5 Subjects That Schools Aren’t Teaching (But Definitely Should)
Raise your hand if you learned about mitosis in school?
Now, leave your hand up if you still know what mitosis actually is?
Finally, keep your hand raised if you’ve used your knowledge of mitosis at your job in the last few years?
My guess is that not many of you reading this would still have your hand in the air.
And this demonstration is how Harvard Professor David Perkins gets his audiences to see the pressing need for curriculum reform.
He acknowledges that mastering content is important, but in the digital age in which we live, educators must re-assess what content they teach remains relevant to students’ futures.
He says,
“Conventional curriculum is chained to the bicycle rack,” he says. “It sits solidly in the minds of parents: ‘I learned that. Why aren’t my children learning it?’ The enormous investment in textbooks and the cost of revising them gives familiar elements of the curriculum a longer life span than they might perhaps deserve. Curriculum suffers from something of a crowded garage effect: It generally seems safer and easier to keep the old bicycle around than to throw it out.”
