Saber-Tooth Curriculum
Chapter 2
The Players of Chapter 2...
- New-Fist
- Conservative Tribe Members
- Three Thoughtful Thinkers
New-Fist Sees a Need...
- New-Fist sets up the first educational goal believing that people need to teach - will provide the children with a higher quality of life.
- New-Fist created first “subjects” – fish grabbing with bare hands, clubbing woolly horses, and driving away saber-tooth tigers.
- Discovered that learning was more fun if it had a purpose (give their education meaning – useful life skills versus playing with colored stones).
- Children of the tribe with education had advantage.
New-Fist
Progressive
Old Wise Tribe Members
Conservative
Three Thoughtful Thinkers
Progressive
The First Curriculum!
Conservatives Are Not Happy...
- Conservative members questioned the new curriculum. “New” is scary and threatening the Great Mystery. (Much like those who view sex education or evolution in school as a threat to their religious beliefs.)
- New-Fist points out that change is the will of the Great Mystery
- Eventually, the conditions changed and the educational curriculum was insufficient to meet those changes thereby causing the quality of education to flounder (standards were not meeting the needs).
Attempts to Implement a New Curriculum Are Rejected...
- Three thoughtful thinkers thought of ways to take what they had learned in school and innovatively adapt it to meet the needs of society.
- Old Conservatives did not see value in fishnet-making, antelope-snare construction, and bear-catching as those were not part of a “real education” but just mere training (think vocational schools). Why teach skills that would be applicable to life?
- Old men argue that we don’t teach with the purpose of a specific skill set but rather general skills that do not ever change regardless of conditions.