depth and breadth

Jay Lemke (jllbc who-is-at cunyvm.cuny.edu)
Sun, 16 May 1999 22:51:50 -0400

I was amused by the casual turn of phrase in Louise's posting about the
bizarre ideas one finds in standardized testing today about what students
ought to be learning.

She noted specialized math skills moved down the age cline in curricular
requirements, and lamented the emphasis on 'depth rather than breadth'.

Of course many of us are in favor of depth rather than breadth in
education. But we mean depth of understanding vs. breadth of superficial
surveys of subject areas. Where is the testing for how well those students
understand the concepts of volume and measure, and the strategies for
moving from our basically one-dimensional notions of quantity to measures
of two- and three-dimensional volumes? and apart from such understanding,
what is the evidence that anyone outside a narrow range of technical
occupations ever needs to calculate spherical volumes after the last time
it's demanded on a test?

The U.S. is rapidly arriving at a consensus about standardized curriculum
that is intellectually archaic and economically useless. Is it any wonder
many parents are looking for an alternative education for their children?
or that most children would rather be anywhere than living in the prison of
our delusions about what they ought to know?

Ken keeps asking where the Left is in the political wars for control of the
curriculum. Maybe they are still looking for an alternative content for
that curriculum. And maybe they should be looking for an alternative to the
very concept of curriculum itself.

JAY.

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JAY L. LEMKE
PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION
CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
<http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/education/jlemke/index.htm>
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