Chapter 3 - The Curriculum Heeds The Concerns of Youth

Students Learn the Ways of Other Peoples

8 Year Home
8 Year Web Project
Introduction
I Study Launched
II Schools Choose
III Curriculum-Needs
Traditional
Barriers
Students-Learn
Careers
Common-Problems
Other Curriculum
Youth-Study
Schools-Help
Gifted-Intellects
The-Arts
Youth-Search
Two-Forces
Changes
Democratic
New-Materials
Problem-Solving
Pioneering
Footnotes
IV-Schools-Study-Pupils
V In College?
VI We Learned
Appendix
Index
indent

In more recent years the visitor would have discovered in several schools that a whole culture had become the subject of study. Teacher and students together had decided to try to see and understand life in the Eastern Mediterranean about 500 B.C., France of the thirteenth century, or Mexico of the last twenty years. Of course, no complete or exhaustive study of any culture is possible 1)), high school students, inst as no complete or exhaustive study of Greek life is possible in the conventional course in ancient history. However, by investigating the ways in which a people got their daily bread, provided their clothing and shelter, organized their communities, dealt with offenders against the common good, educated their youth, defended themselves against their enemies, amused themselves, and conducted their home life, the high school student identifies himself with the people studied and becomes one of them for the time being. Above all, he enters into the thought and ideas of the people he is studying. By reading what they wrote, by understanding what and low they worshiped, and by seeing the products of their self-expression in art, the student begins to know, in a truly significant way, a civilization that is related in many ways to the culture of his own place and time.

One school in its unit on China studied "Chinese poetry and drama, modern books about China, Chinese painting, sculpture, ceramics and architecture. . . . The class Was privileged in having personal experiences With Chinese people, as for example, Mine. Lin Yutang, Wife of the Chinese philosopher, Chinese dancers and musicians, and Chinese students . . . who talked with the class about the problems which the Chinese people now face."4 fit a neighboring school a class "Spent eight to tell Weeks being Greeks. . . . They did not merely study Greece; they were Greeks. They lived, worked ind thought as Spartans, Athenians, Corinthians, Syracusans, Thebans and Milesians. There Was no costume play acting.

It was their minds that they 'dressed up,' and the major problems arising out of Greek life were immediately given modem American application. One question, for example, which occupied the group was why there had never been a United States of Greece, although there had been a Greek democracy."5

The schools which have developed this Culture-Epoch type of course emphasize the importance of relating the study constantly to our own life and time. The common problems of life must be faced by every people in every generation. America faces them today. Are we solving them more Wise]), than other peoples did in other times?

No Wonder the visitor to a class which is exploring a culture finds it impossible to identify the "subject." It is language and literature, art, music, civics, history, economics, mathematics, science, and more. No one teacher is fully competent to lead the class in the exploration of all the major aspects of any culture. Therefore, the visitor may be surprised to find two or more teachers collaborating in guiding die Work. He might learn that every department of the high school is involved before the study is finished.

National Middle School Association University of Maine at Farmington MAMLE - Our Maine Concern McMel - Maine Center for Meaningful and Engaged Learning Mike Muir
Casey J. Brooks
Erica Haywood
Page Updated Sunday, February 27, 2000