Saber-tooth Curriculum

1. Should education be based on disseminating the important skills needed by society in the present and for the future?

Education, as I have stated before, needs to be parallel present day society. The paleolithic educational system was based on this. New-Fist thought of and created a process to develop the children of his time into better "citizens" of the time. Not by teaching them impractical skills, rather necessary skills to become better at the things that needed to be done. Same holds true for the present educational system. We are experiencing more curriculum devoted to aspects of current society. Just as the children on article many of us had some experience with typing while growing up. Why? Because this was the future. I am not insisting that if we didn't participate in those courses that we would have never learned how to. In this class alone, think about how much typing we are doing. I firmly believe that education should be interwoven with practical skills as well as academic skills.

2. Should curriculum change reflect the common goals of the community in enabling its members to function as citizens?

Absolutely! While most curriculum does provide students with general skills, the community should help guide some of the learning. The most obvious example I can think of is teaching an agricultural course in an urban school. For what purpose? If we are in a rural setting in which students are are much more likely to experience agricultural activities, it would be beneficial to provide such curriculum. As stated in the article why were they still teaching the children to scare tigers when there were no tigers left? I suppose you can argue like the wise man, that it is about the "moral" of the activity but we can adapt that same "moral" to present day society.

3. Should curriculum focus on skills or content knowledge as its primary focus?

I am not sure if curriculum would be effective without both of them playing equal parts. I have to fall back onto my content area to explain this. Within PE, I feel that it is much more important for students to understand concepts (which to me is content knowledge) than to perform the skill masterfully. I do expect them to perform the skill but with understanding of why they are doing it. For example, I want students to understand to maintain a healthy weight they must equal caloric expenditure and intake. How they physically achieve that doesn't matter to me. Towards the end of the article, the old men talk about providing a "more thorough grounding in fundamentals" (Peddiwell, The Saber-Tooth Curriculum). I concur with this statement but once a foundation was been established the need for particular skills needs to be met.