Sept 21 Reading

 Curriculum is something I heard all the time in school, teachers always talking about curriculum this, curriculum that. I've never searched up a true definition of this word, but to me, curriculum has always meant a list of the actual material you need to know. Something measurable like addition or multiplication, not something abstract like mathematical thinking. Upon reading this article I completely agree that schools have a "hidden" curriculum as well and also have things that schools don't teach but need to teach thus the article calling this the null curriculum. What stood out to me was the argument that schools taught compliant behaviour. Thinking back to my entire time in schools, I realized I didn't succeed in school because I was the smartest, or studied hard. I just realized very early on that success wasn't achieved by studying the hardest, but by knowing the subtle biases of your teacher and adapting to it. For example, in my math classes, I'd usually do much better on a second exam because I'd know what the teacher or professor expects and what materials they're likely to pull from and what answers they want. It wasn't about how "well" I knew the material or how well my critical thinking was, it was about how well I can play to the teacher's values. In a sense, this skill is a form of comprehensive thinking as it forces students to think outside the box, outside of the curriculum, but it doesn't really teach students anything really important other than being compliant and complimenting the person higher up in the food chain. Another big point I want to touch upon, is the argument against rewards in the school system. The argument is very sound and agreeable as it is true that we don't want to give students extrinsic rewards as that only fosters a desire for that. But I argue that most students act upon extrinsic rewards regardless of whether it was implemented in early schools or not. I'm sure most students go to university for the prospect of a bigger pay check or a job that they dreamed of doing when they were little. I'd say that this is extrinsic motivation. If we wanted to fully remove that and have students only go to school based on intrinsic motivation we will have to (like the article states) offer a variety of explicit curriculums. A lot of students probably feel that certain courses are "useless" for their career paths and their interests, but throughout all of school we force them to take courses in a variety of subjects that they aren't interested in and only attend due to their extrinsic motivation of the end goal. A student dreaming of becoming a musician doesn't want to sit in math class learning differential equations. I can also see benefits of casting a wider net during your academic career to see what you catch but developing that intrinsic motivation to learn can only be fostered by giving students a choice to learn. If one is forced into something, even if they want to be there, it won't feel that way since everyone is forced to anyways.