(2007-01-10) Schank New Curriculum

Roger Schank on designing new High School Curriculum (Basic School Skills).

And on resistance to change. This country needs to come to grips with the fact that the high school curriculum reflects a notion of how nineteenth century scholars thought about how to produce more scholars like themselves.

And he has an interesting theory on why we have fewer graduate Math And Science students than other countries. Do we really believe that the reason that there so many foreign applicants to US graduate programs is that they teach math and science better in other countries? China and India provide most of the applicants. They also have most of the people. And many of those people will do anything to live in the U.S. So they cram math down their own throats knowing that it is a ticket to America. Very few of these applicants are coming from Germany, Sweden, France or Italy. Is this because they teach math badly there or is it because those people aren't desperate to move to the U.S.? In the U.S., students are not desperate to move to the US, so when you suggest to them that they numb themselves with formulas and equations they refuse to do so. The right answer would be to make math and science actually interesting, but with those awful Standardized Test-s as the ultimate arbiter of success this is very difficult to do.