Good Teaching with Bad Curriculum?

Comments in the "Are Good Teachers Really the Most Important Thing?" post have been echoing in my head for a while, changing my mind. The main thing I've realized from them is that, while I don't remember any particularly "bad" teachers in my k-12 experience, I also don't remember much at all, beyond how to read and do basic math, of what they taught me over twelve years. Rather than be an argument that bad teaching caused this sad state of affairs, though, I think it's truer to lay the blame, above all, on bad curriculum.

Reading assigned books in English that I didn't choose and that had little to no relevance to my life. Doing math problems only for the sake getting the right answer for a good grade, problems that again lacked relevance to anything real. Studying science disconnected from any purpose. Studying history and social studies ditto. Is it any wonder I'd forgotten it all by 20, and only really started learning when I became curious about these things as an adult?

I'll anticipate arguments that it's the teacher's responsibility to make these things relevant and useful, and accept it, to a degree. But I'll limit that degree by these factors beyond teachers' control: the imperative to cover so much material that depth is next to impossible; the imperative to use textbooks that are miraculously effective at killing the natural curiosity of the young; the imperative to focus on inert data and isolated, thus meaningless, facts imposed by objective high-stakes tests; the restriction of 55-minute class sessions and the mind-numbing progression from bell to bell injections of disconnected subject matter; above all, the restriction of what it's okay to teach in school, based on the strange apparent belief that the Most Important Thing is to sort our students based on how good they would be as future professors. I could add social factors like poverty, home life, bullying, and much more, but you get my point.

Faced with all these restrictions, teachers face tough odds when trying to make students care.

In a follow-up post, though, I'll share a powerful example of a teacher who used a combination of grade-resistance, project-based learning, and digital communication to give his students an experience they wouldn't forget. (Update: Part 2 is up.)

Photo by b_heyer