return the ball to you after each time you shoot. Would you like me to give you lengthy instructions before we go out on the court? How would you like me to give you feedback on your performance? Should I give you a quarterly scorecard? Would you like to know how many shots you make out of each 10 attempts? No, of course not. Feedback of this nature is not useful to your learning. You need immediate feedback about each attempt you make in order to learn from your mistakes and build on your strengths. I hope the analogy to educational process is clear. Testing and report cards are not useful instructional methods. They measure teaching effectiveness better than they measure student skill. In order to facilitate the development of skills in students, we must provide them with continuous feedback. Monitoring skill development is much more useful to the provision of continuous feedback than any content-based measurement of performance. Our articulation of the development of the use of language is quite sophisticated. Similarly, the progression of mathematics skills is well described. Graphic arts are taught but not well articulated developmentally. Engineering skills are usually not taught until college. In order to facilitate the development of students in each of the skill areas, we must articulate the course of development of each skill, not only for the instructors and administrators, but also for kids and families. I will return to this in section 4. But the second part of this question, "How good at skills do kids have to be in order to graduate?" is truly impossible for me to answer. I would love to survey the general population of persons aged 25 to 65 -- those generally regarded as in the prime of life—and assess their skills in our four areas. If we could identify those adults who consider themselves successful and test their skills in our four areas, what would we find? How good does one have to be at language, mathematics, graphics, and engineering in order to feel successful as an adult? How much of those skills does one have to develop in school and how much can one develop those skills after completing school? If our requirement for a young adult is to be able to think for him or herself, then she or he must be able to use each of the four modes of thought well to be qualified to graduate. How well? One answer to this question is another metaphor. Most of us learned to ride a bicycle. That learning was step-by-step with very close supervision by an adult. But quickly, we learned to ride by ourselves. Then our skill development took off to whatever extent we chose. We could view the public education system as the adult teaching bike riding. The role of the system of public education is to prepare the student to ride on his or her own—to learn to learn. Please note an implication of this metaphor is that the intervention of the system of public education in each student’s life may be fairly brief. Then the student should be sent out to pursue the skills that interest her or him. Some will become trick riders or motocross racers. Others will only ride on the back seat of a tandem peddling only occasionally. The cool thing about this metaphor is that we never forget how to ride a bike once we’ve learned. If we understood math in the way that we understand how to ride a bike, we would never forget math. What does an adult need to be able to do with language? Read a contract. Consider the techniques of persuasion that they are influenced by in advertising. Explain themselves to their spouse. Read the instructions to the latest electronic gadget. What does an adult need to be able to do with mathematics? Balance a checkbook and prepare a budget. Understand value, such as, is buying the giant economy size package actually cheaper per unit? Understand a balloon mortgage. Figure out how many gallons of paint to buy. What does an adult need to be able to do with engineering? Put stuff together that comes in kits labeled "some assembly required." Build a shelf for a space where a store-bought shelf doesn’t fit. Fix a screen. Take the trap off of the sink to recover the lost ring and then replace the trap without leaks. These are not meant to be an exhaustive or definitive list, but rather some examples of the way to think about what we’re looking for in graduates. A local school district administrator recently told me that there is a very low correlation between a student’s performance on spelling tests and his or her ability to spell words correctly in the context of writing, but there is a high correlation between enthusiasm for reading and correct spelling in context. My point is only that what we are really after in our system of public education is the ability of students to actually perform competently in real life. They have to be able to actually use their skills. The third framing of the outcome question, "What must a young adult know?" is most controversial. The diversity of our culture leaves us with so many viewpoints that consensus is impossible. Even the facts are in dispute much less which facts are important enough to require. To make matters worse, the culture in which we live is changing much faster than we can prepare for when we publish standard texts. Finally, and worst of all, is our presumption that mastery of certain content is desirable and testable I love chili rellenos. I think chili rellenos are such a desirable part of our culture that all graduates of our system of public education should be required to master the making of a chili relleno. Who could dispute this? The importance of chili rellenos is axiomatic. (Of course, I am being facetious, but my point is quite serious.) I recall memorizing the names and capitals of the 50 states when I was in fifth grade (45 years ago). Fifth-graders are still memorizing them. The names and capitals of the 50 states are certainly not more important in the lives of ordinary citizens than the making of a chili relleno. Certainly some people would like to know the 50 states and their capitals just as I would like