[nekokami]

Well, I handed in my homework last night... all 21 pages of it. I don't think you're going to want to read all of it here. But for completeness, I will at least post my own answers to the two questions I asked.

I was supposed to write my definition of education before asking anyone else. Here it is:

Noun. A formal system intended to impart knowledge, skills, principles, and/or values to one or more participants; the results of such a system.

(I was constrained to 25 words or less.)

I chose to distinguish between education and learning in this definition. We learn in many ways, but I think when we use the term "education," we usually mean purposeful learning, and generally in some systematic way.

I was asked to get arguments from others before generating my own response on who should decided the curriculum of public schools. I really appreciate the answers you all gave. I found them very helpful in formulating my response:

In order to decide who should direct the curriculum of public schools, we must first determine what the purpose of public schools is. Since public funds are being used, should we assume that public schools are intended to provide some “common good”? Is their purpose to prepare citizens? And if so, do we intend for this preparation to entail the ability to think critically, the transfer of cultural values, and socialization within the community? If we include the transfer of cultural values as part of citizen preparation, do we intend to selectively transfer the values of the dominant culture, the culture of the local community, the culture of the parents, or a pluralistic combination of all available cultures? When we speak of socialization within the community, do we intend to teach skills of cooperation and constructive contention, or conformity and obedience to authority?

Perhaps public schooling is provided as an avenue of social justice—a means to allow all children to achieve their greatest potential, irrespective of the resources their parents may have had. In that case, what do we mean by potential? An operational definition might be necessary here. Should we assess the success of public schooling based on access to employment, and eventual income? On achievement as measured via standardized tests? By success in more advanced educational programs? On some measurement of “happiness”?

Or perhaps public schools are intended to support the community’s economy, by preparing skilled workers for businesses or entrepreneurship. Or, as the cynical might suggest, perhaps one function of public schools is simply as a form of publicly funded babysitting, so parents can participate in the workforce rather than monitoring their children and keeping them out of trouble, with a long-term goal of reducing crimes committed by graduates by whatever means necessary.

I don’t believe there is consensus in the United States around the purposes of education. I have seen arguments presented to support all of the purposes listed above, several of which are contradictory. I will stipulate, for this discussion, that the purposes of public education in the kind of society I would prefer to live in include preparation for citizenship by encouraging the development of critical thinking, cooperative communication, and constructive contention, and by helping students become aware of the diversity of cultures that form our pluralistic society; where possible, the values common to those cultures should be conveyed, in addition to points of difference that can cause friction. I will also stipulate that a purpose of public education is to provide developmental support for individual students in terms of helping each of them identify and build on their own strengths, overcome or compensate for weaknesses, and learn how to learn to do anything they would need or want to do later, practicing this last skill on a range of content designed to provide a broad sample of human knowledge.

With these purposes in mind, the curriculum should be designed in part (and delivered) by people who are already skilled as critical thinkers, cooperative communicators, and lifelong learners, and in part by people able to represent the diverse cultures in our society. As the individual subjects are less important, in some senses, than the breadth of subjects and the way in which they are investigated, the content of the curriculum should be decided in large part by the students themselves, with guidance in cooperative selection, critical investigation, and learning strategies by teachers. Subject matter experts (working practitioners in the fields in study) would be encouraged to work with groups of students to provide knowledge, skills, and conventions specific to the areas selected by the students and teachers to pursue.
In terms appropriate to our current framework, this would place local teachers (possibly as a cooperative group) in the position of directing the functional aspects of the curriculum, with input from local community representatives (possibly in the form of a school board, or possibly as open community meetings or a parent’s association), with the content directed in an ongoing project-based manner by the students themselves, with support from the teachers and surrounding community. As students mature, they may begin to develop areas of specialized interests that will benefit from being allowed to group with other students and community members with similar interests, though breadth of subject (and diversity of culture) should always be encouraged.

Comments welcome, of course.