Teaching Kids to Walk

Standard 1.9-Students will be able to walk for a variety of purposes

Last week Martin Johnson, the deputy general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, a UK teachers' union, suggested the national curriculum be discarded and children taught life skills instead, such as how to walk.

"There's a lot to learn about how to walk. If you were going out for a Sunday afternoon stroll you might walk one way. If you're trying to catch a train you might walk in another way and if you are doing a cliff walk you might walk in another way," Johnson explained.

"If you are carrying a pack, there's a technique in that. We need a nation of people who understand their bodies and can use their bodies effectively."

I suppose Johnson was trying to argue that the national curriculum, with a back-to-basics focus on academic skills and standardized tests is disconnected from actual life experiences and social needs. I tend to agree and might add that the intellectual skils needed to excel in the 21st century are not reflected in a narrowed curriculum with scripted instruction and prescriptive learning goals. Realities outside of school in our global, fast-capital economy call for multimodal ways of thinking, flexibility, and adaptability, while policies governing in-school practices remain focused on stabile, unchanging conceptions of knowledge... Too bad he kept running his mouth. It's rhetoric like this that allows Bush to convince people that he's confronting the "soft bigotry of low expectations" with NCLB.