Note from Moderator: For 77 years Marion Brady has been immersed in public education in numerous roles, from student to teacher to text book author to informed commentator on public education. In blog entry #10, (April 24, 2009), Marion laid out a very simple, but very essential prescription for necessary change in Public Education practice to fit the present day and future needs. He contends that modern public education policy originated in the 1890s, and has inadequately changed in the well over 100 years since. Below Marion Brady provides more specific context.
Marion Brady: For more than forty years, in books published by respected presses, in a great many articles in education journals, and in newspaper columns distributed nationally by Knight-Ridder/Tribune, I’ve maintained that there will be no significant improvement in learner performance until problems with the deeply flawed “core curriculum” adopted in 1893 and in
near-universal use in America’s schools and colleges are recognized and addressed.
My criticisms have been myriad and specific, and have been articulated in simple, straightforward language, but education “reform” efforts from the local to the federal level continue to assume that poor performance is primarily a “people problem” rather than a system problem.
Until problems with the 1893 curriculum are addressed, rigor, raising the bar, trying harder, bringing market forces to bear, and so on — the reform strategies being promoted by corporate America and state and national politicians and policy makers — won’t just fail but will be
For a summary of major problems with the familiar, traditional core curriculum, see: