Tag: music

Back-to-School Motivational Playlist

~ Blue Cereal

I’ve always been one of those people who’s better at sharing a song or playlist with someone than explaining how I feel about something. While I’m not particularly nostalgic in terms of wanting to go back to high school (as a student) or anything, I do miss the golden age of the “mixtape.”

I compiled some serious cassettes in my day, friend. They were completely unappreciated by anyone but myself, but that’s the curse of greatness, I suppose.

Now that I’m well past a half-century old, I don’t do mixtapes anymore. That’s not because I’ve outgrown them. It’s just that people would find it all the wrong kinds of weird. I do find myself still using music as a motivator, however – during exercise (mostly walking these days), cleaning the house, or driving to school in the morning. Honestly, over the past few years, it sometimes takes a few tracks cranked up a bit too loudly just to offset the oppressive sense of madness closing in around us on a daily basis.

And it has fewer calories than drinking. Also, while you may damage your hearing over time, you’re less likely to wake up hungover or naked in the garage with a Chuckie mask on.

In any case, it’s almost time to start a new school year. I’m not dreading it or anything – my need to be intentional about energy and motivation isn’t a reflection on the job or the people involved, exactly. But I suspect I’m not the only one these days who could use a little extra “boost” from time to time in order to remain driven, and focused, and optimistic.

Or at least not crippled by unmitigable despair – that makes it hard to inspire anyone.

With that in mind, I’d like to share my Top Ten List of Motivational Music (Back-to-School Edition). They’re not all specific to school or education or whatever, but for me, they’re at least compatible with the ideals behind what we do. Take it for what it’s worth.

10. These Days (R.E.M.)

This is a live clip, which is fine, but I confess this is one of those rare cases in which the studio version seems more intense and alive. It’s from the very first R.E.M. album I ever owned and still one of my favorites. I feel this one even more deeply as the years go by.

All the people gather, fly to carry each his burden. We are young despite the years – we are concern – we are hope despite the times. All of a sudden, these days – take this joy wherever, wherever you go…

9. Fear of Flying (Farrah)

This is a band I’d have never heard of if it weren’t for – you guessed it – a friend’s mixtape. Granted, it was actually a mixCD, but that doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, so…

But one day, she’ll get away and see the life she could be living. Make a change, get on a plane because there’s so much she’s been missing. When she gets over the fear of flying…

I’m not one to promise kids they can “be anything they want to be” if they only “believe” or “dream” or whatever. I am 100% certain, however, that most of them have far more potential than they realize if they find the courage to step up and embrace what’s possible.

8. ‘Til the End of the Day (The Verbs)

This is a cover of a classic by the Kinks from the mid-1960s. There’s nothing particularly profound about it – it’s simply a defiant celebration I find compelling. I also like the way it stays faithful to the source material while making it sound fresh and sincere – a handy metaphor for teaching, I suppose.

You know the guy who played drums for the Rolling Stones a year or two ago when Charlie Watts didn’t want to go? This is him and his wife. That means that counting me, and now you, there are roughly four people in the world who’ve heard of The Verbs, and yet here they are throwing all that energy into what they’re doing. I like that little metaphor as well.

Baby, I feel good from the moment I rise – feel good from morning ‘til the end of the day…

7. Blow (Lincoln)

Another obscure band with only a single eponymous album (in 1997) to their name, but a dozen tracks of the best quirky alt-pop ever recorded. I only recently discovered that this band included Danny Weinkauf (bass) and Dan Miller (guitar), who’ve played with They Might Be Giants for something like 25 years now. Honestly, when I was 17 – and still made mix tapes – I would have never missed a connection like that… and we didn’t even have the internet then.

This is one of those tracks that doesn’t ignore the dark futility of it all, but incorporates that despair into the absurdity – thus at least partly negating its sting. It’s a bit counterintuitive for a list like this, but sometimes the dark, cynical stuff mixes well with the joyous – like salt-and-chocolate, rum-and-coke, or Quentin Tarantino.

When the buzzer is broke and you’re given the kiss from your friends who all moved to Los Angeles – the refrigerator’s filled with nothing but ice, some old nail polish, and some orange Slice… When you’re out on a limb, up in a tree, M-I-S-S-I-N-G…

6. Move Into The Light (Southern Avenue)

This band somehow stays relentlessly positive no matter what the subject matter. There’s nothing twisted or subversive hiding behind the optimism here – this is dug in and determined joy.