to know how to make a good chili relleno. Let those who are interested learn what they want. Let’s focus on things that are really universally applicable. Another illustration comes to mind—cursive writing. It is a centuries old tradition to spend many hours in or about third grade teaching cursive writing. Yet, on writing proficiency exams in high school, more than half of students print their responses. In adult life, we are rapidly going paperless making keyboarding much more useful than cursive writing. And in the next decade? I suspect that this year’s third graders will use voice recognition software to compose their college application essays. They will sign their electronic transactions with a thumb print. How then can we hope to agree on a collection of information (content rather than skills) which all graduates should know? Many writers about education appropriately highlight the improvement in motivation and performance of students (and educators) when they choose the curriculum themselves. Writers in the integrated thematic genre of progressive education allow great latitude in content areas but insist on certain core themes. On the other extreme, Minnesota’s current trend on the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment is to examine very specific content at each grade level. Initially, the MCA addressed skill development in reading, writing, and math much as the Iowa Test of Basic Skills has done for many years. But, more recently, the MCA has crossed the line into science and social studies content. It remains obscure to me how the material to be included on these tests was chosen. In the third section, I will return to the choice of curriculum content. I will attempt to articulate themes of study that serve the coherence of education by being developmentally relevant and logically sequential. I will not suggest that students will be expected to master any them. I will meet the challenge of many writers who demand that the material be rich and challenging, but, in making the material challenging and relevant to real life, I will choose themes that the elementary student would not be expected to master. So, I will beg off the question of what the graduate must know. I will substitute an answer of what the graduate must be familiar with. A discussion of outcomes would be incomplete without addressing outcome measurement. There are two widely accepted types of assessment employed in most public schools and a third type typically employed in higher-level education. The two types commonly used are norm referenced and criteria referenced tests. The third type is the portfolio. Most performing artists, designers, and salespeople understand that the portfolio is the best way to "show what you know." In the measurement of skill development (our goal in public education), portfolio is a great choice except portfolios are so unique to each student that they are difficult to use to aggregate data statistically. Norm referenced testing such as the Iowa Test of Basic Skills has been used successfully for statistical purposes. Norm referenced tests can and should be used to measure developmental progress, but, back to the blind hoops shooter metaphor, we cannot give students feedback on their progress only annually and expect it to be meaningful to them. The great application of norm referenced testing is in measuring the development of populations of students. That is to say that norm referenced testing is best applied to giving teachers, schools and districts feedback on their success as compared to other large student populations. Criteria referenced testing has little application to skill development and much more relevance to content mastery. Dismayingly, an individual student’s progress, as measured by the MCA (Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment), from year to year is unpredictable. The glimpses of a student’s performance on the MCA are not statistically related to one another over time. That is to say that the abilities tested on the MCA are not developmental or sequential. The performance on one year’s test does not mean the student is progressing well (or poorly) and that we should expect that student to do similarly the next year (or subsequently in life) because the content material on each test is completely independent of the content on another year’s test. Content measures are not useful in predicting future performance in the way that developmental measures are. Some material should be taught and measured in the criteria referenced way. For example, most states require drivers of motorized vehicles to be licensed. A certain level of competence in written material and actual driving are required to obtain that licensure. Interestingly, we do not give letter grades to students on their driver’s tests. We give them a "pass" or "fail." We set a standard of competence and then test each candidate for competence. They are either competent or not. This is the appropriate use of criteria referenced testing. Criteria referenced testing helps us determine whether a person has mastered certain content or not. I do not want to board a plane piloted by someone who got a C or a D on his or her piloting test. I do not want a plumber or an electrician who hasn’t really mastered his or her craft. So, let’s reserve criteria referenced testing for material that we want to grade "pass/fail" because we want to verify that students have actually mastered the material. The portfolio demonstration of skill development is a wonderful ongoing feedback system for students, teachers and parents if we can articulate or demonstrate a sequence of development of each skill which we want to facilitate in students. I will attempt to do that in the fourth section. Section Two: The Modes of Thought In my practice of psychiatry, I have found it useful to understand children and families in terms of development. Over the last 30 years, I have come to know thousands of children. I feel comfortable characterizing the developmental phases of childhood. On the