There’s no getting around it. The traditional general education curriculum, the one presently frozen in bureaucratic place with subject-matter standards and standardized tests, is fundamentally flawed. That curriculum:
• ignores extremely important fields of knowledge
• denies the fundamental, systemically integrated nature of knowledge
• lacks criteria establishing the relative importance of various content
• vastly overworks memory to the neglect of all other thought processes
• has no overarching aim
• lacks built-in mechanisms forcing it to adapt to social change
• doesn't move smoothly through increasingly complex conceptual levels
• disregards the brain's need for order and organization
• fails to address complex, critically important moral and ethical issues
• casts learners in unnatural, passive roles
• neglects alternatives to text and speech as sources of learning
• lends itself to superficial methods of evaluation
(just to begin a list).
These problems can be solved only by putting in place alongside traditional specialized studies a course that discloses to learners the holistic, systemically integrated nature of knowledge. It’s aim should be simple, clearly stated, and understood by every teacher and learner – making more sense of experience.
Critically important to sense making is a clear understanding of the sense-making process.
