Help me with my homework....

[slayda]

Originally Posted by nekokami

Thanks, Slayda!


Could you tell me more about how you came to this decision about who should be most involved in selecting the curriculum, in the order or priority that you described? Or what you would give as the reason for this priority? (I'm not questioning your priorities at all, but I was directed to ask each person why they answered the way they did on this question.)

Sorry to not get this back to you before your homework was turned. Been a busy week, but I think you captured the essance of my priorities in your write up.

Basically having been a student and a teacher as well as often being forced to be self educated in some areas, I soon realized that, although self education can be as good as formal education in many ways, the self educated will have gaps in their knowledge that they are totally unaware of. Long sentence that says the self educated knows what they know but don't know what they don't know. This may be either confusing or seem to be redundant. As a personal experience learning Microsoft Powerpoint, I became somewhat of a local expert at my office. When discussing Powerpoint with a coworker who had taken a course, I learned that, during a presentation, pressing the "b" key would "blank" the screen. Another pressing of "b" would unblank the screen. I had no idea that such a capability was available and therefore would never have looked for how to achieve it. This is why we should have as the first tier of curriculum makers those who are knowledgable in the subject matter, usually teachersbut sometimes just subject matter experts.

The second priority (parents/guardians) has been explained well by other posters. They know what they want their children to learn but sometimes are not as educated as they would wish to be and so should defer to teachers.

Third, students (particularly as they mature) have varied interests and often become self educated in areas that the teachers and parents were not even aware existed. These should be worked into the curriculum as much as possible just to 1) keep the interest of those individules (who might even be called on to teach this area) and 2) to broaden the general education possibilities.

As to the group who should not decide the curriculum, I've seen (with my wife's child care business) how so called experts (who had never even tried to educate preschoolers) came up with logical sounding but totally impractical standards. These "experts" often were politicians or appointees.

The second group (fanatically religious) have agendas different from general education. The public schools, in a nation with religious freedom, should not be controlled but these people. (Note that I included fanatical atheists in this group.) They have a role in education of their children but it IMO should not be in the public schools.

Hope this helps you understand my priorities and again I apologize for the lateness of my answer.

[nekokami]

No problem, Slayda. I was only told to ask 3 people, and I got far more responses than that.