other hand, I am not an educator nor am I an expert on the assessment of the educational progress of a child. In this section, I venture into conjecture, an adventure which I hope you will enjoy with me. I hope to engender conversation and speculation with the thoughts I will put forward here. Please understand that I know the limits of my expertise. This section is devoted to the explanation of a particular approach to education which is neither entirely new nor entirely familiar. It is based on two very distant concepts of development. The first concept was articulated by Anna Freud in the middle of the 1900s. She wrote that different aspects of children could be seen to develop in parallel but not always in synchrony. The second concept is that of Howard Gardner who has suggested that the traditional idea of intelligence as a single characteristic of people is in error. It is not true that people are simply either smart or stupid. Gardner picks up where Freud left off and asserts that we can identify and track aspects of child development and demonstrate that these aspects develop in parallel but independently of each other. He goes so far as to name the aspects of development that he thinks are important. He calls them "intelligences" and lists several. I find the concept of "intelligence" intriguing but confusing. My psychologist colleagues laugh at me when I asked them for some clarification of my confusion. They say that intelligence is that aspect of humans that is measured by intelligence tests. It seems that test writers have tried to predict educational success and invented tests to do that. We have come to think of IQ as an actual something. The Bell Curve is a well researched book which discusses IQ in great detail. In practical experience, however, we are all aware that people that we know are "smart" in various ways and "stupid" in others. We may even see ourselves this way. While smart people tend to be generally smart in lots of ways and stupid people tend to be stupid generally, almost everybody has strengths and weaknesses, sometimes quite radically different. Intelligence has been characterized as innate, genetic, and immutable. However, we know that performance on intelligence tests is highly influenced by cultural factors. I conclude that a person’s ability to think critically and solve novel problems is both a matter of their innate ability and a product of their training and experience. If we accept the notion that the goal of education is to produce adults capable of critical thinking who are able to solve novel problems, then we must pursue means to facilitate the development of students’ thinking capabilities. I have chosen four modes of thought to facilitate—language, mathematics, graphics, and engineering. I recognize that these four may not be agreed on by everyone. I would like to engage more discussion about "intelligences" that the educational system should address. Gardner suggests nine. Previous writers have identified as many as 12. I have chosen these four based on my preference of strategies for addressing problems and my perception of the distinction between thought content and thought processes. It seems likely to me that some problems would be best addressed, at least for some people, by listening to or creating music. That means to me that music or dance might be seen as modes of thought employed in finding solutions to novel problems just as language or graphics might be. Certainly music is an excellent mnemonic device which dramatically enhances humans’ ability to retain information. Yet somehow, I don’t see music instruction as a core mode of thought to be addressed in the public education system. This is just my personal bias or preference. Considerable research supports a correlation between musical instruction and high academic achievement in other areas. I distinguish between thought content and thought processes in an analogy to educational content and educational process. I think of human relationships as something that we can think about (content) rather than a way of thinking things out (process). Other types of intelligences that have recently been identified, such as spiritual or ecological, seem to me to be content areas rather than modes of thought. Other modes of perception, such as smell or temperature, might also aid in problem solving, but do not seem to me to be core modes of thought to be addressed in our system of public education. I have chosen language as a core mode of thought because it is clearly the preeminent method of teaching and learning in our culture. I interviewed a young woman yesterday who used 4000 text messages in the previous month. She is able to have cogent conversation verbally with those she is with and text others at the same time. She is clearly gifted in the use of language. Our culture is clearly changing the way in which we use language—for example, text messaging rather than the snail mail I grew up with—but the use of language will forever be a staple method of thought and communication for humans. Mathematics is another core mode of thought and also a traditional classroom focus. While mathematical problem-solving often overlaps language, it seems to be a distinct mode of thought of its own. Some events can be described with mathematics more usefully than they can be described with language. Mathematics can be used to predict events sometimes more precisely than those events could be predicted with language. Some problems, then, can be solved using math that couldn’t be solved just with words. Math is a symbolic representation of the world that is distinct from the symbols of words. On the other hand, a lot of math is symbolized graphically. So, I have chosen graphics as the third mode of thought to be addressed as core in our curriculum. The old saying, "a picture is worth a thousand words," seems true sometimes. I think that the popularity of film as opposed to reading as a method of storytelling speaks to the power of visual images in communication. It seems that graphics support