Making Curriculum Pop


a fav. passage ...
You can see the appeal of this idea. Foundations before choice. Learn the notes before you play the concerto. But while it is true that most fields have some sequential ordering of topics, it is also true that what David Perkins calls "playing the whole game at the junior level" has a lot of advantages. Perkins cites Little League as an example: we don't spend a year learning to throw, another to catch, another to bat; rather, we play the whole game of baseball from the beginning, just at the junior level. Playing the whole game gives young players a chance to see how the sport as a whole works, and, just as critically, it means that they get to see why one would want to play the sport. This engenders motivation, which is what provides the fuel to practice the parts. To return to music, even the youngest children play whole pieces of music in concerts, which is a critical part of what gives rhythm and meaning to the work.
There is also the fact that the "basics first" approach also tends to reproduce inequalities in schools. This line of thinking tends to foreground students' deficits over their assets; for disadvantaged and lower-track students, it serves to justify teaching as transmission and what Freire called the "banking model" of education. Writ large, this line of thinking is a powerful force for social reproduction--no matter how well-intentioned it is, the result in practice is that, yet again, the most privileged students are being taught how to think, whereas less advantaged students, who are often students of color, are being taught how to follow the directions of authorities. Research suggests this divide starts as early as kindergarten, and continues through high school.

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