Sometimes the darkness wraps upon me like an old friend – I mistake the shadow for a comfortable embrace. Sometimes the sadness feels so natural – I get casual – accept and look as factual, when I know that ain’t the case…

They could have held multiple spots on this list with tracks like “Push Now” or “Don’t Give Up” or especially “Keep On”…

Actually, now that I’m thinking about it, I may need a longer list.

5. Stronger / Young and Dumb (Hanson)

I’ve declared these two tracks a tie without them actually taking up more than one slot on the list. (If you don’t like that system, make your own list and you can format it however you like.)

Hanson, for those of you who don’t know, are from Tulsa – my hometown and proverbial stomping grounds for many, many years. After a few big hits (the elderly among you no doubt have “Mmmbop” running through your head already) and a few successful albums in the late 1990s, they faced a dilemma. The record label was willing to continue supporting and promoting them, but it wanted more of a “boy band” flavor to follow up what had already been successful. The lads, on the other hand, were growing up a bit and developing as songwriters and had their own ideas of what kinds of music they wanted to make. It was still very much pop music, much of it positive and fun and bouncy, but they meant it. (They’d meant the early stuff as well, but it turns out when you’re teenagers, your thoughts and feelings can evolve pretty quickly.)

The brothers left their major label and all the security it could provide and started their own independent record label. They recorded the music they wanted to do, and made a documentary about it while having absolutely no idea whether or not they’d be selling real estate or doing burger joint jingles to keep the lights on a year or two down the road.

It’s been 25 years and over a dozen albums since “Mmmbop,” and the Hansons are all grown up with families of their own and maybe a touch of that world-weariness the years can bring – especially when you’ve been used as an easy punchline for several decades by people not creative enough to write their own jokes, let alone their own songs. I’m not the devotee some are (they’re called “Fansons” and they can be… interesting), but I genuinely love this band both for the music they continue to produce and for their story. They are far from perfect (don’t look it up), but anyone who looks corporate music culture in the eye and hands back the check so they’ll be free to do what they think is right is OK with me.

“Stronger” is profound in its simplicity:

But I long to be stronger than this… I long to be Stronger than this… I want to be, I want to be strong.

“Young and Dumb,” on the other hand, reflects the wear and tear of fighting cynicism and despair as the years accumulate:

And when my eyes are clear, I see good intentions are a cheap veneer for every evil justified. I’d rather be young and dumb – surrounded by the possibility. Don’t want to be old and numb – wanna tell myself a lie, wanna tell myself, I’d rather be young and dumb…

4. Light Will Keep Your Heart Beating In The Future (Mike Doughty)

This one is a bit of an enigma given that other than the chorus, it’s not clear that any of it means anything. On the other hand, that makes my commentary a bit more concise. In any case, I played this one rather loudly almost every day on the way to work during one particularly… difficult year. I still turn it up way too loud when it comes on.

3. Opening Up (Waitress, the Musical)

This clip combines numerous elements I wouldn’t normally think of as “my thing.” You’ve got Sara Bareilles, who I love, but who is very much a commercially successful, “name brand” artist (not my usual m.o.). You’ve got stage musicals, for which I actually have quite a soft spot when they’re creatively and musically genuine. You’ve got overtly uplifting-happy-singing-dancing, which I usually hate, even on a countdown of motivational songs. Just to make sure the cheesiness is complete, I opted not to use the audio from the official cast recording and instead found this gem from “Good Morning America” of all nightmares.

And I love this song. This moment. This production. Everything about Waitress: the Musical should annoy the hell out of me, but it brings me joy and optimism and tears of understanding (hey, I’m a crier) – live, on CD, and even some pretty strange YouTube versions.

2. Don’t Feed The Trolls (Jonathan Coulton)

Don’t get me started on Jonathan Coulton. I love his story, his music, his wit, and his willingness to mix intellect, silliness, and sentiment together in ways that simply shouldn’t work but usually do. This one is a live version of a track from 2017’s “Solid State,” but it’s the studio version that most stirs my figurative loins.