both language and mathematical communication and problem-solving. The fourth core mode of thought I have chosen is engineering. It seems to me that sometimes the way to solve a problem is to build a model of it. While models incorporate mathematical precision and graphic display, they have the capability to portray forces and motion that are difficult to portray any other way. I think engineering deserves to be considered separately from the other modes of thought as a core focus of our curriculum. You should be noticing that a theme has emerged in the last four paragraphs. The "modes of thought" that I am entertaining are all ways to symbolically represent the world. I believe that the characteristic that makes humans so powerful as a species in the world is our ability to symbolize. Our ability to abstract and think about situations in a symbolic way and then bring our solutions back into the real world allows us to communicate, collaborate, predict, and plan better than any other species on Earth. Don’t get me wrong. I am aware that honeybees dance for each other to organize their efforts to gather nectar. Lions coordinate their efforts to capture prey. Dolphins and birds certainly use verbalizations meaningfully. Chimps who have been taught sign language spontaneously use vulgar language to express their disgust with others. But humans take the cake. It is only humans that can have the impact, for better or worse, on the entire planet that we have had. We symbolize better than any other species. While memory capacity, processing speed, and perceptual accuracy are probably innate characteristics of the brain, familiarity and facility with symbols are clearly trained. Many researchers in the field of brain and cognition now agree that the physical development of the brain and therefore the brain’s capacity is influenced significantly by the experience and effort of the individual who houses that brain. We are as yet in our infancy in understanding how the brain works, but the probability that we can train people to think better cannot be ignored. We must create the educational system that will produce thinking adults. The purpose, then, of our system of public education is to facilitate the development of kid’s ability to think critically and solve novel problems. I have broken that down into four modes of thought. We must facilitate kid’s development of language skills, mathematical skills, skills in graphics, and engineering skills. While other skills may also be pertinent (especially music), I have not, so far, included them as core skills to be addressed in our curriculum. The skills we choose to facilitate must be applicable to situations and problems which we haven’t anticipated. Our kids will encounter novel problems that we can’t even imagine. So, we aren’t about training kids to use the age old, tried and true methods of handling something. We are about helping our kids develop capacities to examine, represent, communicate, manipulate and implement solutions in their world in the future. Section Three: The Thematic Content An integrated thematic approach to teaching and learning does not require any particular theme as content to study. However, in order to serve coherence, I believe that developmentally relevant materials should be addressed. I am suggesting in this section thematic content that seems to me universally useful for adult citizens in our culture. I suggest six major themes each of which would be addressed in one year of schooling. The themes are Health, Self-advocacy, Psychology, Commerce, Civics, and Ecology. I have broken the major content themes that I would like to address down into smaller packages in order to fit them into our familiar schedule for elementary school. The elementary curriculum described here is organized into four 9 week quarters per year. However, my proposal for secondary curriculum departs so radically from the traditional that I have made no effort to make it conform to our current schedule. As we become immersed in the thematic content, please do not lose sight of our overriding intent to facilitate skill development, not to master content material. Grade 1 Health is the major theme for the first grade. The first grader is still primarily self involved. The reader will note that the themes addressed here are often self focused. The year is broken down into four sub themes: getting to know each other, understanding what is alive, distinguishing what makes us human, and becoming expert at maintaining our health. The weekly projects are outlined as follows: 1. Getting to know each other
2. What is alive?
At this point I am bored with repeating the need to have the students produce verbal, graphic, numeric, and modeled demonstrations of their learning. I will not repeat this anymore as I am confident that the reader has this firmly in mind. 3. Who is a person? What distinguishes humans from other animals?
4. Systems maintenance—a closer look at how we keep ourselves alive—hypotheses, investigations, and reports on how to do it well
Grade 2 Self Advocacy is the major theme of the second grade. Boundary negotiation and issues of authority are common preoccupations at this age. Four sub themes are suggested: nutrition and exercise, boundaries, common sense, and ethics. The weekly projects are outlined as follows: 1. Nutrition and exercise
Don’t forget here that each student is expected to demonstrate knowledge of each theme using verbal, numerical, graphic, and modeling modes of expression. 2. Boundaries
3. Common sense solving problems
4. Ethics
Grade 3 Psychology is the main theme of the third-grade. At this stage, children become much more aware than they have been previously of larger groups and variations of family constellations. The four sub themes addressed in this curriculum in third-grade are emotional development, family culture, group dynamics, and motives. The weekly projects suggested are as follows: 1. Development—intended to outline the unfolding personality development the children are experiencing and observing.
2. Family culture
3. Group dynamics
4. Motives
Grade 4 Commerce is the major theme of the fourth grade because of children’s fascination with money and trading at this stage. The four quarterly sub themes are money, market value, capitalism, and economics. The weekly projects suggested are as follows: 1. Market value
2. Money
3. Capitalism
I feel the need to remind the reader here that each week’s endeavor is to include reading, writing, speaking, measuring, calculating, projecting (estimating), drawing, photographing or videotaping, acting, exploring and building in the pursuit of understanding whatever it is that we are studyinWhile I consider these content themes important, I would not require a student who was absent to make up the material. The student who comes to the school for the first time in the middle of a term need not start from the beginninIt is the skill development that we are really after, not the mastery of the thematic material. For example, the stock portfolio above would not be graded based on the profitability of the stocks chosen; it would be graded on the quality of display and the accuracy of the results displayed. 4. Economic evolution
Grade 5 Civics is the major theme for the fifth grade because it is at this age that many children begin to become aware of the regulatory systems in the world around them. They train to be safety patrols. They begin to understand the news and question the differences among regions of the world in how people livThe four quarterly sub themes suggested are parallel history, democracy, antitrust, and self advocacy. 1. Parallel history—a pattern of social evolution that has occurred around the world at different places at different times
2. Democracy
3. Antitrust
4. Self advocacy
Grade 6 Ecology is the major theme for sixth gradAt this time, children are ready to expand their awareness to a very broad scopTheir dawning understanding of the workings of systems allows them to delve into the complexities of biology at new levels. The suggested quarterly sub themes are life’s tree, food chain, biomes and evolutionary niche. 1. Life’s tree
2. Food chain
3. Biomes
4. Evolutionary niche
This ends the traditional classroom work of elementary school. Junior High School At this point, I suggest we depart from the traditional and try to integrate the students’ learning into the community. I suggest that we view the thematic content of junior high as a whole. The themes articulated here are not presented in any particular order, nor would students be expected to be exposed to them in any particular order. Junior high students become interested in earning money and engaging in the commerce of the community. They work naturally in groups and are very interested in being useful in genuine enterprise. The junior high experience, then, is organized into practicum experiences in six sectors of the economy: childcare, agriculture, government, manufacturing, communications, and human service. Practicum supervisors would be attached to practicum sites rather than to groups of students. Again, the student is expected to demonstrate learning about each area by producing a project using all four skill areas—linguistic, graphic, mathematic, and engineering. While students’ projects could be created by a small group, each student would be expected to individually present the project to a peer review board.
High School Again, the experiences offered in high school are presented here in no particular order. They represent the functions within all organizations necessary to the survival of the organization. The ability of a high school student to abstract is played upon at this point in the curriculum—I hope that students understand that their experience of each functional component of a single organization is representative of the same functional component in other organizations. The experience blocks I suggest are finance, public relations, plant management, information systems, research and development, and human resources. Group projects culminating in solo presentations to a peer review board are outlined here just as they were in the junior high section.
The peer review boards mentioned above might be comprised of four students who are also studying the thematic area that is being presented but who are not in the presenting student’s group. The board would also include an instructor familiar with this area of study although preferably not one who works at the practicum site that is the subject of the presentation. As high school students complete the projects described here, they may progress in to post secondary experiences—specific training and vocational skills or further theoretical training in their areas of interest. Successful completion of the areas outlined here constitutes high school graduation. Section Four: Assessment The alert reader may have asked by now what is meant by the words "successful completion." We must broaden that question by returning to the fundamental concepts of this curriculum plan. Throughout the description of the "integrated themes," I have asked the reader to indulge me in assuming that students are acquiring skills in verbal, mathematical, graphic and engineering thinking. The integrated thematic approach outlined here does not address the technique of facilitating any of these thinking skills. Nor does it address how much development of these skills might be or ought to be expected of a student or group of students at any point. Some writers and theorists back off this point asserting that students are enormously variable and testing of students often does not reflect their true mastery of material. Students vary from one another because of their cultural background and experience, because of their age and because of innate abilities. Moreover, each student is likely to vary within him or herself among different types of skills. We cannot beg off of the question of assessment. We must take the variance of students as a given and as the base of the artistry of teaching. The coherent curriculum outlined here is intended to allow maximum flexibility in its application to a variety of students’ skill levels. Assessment of students is the only rational basis for the teacher’s efforts to facilitate