MUST READ: Solipsism, American Pre-K Style
The problem:
Progressive educators have long understood the importance of public schooling and the concept of the “hidden curriculum” in particular, the implicit messages and lessons a school inculcates. Everything that occurs in a school building communicates a philosophy to students. Who creates the curriculum and which books are chosen or excluded? What behavior is punished or rewarded? What student work or images are displayed throughout the building? Our schools form the philosophy of the next generation without any blue-haired ideologues ever needing to assign Kimerblé Crenshaw or Herbert Marcuse.
What’s on the contemporary hidden curriculum? “Action civics” has replaced history. Young adult fiction has replaced the classics. Student choice has replaced the curriculum. Free reign has replaced discipline. Media literacy has replaced literature.
The solution:
Rebuilding the core curriculum of our schools would provide our students with the guidance that popular culture and many adults refuse to provide. The mere existence of a curriculum implicitly communicates to students that there are things worth knowing, even if it doesn’t immediately interest them, that there are historical figures worth emulating, that the here and now is not all there is, and that there are things worthy of consideration beyond our mere passions and insular interests.