And when the bright lights find you, don’t let your heart get lazy. Keep all the worst behind you – that stuff will make you crazy. Don’t read the comments, and don’t feed the trolls… Don’t read the comments, and don’t feed the trolls…

1. The Poisonousness (They Might Be Giants, featuring Robin Goldwasser)

If you haven’t kept up with TMBG since “Particle Man” or “Birdhouse In Your Soul,” you’re seriously missing out. These lads have managed to stay successful enough (largely through their kids’ albums and various theme songs and such) to maintain complete artistic freedom to do whatever their weird little hearts desire. This particular track is from one of their side projects, a concept album based on an obscure comic book series called “The Escape Team” with which I am thoroughly unfamiliar. I thus have no idea what inspired this particular track, but it doesn’t matter – once released into the universe, art is ours to interpret and feel as we see fit, dammit.

I’ve literally played this on repeat up to seven times in a row some days. Loudly.

Can anybody stand up? Dispose of the villainousness? Save us, save us – we can’t break the spell, we can’t leave this hell – Like the end of Lord of the Flies, we can’t tell if we’re going to survive this diet of lies…

(Hand witch) We’re all trapped in this world. (Hand witch) What else can be learned? (Hand witch) These bubbles are disturbing…

Everybody stand up – dispose of the villainousness! This will save us – we can break the spell, we can leave this hell – Like the end of Live and Let Die, I can’t tell just how or just why, but we’ll survive…

Conclusion and Invitation

I’ve found excuses to do music or video lists on this blog before. They’re consistently some of my least-popular posts, plus there’s the added inconvenience that over time some of the videos vanish and so the links no longer work, etc. Music is so personal in terms of its impact and such – perhaps it’s futile to keep putting it out there.

Then again, maybe that’s the whole idea – to keep putting it out there anyway. To believe it matters whether you get warm fuzzies in return or not. (Tell me THAT doesn’t summarize teaching perfectly sometimes.)

But it’s not supposed to only work in one direction – so, what’s your list? That’s not just a formulaic way to wrap up – I really want to know. What song or songs do you put on to bring out the best parts of you? Comment with links, if available, and I promise I’ll listen to every one of them at least once. Heck, I might even like them.

Arts In The Apocalypse

~ Blue Cereal ~ 1 Comment

Getting Involved In ArtIf you keep up with education news at all, you know all the usual struggles – class sizes, standardized testing, general hostility towards educators by whoever’s looking to score points with conservatives that week, etc. One of the biggies is the ongoing battle to keep the arts in public education. Every time budgets are tight (and they usually are), one of the first things to go is music, or the visual arts, or drama. Even when those classes survive, they’re the first to become “dumping grounds” for students who’ve shown no particular interest in anything but have to be SOMEWHERE. “Hey, anyone can draw a picture or hit a drum, right?”

Either way, we as a society continue to show a dismissiveness towards the arts which we’d never tolerate towards Algebra III, Indiana State History, Astronomy, or even Basketball. We still claim to value reading, but our focus is increasingly utilitarian. Why waste time and energy reading books for pleasure? (Even many otherwise wonderful English teachers express horror at the stuff their kids read if given “too much choice”; presumably, unless it’s “good for you,” we shouldn’t be reading it in school.) And the idea that students should be encouraged to WRITE anything not purely academic… perish the thought!

Given the kind of money we’re all apparently happy to pay to watch pro sports, download music, go to movies, or read fiction of questionable quality, this strikes me as something of a paradox. Plus, it’s stupid.

Of all the terrible ideas we’ve heard in recent years regarding public education (and there’ve been a LOT of them), few do more immediate and universal damage than cutting arts programs. Thomas Jefferson once said that if he had to choose between “government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” In the same spirit, I’d like to explain why in dark times such as these, if given the choice between focusing more resources on “academic” programming or pouring it into arts education, I’ll gladly argue for the latter.

1) Well-Rounded Students Are Better Students

Pretty much every civilized nation in the history of mankind has included some variation of the arts in whatever education its people determined to be appropriate. The Ancient Greeks pushed plenty of music, drama, and literature right alongside all that math and philosophy we still celebrate today. The Classical Chinese valued poetry, music, and calligraphy as much as math or political philosophy. No upscale European education was considered complete without instruction in formal dance and a thorough familiarity with classic literature.

Participating in arts education tends to increase achievement in more mundane academic subjects as well. This is a useful point to bring up for school boards or grumpy administrators, but let’s not get too sidetracked by this little pedagogical bonus. If you ask me about my favorite books, musicals, songs, or paintings, and I respond by carrying on about how the newest Bowling For Soup album really helped me focus on repairing the fence in my back yard or explain that I’m counting on an upcoming local production of Something Rotten to help me better strategize ways to reduce credit card debt, I doubt you’d invite me to your next cookout.

