Rethinking the High School curriculum [View All]

[dkf]

" Imagine the following HS requirements being recommend to the School Board:
• 3 years of economics and business
• 2 courses in philosophy – one in logic, the other in ethics
• 2 years of psychology, with special emphasis on child development and family relations
• 2 years of mathematics, focusing on probability and statistics
• 4 years of Language Arts, but with a major focus on semiotics and oral proficiency
• US and World history, taught as Current Events - backwards from the present
• 1 Year of Graphics Design, Desktop Publishing, and Multimedia presentation

Outrageous? Hardly – if we do an analysis of what most graduates actually need and will use in professional, civic, and personal life. How odd it is that we do not require oral proficiency when every graduate will need the ability. How absurd it is in this day and age that students aren’t required to understand the capitalist system. How sad it is that physics is viewed as more important than psychology, as parents struggle to raise children wisely and families work hard to understand one another. Requirements based on pre-modern academic priorities and schooling predicated on the old view that few people would graduate and fewer still would go on to college make no sense. Ask any adult: how much algebra did you use this past week?"

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/2/6/834419/-students-should-graduate-with-a-rsum,-not-a-transcript

How funny that I was telling my coworker today that our kids don't get taught the important things in high school, about real world situations like how to handle your finances, and how the Government and its laws and institutions affect your life. I do think that algebra is helpful, as is the concepts of calculus. Trig and geometry, not so much. At least for me.