In this blog, I will weigh in on curriculum and the travesty of so called "education" experts.

Clearly, when you look at some subject matter, there are particular orders which by definition, separate themselves from a group of topics surrounding a particular discipline. Mathematics is a clear example, you must learn number concepts, to do operations, to combine operations etc. and then to apply ever more advanced concepts built upon these basic skill sets. Even here there is some debate about teaching algebra before geometry for example but little debate on the general order of teaching the discipline or topic. The debate here rather centers on how to teach the constituent parts. You may make this overarching analogy in Engineering, Computer Science or other related Science based disciplines. Where our system goes badly array is in the social sciences. While you may argue that there is a natural order in teaching language, reading, even writing and they, as in sciences start with a common set of learned material, such as an alphabet, phonics, etc. and build on these cornerstones.What we have identified and continue to study is a fundamental idea that each person learns at a different rate, under different stimuli and in different environments.

Where there is the greatest discord is what to teach in what artificial level of achievement, i.e. the first grade, the fifth grade, etc. The fact that in 1st grade, I must do subject a, b, c and finish with subject m, is in part, itself an indicator of the failure of most schools in educating students to be prepared for careers after the mandatory period of compulsory education. We have been dancing around the ideas that there should be no social promotion, that grades (years in school) are artificial constructs (much like the construct of school category (elementary, middle and senior)). In my view, I believe that we need to adopt an individual education philosophy, that an individual needs to learn in packets/modules of related information and that their relative standing in that school or educational setting is only their relative module completion standing. That curriculum should be designed to ensure that the institution produces functionally productive students, who can integrate into their society and become a productive member in that society. Unfortunately, it seem like to me that there is no choice but to test (whether that is oral, written, electronic etc.) to assess understanding of particular module completion.

What is the travesty are those "education/curriculum" experts who claim to know which one size fits all program will benefit the local, regional or state education system and it's students. They clearly are failing in their attempts to standardize meaningful curriculum. One only needs to look at you local college and the number of remedial course participants (by the way a rising percentage of the total enrollment) to see what we are doing as a society is "dumbing" the society down. What's the answer, I don't know but I'm committed to re-engineer the system to incorporate the concept of functional learning to a minimum standard which promotes the optimization of each students potential.