What is worth learning?

 

From my experience in attending public school all my life starting from elementary through high school the curriculum that I’ve always been knowing is the explicit one. The school and teachers want students to be good kids that follow the rules and live up to the TEKS standards, which is totally understandable. I suppose the authors from the information that I was given assumed that I knew about the 3 curricula but I was actually not fully aware of the specifics. I didn’t know that there was a name for what is considered explicit, null and hidden. When I decided to become a teacher I knew that I had to follow certain objectives and standards to form a lesson plan, but looking back to what I have learned from non-education and education college courses there is more information out there that schools do not talk about to young students. So the idea of a null and hidden curriculum has always been in my mind but I never thought it was something that many schools and teachers struggle with when it comes to teaching. 

 

 

 

I was somewhat shocked about Kylene Beers Facebook post of how there are some parents that are against talking about the truth of racism or any other strong topic to their children. The reason why I said “somewhat” is that a few days ago I came across an old friends’ Facebook post that expressed being against talking about LGBTQ to young children because she strongly believes that it will get them confused when it comes to sexuality preferences. I read a few of the comments from that post to get a better idea of their reasoning and of course I found one comment that was totally for talking to her children about these kinds of topics. So I was not fully shocked that there are opinions like these coming from parents or any other person but it for sure had me rethinking.  

 

 

Beer's Facebook post really spoke to me in knowing how to handle these kinds of conversations in the most professional and kindly manner. If we truly stand for Banned Books Week, bringing up culture politics into classroom discussion, not fall into the exclusion of voices then why not work our way up to better communicate these ideas. Perhaps maybe there will be a better understanding of how important it is. 

 

 

Reference List:

                                                     3 curricula all schools teach - YouTube 

Kylene Beers - A Curriculum of Irrelevancy Another... | Facebook