In a recent post on Learners as Contributors, which received some good comments, Bill Fitzgerald said that:
True student-centered teaching takes more preparation than traditional lecture because the teacher needs to be prepared for whatever outcome organically arises. Really, it requires an openness to possibility that many teachers feel uncomfortable with because they labor under the paradigm that they need to be the expert in any subject covered in their classroom. True student-centered teaching also requires teachers to explicitly teach critical thinking skills, media evaluation skills (a must for internet-based research), and a host of other skills that are necessary for life but are not directly measurable on a standardized test.
This got me to wondering about curriculum, such as Brian Alger’s comment that “Curriculum is a solution to a problem we created.” I also started thinking about the barnraising exercise that Dave is hosting on new media curriculum creation. I believe that it’s a good exercise but there is a more fundamental issue that really interests me.
What would a curriculum look like if you eliminated any specific CONTENT and any reference to particular TECHNOLOGIES and instead focused on universal cognitive PROCESSES? Many varieties of this “curriculum” could be created, using various content areas or communication technologies. I imagine a curriculum that is open to teachers’ expertise and learners’ needs, based on processes like:
- Critical thinking
- Problem solving, individually and as part of a group
- Narrative development
- Media analysis & critique
- Self-expression
- etc. (please add more)
What would be different about this more basic curriculum is that learners would be able to choose how they would learn these process skills and how they would show mastery. Self-expression could be shown through writing, blogging, art or mechanics. This approach would also free up a whole bunch of teachers in administrative curriculum development positions ;-)
Given the expanding amount of information and media that is available through the Internet, access to material should not be an issue. Of course, teachers would need to develop new skills, but just imagine what learners could achieve. As John Taylor Gatto wrote in Harper’s a few years ago:
After a long life, and thirty years in the public school trenches, I’ve concluded that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress our genius only because we haven’t yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women. The solution, I think, is simple and glorious. Let them manage themselves.