.7 Having Standards

Language disappeared. Since that time in 1989 we have kind of given a wave at the arts and said that the arts should be there too. However, Geography has been one of our national goals for seven years. Has the level of instruction in geography increased? No, because for the teaching in geography to increase something else has to decrease and what is there to decrease? Well, we are not really sure what we want to take out of these national goals and we are not really sure what we want to put in but it is good to have these national goals. We have national goals but at the conference where the national goals were announced, it was stated without any doubt at all, "Please understand that this is not a national curriculum because we know nobody wants that." Since that time we have been working on setting national standards. The bottom line for our discussion today is that the standards aren't there and when they have been officially accepted they are controversial. For example, the standards in math, in the national standards they don't recommend that anyone be required to learn long division or compound fractions. You don't need to learn long division because the calculator is there making the skill of long division obsolete as a required skill. That is very controversial but that is what the standard is. The most controversial standard in the math standards is that there shouldn't be any homogeneous grouping that kids of all abilities should be in the same classes all the way through grade eight. No differentiation for smart kids or gifted kids or dumb kids or at risk kids. Everybody should be together. The point is that as a society we haven't accepted the fact that there should be national standards so that everybody feels free to have their own opinion and doesn't see any professionalism or any social momentum towards a common standard. My own opinion is that I could live with it either way. I could live with requiring kids to do their calculus arithmetic by hand or with a calculator. The point is that the status quo produces confusion, and this is why in my judgment we need national standards that are predictable so that even if the standards are not to our liking, we know as teachers what we are expected to do, we know as kids what we are expected to do, and everybody is on the same wavelength. Then we can have grand arguments about whether the standards are correct or not and have mechanisms for revising and changing them because as important as having the standards is having a way to predictably change them.

	The status quo for curriculum typically produced confusion. How could this be changed?	Answer Here
	Mr. Mason is a third grade teacher who id trying to teach his students multiplication and division in the traditional ways. How might a national curriculum for math affect Mr. Mason's job?	Answer Here