The General Assembly is moving forward with legislation to replace the federal Common Core standards with the highest most rigorous in the nation for our North Carolina students, led by a group to assess and review standards. And after a close look, this is a good idea. The next question becomes what would the curriculum look like. In a NYT piece yesterday, William Logan argues kids should learn to read by reading poetry and offers some suggestions on curriculum :
My ideal elementary-school curriculum would instead require all children to learn:
(1) the times tables up to, say, 25;
(2) a foreign language, preferably obscure;
(3) the geography of a foreign land, like New Jersey;
(4) how to use basic hand tools and cook a cassoulet;
(5) how to raise a bird or lizard (if the child is vegetarian, then a potato);
(6) poems by heart, say one per week;
(7) how to find the way home from a town at least 10 miles away;
(8) singing;
(9) somersaults.
With all that out of the way by age 12, there’s no telling what children might do. I have thieved a couple of items from W. H. Auden’s dream curriculum for a College of Bards. If my elementary school students are not completely disgusted by poetry, off they could go one day to that college, well prepared.