Sadly, you’d miss my talk on how the culinary arts make us better at plasma physics.

Supporting the arts because of their positive impact on other subjects is a bit like dating a girl because she has so many attractive friends. The arts matter because of what they are and what they do – all by themselves. The rest is gravy.

2) The Arts Promote Social & Emotional Learning (SEL)

Yeah, I said it. Educators simply must refuse to stop using useful terms any time the disingenuous or ignorant appropriate them for their own propaganda and demagoguery.

Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) refers to a very important, but very normal, part of growing up and learning how to become a useful member of a complex society. It’s all the stuff that goes into figuring out who we are individually as well as collectively and learning how to manage our emotions and respond to the emotions of others so we can function in small groups, large groups, or alone.

Any time you decide not to eat an entire bag of Double Stuff Oreos because you’ll ruin your dinner and feel gross afterwards, you’re demonstrating SEL. Any time you set aside your phone so you can focus on finishing your math homework first, that’s SEL. Taking a deep breath when your co-worker is being difficult and trying to figure out what’s going on with him before responding (instead of simply screaming, crying, and throwing coffee on him) shows you’ve managed some SEL. In short, if you’ve ever successfully managed a team, contributed to a discussion, or participated in a book club or Bible study, congratulations – you must have learned a little SEL somewhere along the way.

Probably in school.

The alternative, of course, is to become a sociopath – completely isolated and unable to process or accommodate the opinions, feelings, or ethical constraints of others. You can go halfway and settle for only caring about people just like you and refusing to understand anyone or anything beyond your own closed little world, but that’s not usually the most profitable or personally fulfilling course.

Music, drama, literature, and the arts are all different ways of exploring the human condition and the experiences, insights, and emotions of others. We don’t have to emulate or even “like” every character or idea expressed in order to benefit from understanding them better. It’s also likely that we’ll continually discover more about our own thoughts, feelings, hopes, fears, dysfunctions, and potential as we “become” others by singing their songs, reading their words, or acting out their lives.

Empathy isn’t a touch-feely weakness the left uses to force out God and make room for socialism. It’s a form of understanding – of wisdom. It’s related to the same internal imaginings which allow us to learn history or better understand political or economic principles. It’s why we’re able to care about our families and friends enough to argue about what’s best for them. It’s also why most of us don’t want to shoot up our schools or workplaces, and why we’re so hurt and angry at those who enable such things. Even if you don’t like most other people, some general understanding of their feelings and beliefs, not to mention a few basic “people skills,” are essential for success in most professions or communities.

It’s not just the emotions and ideas of others, of course. Art helps us confront and recognize our own desires, fears, lusts, hopes, and foibles as well. Emotions should never be in complete charge of our choices, but they DO matter, and understanding them is part of becoming a mature, self-reliant individual able to function in a complicated world.

3) Art Challenges Us

You’ve probably heard that court jesters in the Middle Ages could often say things to royalty that would result in imprisonment or execution for anyone else. Whether or not this was universally true, art (including humor) often communicates difficult or unpopular ideas in creative, engaging ways and challenges us to question our own thoughts, feeling, and assumptions about almost anything.

The stand-up comedy of Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, or George Carlin could be offensive. (Bruce was arrested multiple times for obscenity.) Not everyone finds every comedian equally funny, and sometimes we pass the mic to someone with absolutely nothing useful to say but plenty of vulgar or hateful ways to say it. Other times, however, humor speaks truth to power. Sometimes, jokes shape how we think about the world around us more than the mere sharing of information ever could (just ask Jon Stewart).

Theater has a long history of exploring the human condition via comedy, drama, or even by breaking into song every few minutes. Literature isn’t always heavy, but even seemingly light texts often have a way of undermining our assumptions about society, government, love, family, good, evil, or life itself. The visual arts and many forms of music are particularly good at skipping right past our defenses into our subconscious mind and spiritual-emotional centers to rattle our norms.

The impact of music or visual arts doesn’t even have to be consciously understood or remotely logical to impact us in meaningful ways. There are still R.E.M. songs I still don’t fully understand thirty-some years later but which stir me and “matter” to me. I can explain some of why They Might Be Giants has been my favorite band for decades, but much of it eludes empirical clarification. Even if your musical druthers lean towards Taylor Swift, YoungBoy, or BTS, you’re exploring emotions and ideas when you put those headphones on.

