We all know that you don’t need to know Trigonometry or Physics or Russian History or French to be successful in life. Millions of rich people have limited knowledge of these subjects. Most people who contribute to their communities, who give to charity or are great parents and role-models don’t remember anything about Calculus. I’d be willing to bet that most presidents throughout history wouldn’t be able to pass an introductory Physics test.
We all know that students forget the vast majority of what they learn throughout school. In fact most students forget what they’ve learned from one year to the next.
If almost none of the subject matter that we learn in school will ever help us in any practical manner throughout our life then why do cling to it so much? Why do we cling to these patterns of force-feeding students material year after year that very few adults would ever choose to learn on their own? That no adult sees enough value in from a practical manner to take the time to even refresh their understanding?
Every physics teacher knows that there is value in their subject. It helps them understand the world in fascinating ways and can be enormously practical in a number of situations. A Russian History teacher will likely say the same thing. But will the history teacher seek out a better understanding of Newtonian Fluids over the weekend? Will the physics teacher go down to the library to check out books about Ivan the Terrible? They might, if a friend recommends them a great book or fascinating documentary, but they’re unlikely to engage with the material for long if they are not enjoying themselves.
The fact of the matter is that there are an infinite number of valuable topics to learn and skills to master. We all know that we don’t have time to learn all of them and we all know that the effort required to truly master just one can take a life-time.
I just can’t find any logical explanation toward why students are required to learn any specific material. I’ve tried to find explanations but all of them come up short. For example, some people have said that algebra helps develop abstract reasoning, but the fact is that most adults are reasonably good at abstract reasoning no matter what their grade was in Algebra. If our true goal with Algebra was the development of abstract reasoning then we wouldn’t focus almost entirely on isolating “X” in an equation.
Help me out here. Describe to me a specific subject matter that is fundamentally important. It must be so fundamentally important that it would be impossible or even just very unlikely that someone could lead a happy and successful life without having a solid understanding of said material.
The only one I’ve ever been able to come up with is reading and writing. That’s it. That’s all I’ve got. Everything after that seems to be completely optional when it comes to leading a fulfilling life…
Small Update
A few people have reminded me that there are some other fundamental topics such as basic math (addition, subtraction, multiplication, percentages, etc). If you look at school environments that have no curriculum, though, you’ll see 100% of the students graduating with this basic knowledge. I don’t think there is any evidence that a curriculum is required to ensure that students learn about these basics if a healthy educational environment is present. In fact there is clear evidence that a curriculum is not required to achieve these outcomes.
Jared Cosulich 
Kirsten
November 29, 2013
Perhaps the difficulty here is that we often look at curriculum from the perspective that leading ‘a good and productive life’ is the desired ends. But this is more problematic than it seems. What is a ‘good and productive life’? Should this truly be the desired ends? What other ends to curriculum might we consider?
We know that there are many people who are not leading good and productive lives. They live in poverty, are ill treated, used and abused by systems, and have little opportunity to affect change in the world around them. The world is not all as it should be.
So then, What if the ends of curriculum is to enable people to effect change in the world, not simply live within it. If we are going to change the world we live in, to make it a better, more just, more equitable world, then it follows for me we need to know more about how the world works. And that means knowing a broad range of disciplines, and yes, even algebra and russian history. In this way children can begin to to imagine and enact a world they want, not just live in the world they have.
Thank you for this important question.
Sincerely,
Kirsten
irrationaljared
November 29, 2013
But the question remains, what would happen if you eliminate the curriculum? Do students who attend a school with absolutely no curriculum end up markedly worse off with regard to their ability to affect the world around them.
Having researched students at Summerhill and Sudbury Valley where there are absolutely no requirements, the only evidence suggests that these students are just as capable of impacting the world around them. They are capable of getting jobs, they learn about a variety of subjects, they are thoughtful and curious.
I just haven’t found any evidence that a prescribed curriculum is actually necessary to achieve the outcomes you’ve described…
jamielynnolson
November 29, 2013
Interesting question, and topical for american politics at the moment!
Science, Technology, Math, Psychology, History, all help us understand the way the world around us works. Understanding gravity from a physics class, understanding what it means to be hot (fast movement of particles) help us understand everyday problems and risks. Even if I don’t study astrophysics in everyday life, my understanding of scientific concepts helps me evaluate scientific news and progress and avoid jumping off a building (also lets me get self righteous when i watch movies like Gravity). Understanding some basic concepts of psychology can help you in relationships. Math, (trig, geometry, algebra) help us accomplish basic life skills, like working with money, angles of reflection in mirrors, etc. Understanding historical elements in societies can help you interact with different cultures. It both makes your life better and improves understanding globally.
We also want students in public education to be enabled to choose their future. If we didn’t train them in the fundamentals of physics, how could anyone choose to be a computer engineer? Covering basic curriculum allows freedom of choice.
