Wednesday- Exigency Logic Questions

Hey teachers! What are you teaching today? What are “Essential” learnings today?

Hey students! What are you learning today? What is essential?

Quote:

“My mother made me a scientist without ever intending to. Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would as her child after school ‘So, Did you learn anything today?’ But not my mother. ‘Izzy,’ she would say, ‘did you ask a good question today?’ That difference-asking good questions- made me become a scientist.” Physicist Isidor Isaac Rabi

Questions- What are essential learnings? Where did they come from? Who wrote them? Is there an agenda? Who financially supports the essential curriculum? What do they want? What do todays essential learnings tell us about the direction of education? 

Why do we need to know this?  How does this help students, society, me?

Newson rant:

I came from one school who’s mission statement (an overarching philosophy to follow), was: “challenge yourself to be a person others admire.” 

Questions- first, who has time to challenge the self? And why don’t we have more time for that?  What does it mean to be a person ‘others’ admire? What others? Is Admire: ‘to be approved’ of. (Merriam Webster) By whom?  Is that what you want? 

If the exigency of essential learnings is approval,

And approval is derived from business management sorts

Then essential learnings are essential to business. Logic. 

Here is a catch. I ask questions. I like to challenge myself- you know the whole “The unexamined life” and all that.  I have found that in (business education), curiosity is caustic. A more accurate motto might be: ‘Just shut up, sit down, and listen to this pre-approved curriculum of essential learnings during a pandemic, a mental health crisis, and economic prosperity for the uber-elite.’  Not as flowing, but more honest. 

If you ask questions, you will most assuredly NOT become admired. Not by those ‘in power’ anyway.  You will be a pariah and an agitator, thus painfully ostracized. However, you will be closer to a truth. Is that what you want?  Yea, me too. 

Ever heard of Physicist Isidor Isaac Rabi? Me neither. I don’t know if she is admired, but her mom did challenge her, which I admire.  Is is more important to be admired or be true?

And what happens when personal philosophies and culture clash?