Art in all its forms stimulates more than our rational selves, which in turn supports thinking more clearly and – in many cases – making better choices. Even if we decide “logic” or “reason” should triumph at the end of the day, our thinking is better informed with plenty of the arts in the mix.

Yes, much of this occurs by listening, watching, reading, etc. We interact with art even when we’re not the artist. Better understanding, however, requires picking up that flute, trying out for that role, or filling that canvas. No one enjoys and appreciates poetry more than other poets. No one bathes in sound more than struggling musicians. If schools don’t help kids dive into some form of art themselves, their lives are likely to be far less rich as a result.

4) Art Requires Personal Investment & Risk

There have been a few prodigies throughout history when it comes to various artistic endeavors, but the vast majority of us start by playing an instrument badly, writing embarrassing stories, acting atrociously, or painting amateur messes with as much fervor as we can muster. For the vast majority of humans, art requires diving in with complete commitment and producing total crap at first.

Any parent who’s ever attended a child’s dance recital, middle school orchestra performance, school play, or first soccer game knows this. The best painters, singers, and writers in the world have long histories of necessary failures along their roads to success. Far more of us have even longer trails of mediocrity and mixed results which may never lead to fame and fortune.

If you’re an educator or informed parent, you know where I’m going with this. Failure is an essential part of learning. Period. This is just as true of bowling, origami, or street magic as it is of argumentative essays. Falling short allows us to get better. To adjust. To try again. In doing that, we develop confidence. Perseverance. “Grit.”

People who never take risks or who’ve never been allowed to experience their own failures usually end up – well, you know how they end up. You’ve watched it happen enough by now to know.

5) Art Brings Joy

Finally, our artistic endeavors – whatever their form – have a way of periodically producing something really cool. We nail that one musical passage. We write that one great paragraph or post. We paint or sculpt or photograph that one thing that brings us joy, or fulfillment, or which provokes others in some important way.

We shine.

That’s pretty good for our perseverance and grit as well, but more importantly, it’s wonderful. It’s art. It’s magic. And for a moment, it makes this fallen, stupid world beautiful. It makes us beautiful. It makes everything else worth it… just for a moment.

If that seems overstated to you, or unnecessarily melodramatic, or even a bit flaky, they may I respectfully suggest you consider taking up an instrument? Or a paintbrush? Or a pen? Join a local drama club? Write a short story? Sing along with a favorite song? It will probably do you some good, even at this point in your life.

Too bad no one pushed you to get more involved in the arts when you were in school.

Why Are Some Curriculars “Extra”?

~ Blue Cereal

Three R'sIt’s difficult to question things we don’t realize we assume. For example, few of us ponder why we easily trust our family doctor to diagnose pretty much ANY part of our body, internal or external, except our mouth. Our mouth, it seems, is so darned complicated and unique compared to, say, our aortic valve or epidermal sheath, that only SPECIAL DIFFERENT OTHER TYPES OF DOCTORS can even LOOK at this oral outlier.

The sole exception involves gagging you with a stick while you say ‘aaahhhh’ – a breach of etiquette required to view your throat (which doesn’t even count).

We don’t really think to question it. That’s just how it is, was, and always shall be. Except it’s not. It hasn’t been THAT long since your local barber would be as likely to pull your troublesome tooth as trim your sideburns. It was all above-the-shoulders care – why limit yourself?

Factory EducationSchool is rife with these sorts of assumptions. We simply MUST shuffle students from boxed area to boxed area in slightly-under-an-hour increments. We have roughly the same number of kids in each class, one subject per teacher, and at some point papers of various kinds must be placed in baskets to “grade.” Eventually, all experiences must reduce to a number between 1 – 100 and one of five letters, none of which can be ‘E’ because that’s stupid and wouldn’t tell us anything – unlike, say, ‘C’. 

It’s really rather bizarre.

But these things are at least being discussed, and challenged. The sense that we’re missing something isn’t new, but the subject does seem to be heating up lately, thanks to a variety of issues – Common Core, Race to the Top, No Child Left Behind, anything involving Bill Gates, Jeb Bush, Arne Duncan, or Michelle Rhee. If those don’t get your panties in a wad, I could add TFA, charters, vouchers, or Virtual Embezzlement… those oughta do it.

The ease of utilizing blogs and social media probably hasn’t hurt. Teachers can rant and share and question with a comfortable combination of anonymity and familiarity – and with peeps from around the edu-niverse. I myself have a lil’ blog which is more or less education-focused. You should check it out sometime. 