To be fair, we do need to evaluate what curricular options are most valuable, but having certain basics of Language, Science, Math, History, are important for society to function.
irrationaljared
November 29, 2013
Here in lies an excellent question:
But the fact is that students who are not trained in the fundamentals of physics do choose to be computer engineers. Students who are not exposed to a specific curriculum understand gravity because it is a concept that you will be exposed to throughout life.
I’m a professional programmer and I have a very limited understanding of physics. I have looked at introductory physics tests for the high school level and I would fail them without specific preparation.
A lot of this depends on the society and culture that you live in. I’m just trying to isolate curriculum and there are two schools (Summerhill and Sudbury Valley) that have created healthy, safe, and interesting educational environments that are devoid of curriculum. Both schools have produced computer engineers and I would bet a lot of money that all students at each school have the same understanding of gravity as any well educated adult in our society.
I don’t agree that covering basic curriculum provides freedom of choice. Freedom of choice provides freedom of choice. Micro-managing students for 15 years and exposing them to a prescribed set of subjects (only a small minority of all of the possible subjects a student could be exposed to) doesn’t actually provide them much freedom at all.
I would agree that having a basic understanding of math is essential, along with reading and writing. There are probably a number of scientific concepts that are also essential. But students at Sudbury Valley and Summerhill all seem to walk away with the necessary understanding of these concepts to thrive despite not having any curriculum at all…
Joseph Moore
November 30, 2013
Psychology is pseudo-science. Which 1 of the 16 mutually exclusive schools of psychology currently taught is the right one? There are not 16 different, mutually exclusive school of chemistry or physics, after all. If psychology is just a set of opinions about what makes people tick, why teach one of the schools in lieu of any other set of such opinions? Understanding science means more than the ability to mock popular entertainment.
And the curricula in modern schools have been carefully designed to make sure as few people as possible learn any Science, Technology, Math, or History. If you doubt this, just ask: how else could the result – the almost complete ignorance of these subjects in almost the entire population of the well schooled – have come about? Imagine any other human activity in which hundreds of thousands of trained professionals were given tens of thousands of hours over 12 years to achieve such trivial ends, yet consistently and miserably fail. You’d really have to work at it, to be that incompetent.
The fields you name – Science (technology in the modern mind is just applied science), Math and History – are the fields that provide a platform, a vantage point from which to view and criticize education. Therefore, there is is no systemic interest in teaching them. Individual teachers might want to, although those are the kinds of teachers the system is designed to filter out – just ask Jared. But the system as a whole – the arbitrary and abusive segregation of individuals by age, the fragmentation of knowledge into incoherent bits, the bells which, like the ‘handicaps’ in Harrison Bergeron, keep kids from being able to pursue any real interest to the end, the teachers whose prime qualification for their job is the ability to put up with the arbitrary nonsense needed to get an education degree – is designed to prevent and inoculate against any real education.
And it works great! “Depriving” children of this curriculum is to confer a great blessing on them.
LiHe
November 30, 2013
Access to information does make an enormous difference in people’s lives and in how society functions. Underline that last sentence. Nobody is saying that they don’t want people to be educated. The question is whether our school system, i.e. an (attempted) enforced intake of the “right” information according to the “experts”, standardized, compulsory, and with zero regard to the interests and talents of the learner, is the best way to accomplish that. The typical school succeeds mainly in compartmentalizing the world artificially, in creating the illusion that a force-fed smattering of a few broad topics constitutes a good education, and in preparing people primarily for factory-style labor.
Another thing that makes an enormous difference is freedom — specifically, a difference in what people actually get out of the learning environment. Desire matters. Choice matters. Interest, readiness, and innate aptitude matter. Not having a captive audience matters because then quality matters (if it’s no good and your audience has a choice, they won’t come.) Having no choice but to be there and to study what someone else wants you to study is a funny definition of freedom. Actually, wait, it’s not the definition of freedom at all. What it is is doublespeak.
Granted, there was a time when access to information was limited, and that made the ability to attend an institution where information was available extremely valuable — that’s where your definition of freedom makes sense. But that’s not the case any longer, for the most part. Doubtless I would learn the most about physics where there are physicists. But for basic knowledge? I learned more in an afternoon perusing Wikipedia and Kahn Academy recently than I did in an entire year of boring lectures and inane busywork and being measured and judged for worthiness in high school physics class. It’s a different world now; different rules apply.
Andy "SuperFly" Rundquist
November 30, 2013
Great questions! Here’s my take from the perspective of a) a physics professor, and b) a dad with an 8th grader, a 6th grader, and a 1st grader. First the physics professor. I was talking with a bunch of chairs of physics departments this past summer, arguing over a somewhat similar question: what courses should all physics majors in the country take? I was in the corner of “it doesn’t matter, as long as they experience building and testing models of the world.” Others felt that you had to take an advanced quantum physics course if you had a BS in physics. It’s hard to argue with that, but my point was that quantum physics just happens to be a fantastically successful model of our world/universe. It’s been tested like crazy, and it has a few simple (though strange) rules to follow. I talked about how everyone in general physics (the beginning of the major) spends up to a year on mechanics (Newton’s laws etc, basically carts on tracks etc), not because that’s “what physics is” but, again, because it’s a great, well-proven model of our universe. So, the upshot? Learn about modeling to see how powerful it can be to have a simple set of rules that can be used to explain/predict lots of stuff.
