Reflection 2: The Saber Tooth Curriculum
In his article The Saber-Tooth Curriculum, J. Abner Peddiwell does a magnificent job describing the beginning and declining of a mock educational system using a fable that turns out to be as accurate as it is humorous. Exploring the origin and therefore the purpose of education, Peddiwell exposes the issue of plasticity, or rather the lack of it, within our education system and forces us to reflect on what is currently taught and why. Considering that the critical and divergent thinking skills of students actually drop throughout the school years and that they gradually lose their natural curiosity and love for learning, it seems evident that our current educational system is failing to provide a meaningful …show more content…
New-Fist believes that it will be beneficial if children can learn how to help with food, shelter, and safety instead of spending their entire day playing. Based on what he has observed, he develops a basic curriculum that is soon studied by all children in the group and that features fish-grabbing-with-the-bare-hands, woolly-horse-clubbing, and saber-tooth-tiger-scaring-with-fire. This new educational system was implemented with great success, however, time passed and the tribe conditions drastically changed making the saber-tooth curriculum obsolete. A few radicals, who also had the ability to do and the daring to think, developed new tools and systems to solve new challenges and suggested that the program should be updated. While this would have been the most reasonable thing to do, the older men in the tribe had idealized the traditional curriculum and refused to make any …show more content…
Some people believe that the purpose of education is to train people for jobs, therefore, schools should teach skills valuable in the current workforce. Others see school as a tool to raise active citizens who can participate in a democracy and believe that knowledge about the system will allow them to make informed decisions. Regardless of the approach, current curriculum is overdue for many changes, and more than adding or removing subjects, I believe that we need to revise the timing when this content is presented to make it more developmentally
In his article The Saber-Tooth Curriculum, J. Abner Peddiwell does a magnificent job describing the beginning and declining of a mock educational system using a fable that turns out to be as accurate as it is humorous. Exploring the origin and therefore the purpose of education, Peddiwell exposes the issue of plasticity, or rather the lack of it, within our education system and forces us to reflect on what is currently taught and why. Considering that the critical and divergent thinking skills of students actually drop throughout the school years and that they gradually lose their natural curiosity and love for learning, it seems evident that our current educational system is failing to provide a meaningful …show more content…
New-Fist believes that it will be beneficial if children can learn how to help with food, shelter, and safety instead of spending their entire day playing. Based on what he has observed, he develops a basic curriculum that is soon studied by all children in the group and that features fish-grabbing-with-the-bare-hands, woolly-horse-clubbing, and saber-tooth-tiger-scaring-with-fire. This new educational system was implemented with great success, however, time passed and the tribe conditions drastically changed making the saber-tooth curriculum obsolete. A few radicals, who also had the ability to do and the daring to think, developed new tools and systems to solve new challenges and suggested that the program should be updated. While this would have been the most reasonable thing to do, the older men in the tribe had idealized the traditional curriculum and refused to make any …show more content…
Some people believe that the purpose of education is to train people for jobs, therefore, schools should teach skills valuable in the current workforce. Others see school as a tool to raise active citizens who can participate in a democracy and believe that knowledge about the system will allow them to make informed decisions. Regardless of the approach, current curriculum is overdue for many changes, and more than adding or removing subjects, I believe that we need to revise the timing when this content is presented to make it more developmentally