In 1989, I was preparing to participate in a science curriculum project; actually, I was invited to chair the committee, but the curriculum coordinator decided it would be very unpopular to have a first-year teacher assume that role. I did reflect on the work the committee was going to undertake, and this post contains a good deal of what I wrote:
The question of what should be the ultimate goal of education has been answered many times in many ways by many different people, usually no two people have the same answer to this question. My personal feelings have been developing through listening and reading that arguments of many people. I have come to the conclusion that we must teach students so that they can be effective participants in our democratic society. The idea of teaching students to be effective citizens is not original. Albert Einstein (1936) stated education “should develop in the young individuals those qualities and capabilities which are of value for the welfare of the commonwealth.” This has been stated since Einstein by many others. Bybee (1985) suggests, “An aim of public education is and should be to encourage informed and rational citizenship in the democratic process.” This is a very broad goal indeed, Hurd (1983) provides evidence that ‘science for effective citizenship is too broad and diffuse for middle school education. I agree that it is too much to ask of many middle school students.
I think those decades ago, I was not giving middle school students enough credit. It is not too much to ask middle school students to think about relevant and important topics that matter to society and its citizens. These are the thing that makes for a rich and engaging curriculum. For far too long our schools have reduced the complexity out of the curriculum in an effort to make it “easier” to teach. We forgot that interesting and relevant problems conserve complexity which leads to curiosity, and it makes the curriculum something to which students pay attention
Looking back, it seems we failed to keep in mind democracy and the role of informed citizens in creating it. We choose “easy to teach” rather than “important to society and citizens and democracy.”