Ok, now (b). I get frustrated with a lot of the homework that my boys do, often from a perspective similar to yours. I like the projects where they’re given some flexibility to really explore something. When they were in pre-school, they were in a program with zero curriculum save “we’ll go outside everyday no matter what and see what we see.” I want more of their schooling to be like that.
Bringing it together: I participate in a weekly online conversation with other physics educators. Quite often the K-12 teachers ask us post-12 teachers what topics they should “cover” in their courses to help prepare their students for college. Every single time, the answer ends up being “do something deep, not broad.” What we mean is, if the students can really experience a true exploration of something, they’re much better college students. If, on the other hand, they can just do all the homework problems, they tend to struggle when it’s time to really own their learning. My local high school has a physics teacher who has really embraced this. He offers a class where they design, implement, evaluate, and communicate about some project of their own. I can’t wait to get some of his students in my classes.
Here’s a question for you: You say “students forget the vast majority of what they learn.” I don’t think you mean that. I think you mean they forget the content of what they’re studying. Hopefully they remember the skills they’ve learned. Do you agree?
irrationaljared
November 30, 2013
Thank you for the perspective. It’s good to bring college in to this discussion as I think college-readiness does play a huge role in how we approach curriculum.
I would completely agree that college-readiness seems to have more to do with your ability to learn, to ask for help, to do a deep dive, etc. than it has to do with any specific material. At the college level and beyond you will have to focus your attention on fewer subjects, going deeper in to them then is required in K-12. I would be that most students who have a healthy perspective on their own ability to learn can learn enough math or science or whatever within a year if they choose to in order to be successful in college.
In the end I have nothing against physics or any other subject. I find them all to be tremendously fascinating. I would greatly enjoy teaching them to someone who wanted to learn about them and I think they would derive a lot of value from learning about them. But they would derive a lot of value from so many other activities as well including socializing with their friends, so who more and more I find it very difficult to say confidently that learning X is more important than learning Y…
Regarding your last question, I am talking about the content. I do think skills atrophy as well with time, but content probably atrophies faster. I don’t think you forget everything, but you forget enough to make me question whether it’s worth putting so much pressure on learning and being able to pass a test in the first place.
Lua Martin Wells
November 30, 2013
I very much agree that letting kids figure out what they want and need to know is so much better than having a set curriculum for all kids. I also agree that reading and writing and basic math are the essential structure needed, and that all of those things are likely to be learned without much “teaching” needed for most kids, as long as we’re patient about the timing (i.e. kids may read later than the traditional school average time). My kids were unschoolers, and I believed that as long as they learned how to read and write and think, then they’d be able to go to college if they wanted to – and that the key was for them to have the time and freedom to figure out what they cared about enough to pursue avidly, whether that be in college or out of it. They are grown now, and both went to college and have careers that fit them perfectly. I do hope that more people will start to feel confident in giving kids freedom, and that more Sudbury schools will open up around the country for those who want that option. The more kids who do this, the more it will be accepted, I think, as people will see that it works!
irrationaljared
November 30, 2013
Lua,
Thank you for the thoughts. It’s great to hear that a curriculum-free childhood worked out well for you guys. Almost 100% of the stories I hear about students who don’t go through a rigorous curriculum are successful and it’s a big reason why I question it all so much now.
daveeckstrom
November 30, 2013
In truth, there are some people who are going to need to understand the principles of physics, advanced math, etc. Those people should be given the opportunity to learn those things. Our economic system values the work and knowledge of those educated in these specialized areas to a greater extent than that of those who do meaningful physical things, so we train all our students so they might be prepared to succeed in these careers, even though most will not. Their time would be much better spent out of school learning a trade directly, through apprenticeship. The savings obtained by only sending a minority of so-inclined and talented students through an academic high school could be used to provide a free college education for those who need it and support for entrepreneurial ventures and apprenticeships for those who don’t.
The old industrial models served the corporations well, because they needed some well-educated people in their managerial positions and a large number of people who had been conditioned to faithfully do meaningless tasks. Now that both those functions are available offshore at greatly reduced cost, they have no interest in continuing to support free public education for all, so we are seeing an increase in corporate-driven efforts to deform the public education system rather than making it better for students.
Lua Martin Wells
November 30, 2013
Great conversation and questioning of the status quo here – just wish more people in the education field were willing to discuss these things!! If anyone is interested in hearing a bit more about the story of my unschooled (now grown) kids, I have a short TEDx talk you can watch. You should be able to find it easily thru google or youtube with just my name and TEDx. Most of us have come through the traditional school approach, and have been taught that education = school, so I understand why many people at first think that an unschool approach is crazy stuff… but really, the more you start to think about it, the more it starts to make sense – that when kids learn about what they want to learn about, then they learn so much more, and it sticks with them…