RE: Curriculum Choice
<Your Name> <Address> <City, State, zip>
State legislator or Party
Dear <PoliticalCritter>
There is a lot of noise being made these days days about school choice, school vouchers, more money for education, etc, etc. These are all valid solutions to the problem of school curriculums that apparently are out of touch with parent's wishes as well as what is needed to produce graduates who are reasonably competent in the basic skills necessary to pursue one's happiness in life as a productive and self reliant member of society.
I'd like to throw one more solution to this problem on the table -- curriculum choice. What is curriculum choice? When it comes time to enroll your child in a public school, it seems logical that
| Public schools should be required to offer parents (and older children) a significant choice in curriculums to enroll in. |
Under such a system
a school (through their school boards) would develop and offer at least two, if not three or more, different curriculums for parents and older kids to choose from. Ideally, the curriculum goals would be determined by a mix of business and parental groups with the educators sorting out the details of how to best implement these goals using the tools and resources available to schools.
Educators are the employees, not the "grand poobas" of education. Their job is to teach what we as parents tell them to teach, not for them to teach what they want to teach. The current system of having educators decide what to taught is a little like having the patients run the asylum.
Parents would have the ability to choose what curriculum they feel is best for their child's education, given their assessment of their child's abilities and their own perspectives on what they feel is important.
A school would then have the modest task of determining which teachers would teach which curriculums. It would seem appropriate to test teachers on their knowledge and abilities in any curriculums they wish to teach. This would place a modest degree of objectivity to determining which teachers would teach which curriculums.
A central core of subject matter and some sort of competency testing to pass on to the next level would seem appropriate.
Such a system of curriculum choice would work within the current public school system. Curriculums would have the ability to evolve by the parent's wishes and experience. Currently, most curriculums are devised by educational bureaucrats, many of whom have limited private sector work experience where most people end up living and working. They also seem to have a propensity to fit a political agenda into the current curriculums so that curriculums evolve towards political goals of educational bureaucrats rather than being representative of the public at large and the diverse abilities of individual teachers in the public school system.
Curriculum choice could be quickly implemented by a progressive school board, a school, school district, or progressive state legislatures. It doesn't require one to turn the current public school system upside down with vouchers or charter schools (although those remain good options). The likely result of curriculum choice would be to redirect our educational system forward towards a vibrant and diverse the future as seen by the population at large, rather than off on a tangent to serve as a propaganda tool for the elitist educator's political agenda.
Any time that you can put to developing this option to make are our public education system work right would be very appreciated.
Sincerely, <your name>