A Whole New Curriculum for a Whole New World

(Originally titled “Our Brains Extended”)

In this Educational Leadership article, author Marc Prensky suggests that, in light of breathtaking technological advances, we need to rethink the school curriculum “from zero, without any preconceived notions of what was important, caring only about students’ future needs.” For starters, he would throw out traditional classes – math, English, science, social studies – and regroup everything into four subjects – thinking, acting, relating, and accomplishing:

• Subject 1: Effective thinking – In the early grades, this would include simple mathematical and logical thinking and recognizing common flaws – for example, assuming that something is always true because you’ve seen a few examples. Students would read illustrative stories like “The Emperor’s New Clothes” and play well-designed games like The Logical Journey of the Zoombinis. Technology would be used to extend thinking, simulate consequences for one’s actions, and do projects using databases, knowledge, sources, and teamwork. In later grades, students would learn about:

• Mindfulness;
• How human thinking developed (tool creation, logic, deduction, induction, calculus);
• Dangerous flaws in human thinking – for example, the ways we make decisions about risk;
• Critical analysis;
• Scientific thinking;
• Mathematical thinking;
• Systematic skills for problem-solving;
• Ways to know one’s strengths and passions.

“Instead of today’s focus on pre-established subject matter,” says Prensky, “with thinking skills presented randomly, haphazardly and inconsistently, the student and teacher focus would always be on thinking in its various forms and on being an effective thinker, using examples from math, science, social studies, and language arts.” 

• Subject 2: Effective action – This would start with Steven Covey’s habits of highly effective people – Be proactive, Begin with the end in mind, Put first things first, etc. – and build to increasingly complex challenges in persistence, entrepreneurship, project management, and creative ways to break down barriers and get things done to improve students’ communities, their country, and the world. Students at all grades would manage real-life projects – designing a playground, feeding homeless people, implementing a day-care system. They would start companies and learn the difference between for-profit and non-profit. “The emphasis would be on continual improvement and on how to do each task more effectively next time,” says Prensky, with technology used as a tool and mind-extender. 

• Subject 3: Effective relationships – This part of the curriculum would develop students’ communication skills in teams, peer groups, communities, work groups, and one on one, using face-to-face and virtual modes of contact. It would include ethics, citizenship, and politics, reading great works of literature and social science, and help students maximize their own communicative strengths and address their weaknesses. “The focus of this subject,” says Prensky, “would not be on producing people who know more, but on producing people who relate better in a wide variety of situations.”

• Culminating work: Effective accomplishment – Every year, students would add to a portfolio of completed individual and group projects. They would start small (I made this website), get more elaborate (I collaborated with a class in another country to publish a bilingual novel), and then take on truly ambitious work (Using Galaxy Zoo, I discovered a new, habitable planet). “The focus would be on finding and executing real projects that extend the student’s knowledge and capabilities in an area he or she is passionate about,” says Prensky, “projects that are helpful to the community and the world. Thus, in addition to producing educated people, our schools would produce tangible and useful results.”

“Our Brains Extended” by Marc Prensky in Educational Leadership, March 2013 (Vol. 70, #6, p. 22-27), www.ascd.org; the author can be reached at marcprensky@gmail.com.

From the Marshall memo #477