Standards, standards

As part of the Curriculum Theory course, I studied in detail the National Education Standards, the Arizona State Education standards and the Washington State Education standards. In conducting this study, I planned to gather an understanding of specific standards, their goals, the connection between national and state standards and more importantly develop a critical perspective on standards.

The following is a stream of consciousness reflection of my study of standards —

While looking all of the standards, I was struck by how much of a focus there was on skill development. For example, to be able to comprehend a reading passage, or knowing what an inference was or learning to decode the author's purpose in writing, or learning fractions and decimals, knowing the scientific method, on and on. As I looked through the Language Arts standards, I wondered what it might instead mean to explore the birth of language, its impact on human evolution, its impact on human thinking, what it would mean to play with language and create your own language just for play, how about non-verbal, non-language communication, you know feeling the vibe, knowing what a look means, so much communication after all does not happen through language. Isn't the whole point of language arts at some deep level at least to learn to communicate? Language is just a tool for communication. How about if we explore what it means to communicate or not communicate, feel the need for the right tool and then embark on learning the tool. How might that change the learning?

Then, as I read through the Math standards, I was struck by how abstract the concepts might seem to a 3rd or 4th grader. What does a fraction mean anyway? Why do decimals? How are square roots relevant to students' lives? Why learn them? Then, I got around to reading the Social Sciences standards. I was honestly quite excited to read these standards. They had the potential for so much deep exploration into human culture. I found the standards focused mostly on the 'what' — what is a government, what is  the US democracy, what is the constitution — and very little focus on the 'how' or more importantly the 'why' like, how was the constitution created, why does a nation need a constitution anyway, what might have happened if after the US got independence, no nation was created, there was no government and so on. These questions might lead students to not just accept facts but appreciate the creation and discovery of the facts that we so take for granted now. Not to mention, this kind of learning would begin to develop critical and creative thinking.

The standards are all focused on cramming students with information and helping them 'become' someone who they are not, because they for who they are are considered empty and incomplete in some way. This statement is not one to be taken lightly and it never has been taken lightly especially when I have said it to parents. That said, most parents will bounce back with a 'but there are some basics students must learn, how else will they survive in society'. My very snotty response to this has been, "well if the skills you talk about are so basic, I promise you that student will come across a need for them in their 'basic' lives and when they do, I will do all I can to foster their learning'. Needless to say, very few if any parent has been satisfied by my clever comeback. Studying the standards however helped me find a relevant way to bring about skill learning.

I have come to realize that it is not the skills themselves that are important but the context for their need, the background that led to their creation, the process of discovering them that is critical. When a skill was created, it was instantly meaningful to the creator because the creator had gone through a process of creating the skill. For skill learning to be meaningful and lasting for a child, the child needs to experience some if not all the steps that the creator went through in creating the skills. I identify these steps as —

1. A child organically comes across the need for skill. For example, 7 year old Javed wants to divide a cake into 3 parts to share with his friends.
2. The child considers what it might mean to not have the skill and what it might mean to have the skill. E.g. What would it mean to not divide the cake? What would it mean to divide it? So, laying the value foundation for the skill.
3. The child comes up with his own solution to for the need felt. E.g. Johnny asks each friend to take a bite from the cake and pass it around until it is all eaten. Then realizing that, in that way not everyone got 'enough' or that some got more than others and so feeling the need for equal division. So, Johnny draws equal size squares on the cake and asks his friends to eat only one square at a time. The solution evolves.
4. The child can then evaluate how well their solution works  and what its limitations are. An exploration for modifying the solution and so refining the skill will ensue.
5. Somewhere along the way, the child will learn all the foundational concepts behind the skill. The child will have learned 'how to learn the skill' rather than 'what skill to learn'.
6. Finally, the child will arrive at and can then be exposed to the skill as known by the rest of the world in a manner that does not take away from the tremendous exploration the child conducted to get to that point.

The real learning in this process is in the process not in getting to the skill. It is about 'how to learn', not 'what to learn'.

I am beginning to wonder if this manner of exploring skills learning can be applied to all areas of learning, be it math, science, language or anything else. I think it can. And, if we can do that, that is the only standard we need — one that allows learning to come from within the child.