Where is the purpose-driven curriculum? It’s an elusive
concept that loading on more so-called common core standards and high-stakes
tests will not make evident.
There’s a cartoon of a man coming home from work, saying to
himself, “Well, there’s another day I didn’t use algebra.” In fact, most days
most people don’t use algebra or another other form of higher mathematics. Some
days we don’t even use basic arithmetic. And yet we have enshrined mathematics
as sacrosanct. Why? Because it helps students learn how to think in another
language, to transfer learned concepts from one context to another. Those are
actual purposes for teaching advanced mathematics. Calculus, for the vast
majority of people, is not a life skill; thinking is. Teaching thinking skills
is a fundamental purpose of education.
The overwhelming emphasis on reading and mathematics skills,
minutely detailed in standards and curricula and tested ad nauseam using
high-stakes, life-altering exams, trivializes these subjects in the same way
that curricular neglect denigrates and trivializes everything else, from the
arts to civic education. The actual purposes of education are lost in a morass
of trivia.
We spend an enormous amount of time and effort, paper and
ink, to answer the question, How should we teach mathematics? The real question
is, Why? Why should we teach mathematics, literature, the arts, civic
education, and everything else? Why
questions lead to purpose statements, which in turn should guide standards
setting and curriculum development. Modern “reform” efforts don’t start here
and so put the cart before the horse. It’s hardly any wonder that they don’t
get anywhere.
What if we made Why?
the starting point for every conversation about education—what we teach, how we
evaluate students and teachers, and all the rest? If we can’t come up with an
honest, important purpose, then maybe we should stop right there—before we muck
around and make things worse instead of better.
