What did you learn today?

I was standing at the cash register ready to pay for my meal.  The high school student behind the register took my hundred dollar bill.  The student hesitated.  I couldn't imagine why.  The register already had the amount of the money for the meal, the amount of money received, and the amount of the change due.  He called over another high school student to help me, then left for the back.  The new student informed me, "He sucks at counting money.  Sorry about that."  Then, she counted out the bill according to the amount on the register.

Something is really wrong.  I understand that the above example of the high school student is possibly not representative of students in all 50 states, but the sheer numbers of students who describe their math experiences, together with scores from a variety of sources including standardized tests from the states, national standardized tests, the number of students in math related fields in college, the number of 70s or Cs given in classrooms, and the difficulty level of math in grades 1-8 tell me that there is a massive problem.

Curriculum is rarely questioned when discussion of reform occurs.  The subject is usually about teacher accountability, teacher turnover, better methods of presentation, getting learning standards in teachable form, or parental involvement.  Even if curriculum is mentioned, the subject is how to better protect the core subjects of math, language arts, science, and history against the ever increasing number of non-core curricular subjects.

But that should not be true in the schools of the 21st century.  If technology is king in this century, then the center of the curriculum should revolve around the technology in use of it and in understanding its principles.  Teachers should be so well versed in using technology in their presentation that there should be few students who could outperform them in the field.  All other subjects should revolve around the bigger ideas of their use.  For example, instead of a Language Arts class, language should revolve around a larger idea, communication.  That's because there are several types of communication that businesses use.  Business doesn't use the essay form of writing for anything.  Research and reporting, but not the essay.  Politicians and other speakers might use the essay form, but speech writing should be the more appropriate title.  A whole program that includes social media communication (blogs, picture presentation, Facebook advertising, video presentationetc.), business presentation, report and request writing, and other language applications should exist.  The days of the narrow, very narrow English classes of today should die a quick death.

The curriculum needs an overhaul in the worst way.  Whatever form it takes should be a radical departure from what has existed, and it should drive what needs to be mastered to thrive in a globally competitive economy.  It should not be driven by the artificiality of classroom training like today's school.  It should include formal training, and experience, and simulation.  A curriculum should be designed with technology at its heart in each of the three aspects named above.   Anything less will prepare students for second best.  Two countries of a billion people each are working very hard at becoming world class competition for the U.S, - India and China.  They will succeed in displacing the U.S. if we continue education on its current track.  It doesn't have to be that way.  There is still time to change.