Something I don’t hear questioned much, though, is the nature of our ‘core curriculum’. Sure, the specifics vary from district to district, and grade to grade, but it’s generally assumed that all students need Math, English, Science, and – time permitting – some kind of History or Social Studies. Ideally they’ll get a little Art, something Computer-ish, maybe even whatever it is we call “Home Ec” these days. But the Big Three-and-a-Half remain constant across an otherwise fractured edu-nation. 

Marching BandAnd if students behave, and keep the right letters on their weekly personal-reduction-to-a-point-value report, they may be allowed to play sports, or participate in drama, or band, or debate, or cheer, or dance, or some other ‘extra-curricular’. 

We call them that because they’re things going on OUTSIDE the curriculum – outside of the presumably important, useful, REAL purpose of school stuff. 

That’s the thing I’m surprised we don’t question more often. What makes these things ‘outside’, compared to, say… Physics? Algebra? State History? What makes some classes ‘curricular’ and others, well… ‘extra’? 

If you’re failing Algebra, you can’t play Basketball. But if you’re failing Basketball, they don’t stop you from going to Algebra until you get your game back on track. This little motivational system only works one way.

Why?

Algebra is important, but so are athletics. If our goal is “college, career, and citizenship ready,” Basketball is far more likely to help you with the latter two. Algebra wins for the first, but mostly that just means that doing math qualifies you to do harder math. 

Girls BasketballMost of these kids are never going to be professional athletes. But neither are they likely to become professional mathematicians, or chemists, or historians, or novelists. The skills and knowledge gained in each of those realms nevertheless serve a larger good. They help to form a fuller, better, hopefully somewhat happier person.

The sorts of life skills learned and practiced in a strong band, drill team, or competitive speech program are just as applicable to career and personal success as anything covered in English class. If we’re hoping to produce team players not afraid to take risks, our girls’ volleyball team is way ahead of, say, AP Physics.

There are even, apparently, entire classes devoted to – get this – LEADERSHIP. Who knew?

The value of individual effort and responsibility combined with teamwork and group accountability – the drive to be the best one can be while maintaining appropriate sportsmanship – overcoming adversity – recognizing that struggle produces progress – the power of setting both short-term and long-term goals – adapting quickly and capably when things don’t go according to plan…

Are these things really so much less important than learning to factor binomials or identify regions in which the Afton point seems to have replaced the Clovis?

I’m not dismissing the importance of content knowledge in a variety of areas – I love my subject and if granted my boon would elevate it to the number one priority for all school children everywhere in the world.  Heck, I even value learning for learning’s sake – it’s fun, and fulfilling, and just plain good for us. It also makes us less useless, and hopefully a tad less odious.

But I’m just not convinced our current caste system of subjects is nearly as obvious or necessary as we think.

STEM CarI sat in yet another #STEM breakfast recently and heard extolled the glories of project-based learning with clear assessments whose rubrics were known in advance and a process built on collaboration – what the rest of us might call ‘band rehearsal’, ‘theater’, ‘competitive debate’, or ‘football practice’.

In this case they meant mostly science-y stuff, which is all wonderful and good. But we already have classes where students do those things. They’re just not allowed to keep doing them unless they pass Science.

Are we currently turning out a generation so fluent in algebra, world history, chemistry, and grammar that it would be tragic to risk any of it in exchange for a few life skills? Are we so certain that kid who finds his calling in Theater Production would have totally aced that Old Man and the Sea quiz if he hadn’t been wasting his time doing something that might lead to employment in a field he loves?

I’m not suggesting we do away with the cores. I AM suggesting we expand our idea of what constitutes a ‘core subject’ and do a better job exploring to what extent stuff kids actually want to know and be able to do can be utilized as more than a carrot or a stick to navigate them through the things we think they simply have to know whether they want to or not.

I am suggesting we’re vain to think we know exactly what will or will not be ‘good for them’ long term, especially when their gifts and inclinations suggest otherwise. I am suggesting that we cannot equip a generation to be flexible and adaptable and useful by cramming them all into the same Enlightenment-era curricular mold, enforced through a factory-model school system.

I’m suggesting we question our assumptions. 

{NOTE: This is a reboot of a previous post. Like your mom.}

Related Post: First Class, or Coach?

Related Post (From “The Disappointed Idealist” Blog): Academic vs. Vocational – Why Does It Need To Be A Choice?