UNCOMMON SENSE: THE CURRICULUM

In university, I was surrounded by smart women, and several of them were in elementary education. Today, I talked to one of them who is actively teaching her 3 kids, 10, 5 and 4 at home. She called me to ask about an old idea I had about writing a curriculum. It was to included all the things I wish I had learned, but hadn't learned in school.

It currently exists as a half-filled notebook filled with some treasured ideas, a small computer file folder, and a thin physical one. It is far from complete, and what I am sitting down to think about is what my friend was looking for, and the next step in my book: the theoretical framework that needs to keep us from forgetting anything!

If I am honest, this might be one of the challenges that kept me from moving forward. I have a collection of ideas, but I haven't really tackled the real issue of how to organize everything an adult needs to know to have a full and informed life.

My friend has been teaching her kids in beautiful layers, based on her 18 year teaching career, and starting with the most important broad strokes to begin with. For anatomy, she started with organs, and will be moving onto systems next. For geography, she taught continents first, and everything she teaches that can be related to a map, like Mozart and the country of Austria, can be found starting with a continent; Europe.

I like where this could go. It dovetails back into lots of topics I have blogged.

Binary and Eastend

FYI Wines

31 Iron Rich Vegetarian Food
Montreal's Hero: John McCrae

Knitting 101
How to Build a Mind Palace
Motivational Tools
Social Cognitive Theory
Fauvism and Die Brücke: Van Gogh to Kandinsky
OSASCOMP (Order of Adjectives)
Logical Fallacies
Canadian Suffragettes
How and Why Genius Clusters
Triple Bottom Line
Ten Commandments and Five Thieves
Being a Plain Jane
Joy
Merit Badges
Math Magic
Belay Course
The Endowment Effect
Lessons from Marathon Training
Rules for Divisibility
All Lives Matter
How to Build a Brain Reserve
Viktor Frankl Speaks
W.A.N.G.
Konmari Method
Conflict Resolution 101
15 Practices that Differential the Poor from the Rich
Dinosaurs
Goethe's World View
Mrs. Beeton's Book
Patterns of Nature
An Introvert's Manifesto
40s and Failing It
The Greek Alphabet
9 Muses
3 Keys to fitness
Mesopotamian Languages
Mesopotamia
How to Write a Book
Swimming Tweaks
Aristotle's Golden Mean
Immigration and the Passes
Nice Game
Truth Telling and Other Lies
Building and Rebuilding Trust
Deliberate Practice
Eisenhower Matrix
Ben Franklin's 13 Virtues
ASL
Forgiveness
Lofty Words
HALT
Memory Problems
The Supreme Court of Canada
Quebec Raptors
IB
The Spartlathon
Tree Leaf Classification
Today I am a Divorcee
Decluttering in 4 boxes
Cree Syllabics
Seven Year's War

This list reminds me of the things that I have felt I needed to learn myself as an adult. My thoughts of the curriculum began when I became a mom, but likely had been influenzed by the challenge of teaching medical students, and the many lacks I had in my education that I have tried to fill in over the years.

Based on review of the topics above, topics include: food and wine, society and injustice, history (written and unwritten), philosophy, important figures, home ec, personalities and conflict resolution, nature, language, health, sport, writing, psychology, logic, virtures, resilience, human triumphs, organization, religion, math, art and crafts.

I have quite a few educational curricula to review, and I am finding it challenging to navigate the layers of standardizing so many ideas. I will have to look at Bill Bryson's Theory of Nearly Everything, and a few encyclopedias. A quick google search for Theoretical Framework gives a good outline of some vital steps in the process. Philosophically, the Theory of Everything is interesting for its arguments against. I found this "How to Write a Curriculum from Start to Finish", which, at a quick glance, looks like it might be a good template.

The beauty of libraries is that I have always had the innate sense that the world's book could be put in order based on the Dewey Decimal system, so when I tried tonight to google "classification system of everything", it was right there. The first thing that came up was the "Freinet classification" or "To organize everything", a system that is based on school work, and seen by some educators to be more logical to students than official classifications based on organizational criteria. It was last revised in 1984, and is used in some elementary school libraries. The principle is to splint everything into 12 major divisions, and subdivide again by 12, much like the Dewey Decimal System(DDS) divides into 10 major divisions, and subdivides again by 10.

In an effort to adapt to other languages, and changes in archaic, sometimes biased towards an Anglo-American male heterosexual world view, other classifications exist, and, in an effort to make their libraries more accessible, commercial bookstores (including Amazon) commonly use BISAC (Book Industry Standards and Communications). Unfortunately, this is a proprietary system licensed by a single entity (OCLC). Another bibliographic classification system is the Universal Decimal Classification (UDC). It began in 1991, is international (HQ The Hague) and its summary is available in over 50 languages! It even includes realia, 3 dimensional objects from real life. The British adopted the American Bliss system, and its new version is BC2. The Colon classification has 5 primary categories (facets) and 42 main classes. The Library of Congress Classification is adapted from the Cutter Expansive Classification, the DDS, and the Putnam Classification (head librarian at Minneapolis Public Library), and like the Colon Classification, uses 26 letter classes. Even UNESCO has nomenclature for fields of science and technology, with 2-, 4-, and 6- digit codes. Showing my moderate tendencies, 4 digits hits the sweet spot for me, with the 2 digits a more digestible but extensive list!

I think it is so cool that all these systems attempt systematically arrange ALL branches of human knowledge!

Here are the major divisions by system, and the overlap:
(UNDER DEVELOPMENT)

TED talks have inspired me with endless categories:

Here are a few ideas to follow

Bilingualism

Violence

Critical thinking

Good ideas

In the Covid era: TED CONNECTS

"Ted recommends" contain these topics: technology, science, design, business, collaboration, innovation, social change, health, nature, environment, future, communication, activism, child development, personal growth, humanity, society, identity, community, 

Playlists: 25 more popular talks of all times, most popular

Searchable by many topics

For kids, and adults alike: TED-ED

There are a fun series on math riddles.

There are a number of stories of mythology.

There is a compelling talk on "Big History" that has led to a high school free online syllabus called Big History Project,  to put human life in perspective.

In terms of exposure to perspectives that may not be your own, there are many personal stories with great ideas. It has been a vital part of my adult education. It has transcripts which make referral to it easy. It may lead you to the next great idea. It doesn't have a bibliography, and like wikipedia, works as a great start, but not to taken as the whole story.