The Answer To Curriculum Might Not Be Content Part I

In my post Rethinking Secondary Education in Maine I discussed some of the exciting work that is going on around the secondary education curriculum in Maine.

The curriculum that we finally recommend to the Commissioner will likely be based largely on a report from the colleges in the University of Maine System that suggests that in order to be ready for college, students should have 4 years of English, 4 years of Math, 3 years of lab science, 3 years of Social Studies, and 2 years of a foreign language.

This is a "high status" curriculum. It is the curriculum that has gotten students into four year colleges for decades. But it was also clear, talking Task Force members from the world of business and industry, that this is also the curriculum they feel they need for graduates to be able go to work, let alone a 2-year technical school/community college. (We heard stories, for example, of recent hires not being able to read electrical meters because they couldn't do the math.) This isn't just about 4-year colleges. Maine's slogan "Every Child College Ready" really does mean being academically ready for work or military service right after graduation, not just being ready for higher education.

This is very exciting to me! Who wouldn't want all their kids to be "smarter"?! To get a better education?! I'm a critical theorist (a fancy way of saying schools should be for ALL students) and see this curriculum opening all kinds of doors and possibilities for every single one of our students, not just the ones who are lucky enough to already have lots of doors open.

But this high status curriculum is a little scary, too. We already know it works for the easiest of our easy to teach kids. How will we make it work for our hard to teach kids?

Our answer in the past was that we made DIFFERENT courses for our hard to teach kids. If they can't do Algebra II (especially since they probably had a hard time with Algebra I and Geometry), why don't we offer a Shop Math or a Life Skills Math. If our hard to teach students can't do American Literature (especially since they probably had a hard time with freshman comp and lit), why don't we offer "Sports Literature."

But I don't think this approach has been very successful. I think we didn't address the root problem; all we did was remove our hard to teach kids from the high status curriculum they were struggling with.

What if instead we designed those high status courses in such a way that the hard to tech kids could be successful with them? What would a Physics class look like where every student could leave the course understanding important Physics principles as outlined in national standards? What would an Algebra II or Calculus class look like that every student could leave having met the standards outlined by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics? What would a course look like where even the hard to teach kids could master the themes of Shakespeare or Whitman?

Clearly part of the answer is also answering the questions, how do we design an Algebra or Pre-algebra class that every student could be successful? Or how do we design a freshman comp class where all the students can become effective written communicators?

The answer isn't with the content (we changed the content and still had a problem with the hard to teach kids being academically ready for work and school).

If we want every child, including and especially the hard to teach students, to be successful with a high status curriculum, then we need to focus on instruction.

The definition of insanity is doing the same old thing and expecting different results. We know that a high status curriculum (taught the way it has always been taught) doesn't work for the hard to teach kids. We have to teach the content differently.

What might that look like? Please add your comments below, but I'll add my thoughts in an upcoming post.