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Here is my proposal for a primary education curriculum.
I think there are two main problems with the primary education curriculum as it is taught in America today.
First, there is too much time spent on topics which are neither interesting to the students, nor useful for their future lives, nor mind-expanding; at the expense of topics that are. My theory is that this is caused by a classical legacy, but also by a process in which post-secondary curricula are set by professors thinking, 'What do I want my future colleagues to know?', and then college curricula are set by professors thinking, 'What do I want my future grad students to know before they enter grad school?', and high school curricula are set by colleges thinking, 'What prerequisties do we want students to have before they enter college, in order to get through the college curriculum?', and elementary school curricula are set by high schools thinking, 'What prerequisites do will students have to know in order to learn the stuff in high school?'. The problem with this process is that its implicit end goal is to teach people how to be a good professor, or at least a good grad student, whereas most students will not be interested in becoming either.
Second, there is too much emphasis on having everyone learn the same thing and not enough emphasis on allowing the student to learn what they are interested in.
So, I propose replacing the standard curriculum with a shorter curriculum that covers 'just the basics'. This frees up time that can then be spent in four ways:
Reading well is a useful skill and so each student should have to read a lot of stuff during primary schooling. A happy fact is that there is now so much great literature that there is no longer any agreement on a small set of 'classics' that everyone should read (with the possible exception of Shakespeare, in the English language at least).
The current procedure is that the teacher chooses a list of books that everyone in the class must read. This has the benefit that students can discuss books with one another. However, this comes at a great cost, namely that most students will be uninterested in most of their reading. I think these priorities are backwards. Therefore, I propose that the teacher assigns an approximate word count quota, and each student should for the most part read whatever they want. For the most part, they can substitute 100 comic books (or 100 web pages) for one book (or whatever ratio yields an equivalent word count.
Now, there are different sorts of writing that each student should become familiar with. If the student reads only comic books, even if they read a lot of them, they may not be able to stomach an encyclopedia entry. Therefore, the teacher should sometimes assign a certain type and level of writing (for example, a non-fiction book; poetry; an encyclopedia page; a niche newsmagazine written supposedly markeded for the 'intelligensia' with difficult language; etc), but still allow the student to choose what to read within this constraint.
In addition, a student may fall in love with one topic, genre, or point of view, and neglect others. So the teacher should prescribe negative constraints, too. If the student has been choosing a lot of science fiction, then this should be permitted most of the time, but some of the time the teacher should give this particular student a 'no science fiction' requirement. If the student has a tendency to prefer conservative or liberal political nonfiction, then this should be permitted most of the time, but some of the time the teacher should give this particular student a requirement to read work from the opposing faction.
Writing well is a useful skill and so each student should have to write a lot of stuff during primary schooling. As with reading, however, I feel that the current practice of assigning even a topic for essays is unwise. The student should be permitted to choose to write about whatever they want. The only constraints that should be given is the class of writing, by which i mean nonfiction, fiction, poetry, etc; perhaps non-fiction could be broken further into polemical non-fiction, dry summaries of something, etc. But a particular topic should not be assigned, except that, as with reading, if the student has in the past gravitated towards a particular type of topic (military history, for example), then most of the time this should be permitted, but some of the time the teacher should say, 'This time, write a non-fiction essay about anything EXCEPT military history.'
Presenting/speaking well is a useful skill and so each student should have to present and speak a lot during primary schooling. In addition to speaking, preparing slide presentations seems to be the rule of modern business, and should be combined with speaking.
As with reading and writing, above, for the most part, each student should choose what they speak on, with some constraints on the sort of speech, and against choosing the same sort of topic every time.
There should be a little bit of memorized repetition of passages written by others, and a lot of semi-prepared speeches that the student authored themself, and a lot of extemporaneous speaking. There should also be formal debate between students with assigned topics and positions.
There's one practise i might advise against, however. In my elementary school, once a year each student had to memorize some passage of their choice and repeat it word-for-word in front of the entire assembled school. A teacher would be sitting in the front row with a written copy of the passage and would interrupt you if you got a word wrong. In my experience, this had the effect of unnecessarily creating a fear of public speaking. In most areas of life, when one has to speak, there is no great embarrassment if a few words are out of place. I see how there could be value in having to do a speech before a large assembly, but this value would mainly be in alleviating the fear of public speaking; so the other parts of the exercise should be tailored to that goal.
There should be some practice of negotiation. This is difficult to do without having interests at stake, so i propose various sorts of games, for example the board game Diplomacy, a model UN game, and various other contrived negotiation games. Care should be taken to define the goals and roles sufficiently objectively so as to give each student, through the rules of the game, a role that gives a reason for others to deal with them; this is to prevent socially unpopular students from becoming disadvantaged.
Basic home economic topics such as:
jobs:
investing:
economics at large:
Perhaps for the 'marketable skills' portion, students could play a few games where some of them are employers and some are employees, with a realistic distribution of skill sets among the employees, and realistic needs from the employers, that show how the market price of in-demand skills pushes up wages.
A very basic overview of world history.
Perhaps also a more detailed look at the history of the culture/region/country of the student, so as to give an example of the sort of things people get up to and how awful/deceptive/silly things can get. But not TOO much time on this (eg not years of American history, like in my upbringing, and certainly not a focus on the state of New York to the near exclusion of all else, as in some other people's upbringing).
Students should learn how to question statements from authorities, to think of alternatives to the point of view communicated to them by the media, and to be media literate and 'read between the lines'. One vehicle for this could be class discussions of current events. Clearly, this is dependent upon the skill and open-mindedness of the teacher; a close-minded teacher could take this opportunity to try and propagandize the consensus viewpoint instead of teaching critical thinking.
Philosophy is not of interest to everyone, nor is much of it useful in everyday life, but it is mind-expanding. So i think it should be in the curriculum, for the same reason as math. Like math, i don't think a ton of time should be spent on it.
todo
Arithmetic is a useful skill and everyone should have to learn it.
Beyond arithmetic, math is not universally useful, however i have found that it is mind-expanding. In fact, anecdotally, it seems to me that it is the only topic that is mind-expanding in that i feel like learning math made me smarter in general. So i would keep some math, beyond arithmetic, in the curriculum. But (a) not as much as there is now, and (b) more breadth and less depth.
I would cover the basics of:
This sounds like a lot, but keep in mind that i only wish to cover the very basics of each topic. Overall, i think much less time such be spent on math than is currently.
In contemporary society, computers are important, and so i think they should be covered in school more than they are now, including basic computer programming. (but without much time spent on learning to type, word processing; people can pick these up themselves if they have access to computers and are not inhibited by a need to fear messing up the computers).
I don't mean art history or art appreciation, but just a taste of:
This is not interesting to some, nor is it useful, but it is mind-expanding. So like philosophy and math, i think not too much time should be spent on these, which means that there won't be time for most students to learn to do any of these things particularly well. But there should be enough so that they can tell if they like it and want to do more.
Health should cover things such as:
By cutting down the curriculum, a lot of time is made available for electives. Electives should start early (not just in high school) and should cover academic subjects as well as arts. Most or all of the areas of the traditional curriculum which are left out of this one should be available as electives.
There should also a substantial amount of time devoted to independent study, where the student studies or works on whatever area or project they want alone (or, in a small group, but only if they choose that). Teachers should meet privately with the student periodically and be available for questions.
