My philosophical friends are in a discussion of liberal education. They are interested in Prof. Louis Menard's book "The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University". He is a prof. of English at Harvard, has written several books and writes for the New Yorker fairly often. There are certain subjects that are traditionally thought of as the liberal arts, subjects that assist in freeing the mind and habits from any narrow confinement from one's upbringing and growing up experience. History is one of them. Menard writes that "garbage is garbage but the history of garbage is scholarship."
Most academic discussions of curriculum focus on college and university level education and ignore or underplay the earlier years of human life. The truth is that there is little basic or scientific or logical evidence as to what makes an ideal curriculum. Clearly, the times, the era in which a person lives is a relevant factor. People in the 1600's didn't study electrical engineering or computer science. Most people today study little or no archery.
It seems clear to me that in the US today, and maybe more so in some other places, anyone who wants to learn just about anything can do so. There is a book called "The Boy Who Tamed the Wind" about a African young man in a village where there was no electricity who spent time in an American-sponsored library. He learned what he needed to know and built a wind-driven dynamo that supplied the town with electricity.
Many curriculum thinkers would ask of that boy whether he had gotten a wide-ranging introduction to mathematics and to literature. If he knows little about world art, they might advise him to return to his library for that subject. Music, poetry, philosophy, other languages, the sciences and many other topics might be of interest or profit sometime in his future.
In general, curriculum has not been a hot topic over the years. There is very little sex in curriculum thinking and nothing ever blows up. One of the most biting and memorable books on curriculum was written in 1939, "The Saber-tooth Curriculum", describes satirically the situation where all the saber-tooth tigers are extinct but the skills involved in hunting them are still taught and still graded. One can still fail to "graduate" with failing grades in saber-tooth tiger hunting.
As with anything else, schooling and one's future are related to one's times, one's family and the general society in which one grows up. My mother and grandmother had little chance of studying ballet or harp. I might well have been in sports or medicine if my dad or stepdad had been more determined that I would study those fields.
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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
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