students’ development. That is to say that, in the thematic curriculum, it is more important for the teacher to be reassessing students than it would be in the traditional curriculum. Crassly, in a traditional setting, assessment of students has little impact on the material presented. The curriculum has a life of its own and does not change depending on the students’ performance. Contrastingly, although the themes in this curriculum will not change, the efforts of the teacher to facilitate the development of students is meant to be completely individualized commensurate with students’ performance. Please note that the coherent curriculum is designed to capture students’ interest and to give them an age appropriate exposure to the world. Students are not expected to master any of the material explored. Rather, the coherent curriculum is a vehicle for the facilitation of the thinking skills of all the students in the class at whatever level they are, recognizing that students vary from each other and within themselves and over time. How, then, can we measure students’ performance? Their skill development? The mechanistic answer is simple: portfolio. But the question is more subtle and complex. What is the yardstick with which we measure the portfolio? I am reminded of my kids standing straight against the door frame where I measured their height over the years. They stood as tall as possible. They wanted to see if they had grown. They almost always had—a little. Height is easy to measure, thinking skills not so. It is painfully clear that our letter grade system does not inspire kids in the same way as the door frame does. Can’t we articulate for kids where they "stand" in their learning? And in what way should they be trying to "grow?" Students need a yardstick and so do we. We can meaningfully teach only if we know what a student must master next. We must know what they can do now in order to know what they must work on next. In trying to articulate a "yardstick" for education, I would naturally use a developmental model. Development has been my training. Others may feel that the developmental model is inappropriate. I would be delighted to hear their alternative. I believe that each of the thinking skills I value—verbal, graphic, numeric, and engineering—can be described meaningfully as a sequence of development in a child’s life. Like other characteristics of children, thinking skills develop at different rates in different children and different skills develop at different rates within each individual child. Thus, we seek to articulate a developmental sequence for each of the thinking skills that we value. Traditional education assesses only verbal and numeric skills. Because I value four modes of thinking, verbal and numeric, but also, graphic and engineering, I wish for the articulation of four developmental sequences. The development of these aspects of a person would be expected to occur in parallel but not necessarily in concert. For example, a student might learn more quickly kinesthetically early on so excel in engineering projects before acquiring the linguistic skills he might excel in later. It would be useful, then, to facilitate each skill area at the level of development it is at the moment. We need an independent yardstick for each skill that we would like to facilitate. And at the same time, we recognize that the skills will overlap in interesting ways. I am hopeful that developmental yardsticks will allow students to recognize their own strengths and weaknesses and their successes and challenges. I hope that the feedback from developmental yardsticks would always be encouraging to students like the door frame was to my kids because it always demonstrated progress—at least a little. But the developmental yardstick is also always a challenge—throughout life—because development is never done. Developmental yardsticks allow teachers to apply their efforts rationally, creatively, and individually to their students. And finally, developmental yardsticks allow parents and other participants in children’s lives to appreciate their children’s effort and to participate more meaningfully in it. If we can articulate developmental yardsticks for education, everybody will know what we are working on. Developmental Yardstick for Numerical Reasoning Concrete stage
Sequential Stage
Early Symbolic
Mid-Symbolic
Advanced Symbolic
Applications
Of course, math goes on from here but this is enough for high school. It would be great if everyone understood this much. Developmental Yardstick for Graphic Reasoning Elements
Two-Dimensional Literal
Two-Dimensional Symbolic
Three-Dimensional
Four Dimensional
Five Dimensional
Developmental Yardstick for Engineering Reasoning Gravity
Friction
Density and Strength
Propulsion
Visualization
Developmental Yardstick for Linguistic Reasoning Oral tradition
Pre-Literate
Literate
Language Arts
Communication
Literary Analysis
Collegiate
If we were able to articulate the progress of development at each of the skills we value, each student, teacher, and family (or outside evaluator) should be able to understand each student’s developmental progress by examining the student’s portfolio. The portfolio displays the student’s actual ability to apply the skills we value the developmental review of the student’s portfolio serves our need for both objective validity and norm reference. Conclusion I have held here that our goal in the system of public education is to produce adults capable of critical thinking in the solving of novel problems. I have promoted the integrated thematic approach to teaching. I have attempted to suggest age-appropriate themes of study which are both rigorous and relevant. I have suggested four developmental lines or intelligences or modes of thought which we should try to facilitate in our students using the thematic studies. I have theorized yardsticks along which we could measure the progress that we and our students desire. If we were to implement the changes in public education described here, the criticisms of our current system would melt away. And so ends my commentary on coherent curriculum. I hope for feedback and the opportunity for implementation.
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