WHAT YOU TALKIN' 'BOUT, WILLIS?

Curriculum Change: Making students not hate class so much.

Well, I've said before and I'll say it again, The School of Rock changed how I teach forever. It's a very dumb reason to have for such a change, but that film made me realize that everything a student does should have real-world, embedded application. But what about liberal arts and theory? Well, if you can't include those in the real-world application of the concepts you're teaching what good are they? And who's going to listen?

Dr. Ron Whittaker whose online text I use in Production classes has some interesting ideas in helping to rething curriculum that I really like.

Rethinking Higher Education Curriculum

Consider the full impact of these 17 elements of an essential curriculum.

1. It would be based on the premise that the primary purpose of education is not to pass on knowledge and information.

2. It would teach students how to think rather than what to think.

3. It would be centered on concepts and not subjects.

4. It would provide tools and skills for finding and understanding needed information and data, and teach the ability to synthesize and objectively evaluate both.

5. It would emphasize and reward critical thinking and problem solving while encouraging creativity and independent thinking.

6. It would encourage students to critically reexamine all values and attitudes before they accept them and not to automatically accept yesterday's answers to today's problems.

7. It would advocate and support personal honesty in attitudes, words, and deeds.

8. It would not be designed to support or justify the economic or political goals or status quo of any one country.

9. It would deal openly and honestly with love and sexuality in all their dimensions while at the same time attempting to understand prevailing societal views.

10. It would not be based on competition or "survival of the fittest," but place an equal value on individuals, regardless of race, sex, economic status, or personal predisposition.

11. It would teach total personal responsibility for one's actions, attitudes, and future rather than shifting responsibility to some outside person or agency.

12. It would emphasize tolerance and a nonjudgmental attitude toward people and societies that are "different" or with whom one disagrees.

13. It would emphasize the importance self-discipline and the understanding that personal freedoms must cease or be reevaluated whenever they interfere with the needs and freedoms of others.

14. It would stress adjudication and conflict resolution and not violence as the solution to personal or social problems.

15. It would emphasize the importance and preservation of the environment.

16. It would present the standard subjects (including the three R's, rhetoric, geography, history, humanities and science) within the context of real-life situations that the students can clearly identify with; and, in the process, make use of computer games, and TV and Internet resources.

17. Finally, it would consistently emphasize universal, uniting spiritual concepts, as opposed divisive religious, racial, cultural, or nationalistic concepts.