A Recipe for a Revolution

By James Galloway

I can see many potential positive changes that could be made in the public school curricula. It would be difficult to find something that has been more researched and debated than school curricula. A quick look through the educational listings on the Internet will render hundreds of listings in this general area. Many are by groups highly critical of education as it now exists who are trying to impose their particular ideas on schools. It seems to me, unfortunately, that many of these proposed solutions end up being highly diverse and contradictory. So what we really need at this point is something else adding to the slew of contradictions and confusion, right? I understand that I am just another student out of the 1200 in Cave Spring High School, but all I’m trying to do is keep my creativity and independent thoughts. I am certain that my ideas will never be accepted and that, I believe, is why I’m even bothering to type this up (that, and I need this ‘A!’). They’re radical and they would step on a lot of toes, especially interests in the so-called social, religious, and political establishments.

One way I think the school curricula could be changed in a positive way is in how we teach the students to think, generally speaking. Rather than telling them what to think, we should start showing them how to think. I’m constantly seeing students’ methods of thinking stifled by a teacher’s automated "Yes" or "No" response, as opposed to what the teacher could be doing: he/she could be explaining to the student how his idea could work in the real-life world, and what problems or issues it could prevent and what good it could do. That’s not to say that a teacher that naturally gives "Yes" or "No" responses is a bad one; it just shows that he/she is no longer teaching to his/her full potential. I also see students being taught the idea that life is a competition, and that we should base our lives around the concept of "survival of the fittest." We all have our own lives to live and be successful in, and that doesn’t mean that we have to screw others over in order to do so. I understand that we wouldn’t have as many things as we do today if it weren’t for competition. Take Starbucks for example: if no one had competed against Starbucks in the coffee-vending industry, they would have no desire to make better coffees. They would be the only people selling it in the first place; there would be no one to out-do, so we would be living in a world full of mediocre coffee. That doesn’t mean that they couldn’t have made good coffee without the competition; that’s where my idea would come into play: they wouldn’t half-ass it in the first place. They would have been taught, as children, to support personal honesty in attitudes, words, and deeds.

One method of teaching our blossoming doctors, lawyers, and teachers to understand our world is to teach them to deal with love and sexuality in all their dimensions while at the same time attempting to understand prevailing societal views. As I walk through the halls and even while I’m working at my job, I hear "Faggot" and "Nigger" tossed around, regardless of anyone’s feelings, background, or race. In a way (aside from my point), I’m glad to hear that people are regardless of each others’ races, and that these words of hate are now only used in a joking manner. People can still be hurt, and students use these words (that is, the ones regarding to one’s sexuality) because they don’t understand the meaning of them. Of course, they know they mean "homosexual" or "gay," but they don’t understand how that could really affect a person’s life. Say the person was really a homosexual. The way students aren’t taught that all people are equal and that a person’s sexuality takes no effect on the way that person lives would cause this person to keep in the shadows and live a lie until he gets out of high school. And, even once s/he enters society, things won’t change; the person will still be viewed differently, judged differently, and treated differently, day to day. We should emphasize tolerance and a non-judgmental attitude toward people and societies that are "different" or with whom one disagrees. It might also be a good idea to encourage students to reexamine all values and attitudes before they accept them. I’m not suggesting that a person should renounce his/her religion just because s/he is born into it; but before s/he accepts the religion and its beliefs, look at them, and make sure that they are the ones for him/her.

The biggest change to the curriculum would be to emphasize and reward critical thinking and problem solving while encouraging creativity and independent thinking, and not to automatically accept yesterday’s answers to today’s problems. I remember a very complicated story problem I was assigned in Hidden Valley Junior High School. My answer was counted wrong, not because it was wrong, but because I didn’t solve the problem in the "correct" way. You had to show your work. And as far as the teacher was concerned there was only one way to solve the problem—her way. Although I thought my way was easier—I worked hard at trying to find easier ways of doing things—I was forced to conclude that you couldn’t try anything new and different (if you notice a certain lack of creativity in this paragraph, now you know why!).

Before I conclude this paragraph, I want to tell a story I read at a web-site (whether it’s valid or not, I can’t say) about an untrained substitute teacher from Philadelphia. He was placed in a poor, failing, fourth grade Philadelphia classroom. He abolished the textbooks—locked them all up, in fact—abolished the quizzes, and just had the kids hang on to their pencils and paper. Each day he brought in copies of two local newspapers. He read stories of interest out loud, or had the class read them in unison. He talked about these events and gradually got the kids interested in what was going on. They became so interested, in fact, that the students wanted to write letters to people like their sports heroes (after calculating season and game averages). The teacher went over the letters with them before they were mailed (the students didn’t want to embarrass themselves by poor grammar or spelling, especially in front of their heroes). Students who needed to go to the bathroom just excused themselves and left—just like in the real world. By the end of the year, these "deprived" children were performing above grade level in reading, writing, and arithmetic. A more typical classroom experience for "challenged" students like this is to be bored and confused, and possibly even humiliated and angered—until they aren’t forced to attend school anymore. I want to say that I respect those few teachers that are still passionate about their jobs and who still are finding new, inventive ways of teaching and keeping the learning experience an essential one. I can honestly say that so far I have forgotten over 85 percent of what I have learned over these years. I’m still seeing myself as a successful person in my future. Hence, I believe that there are many potential positive changes that could be made in the public school curricula.