Many teachers still rely heavily on textbooks to tell them what to teach. Yet textbooks, because of their topic focus, usually cover too much content and fail to address the higher-level, lasting ideas that can be applied to current and future trends. For the past 100 years, our curriculum has been governed by discrete subject areas and topical organizers for content. Figure 2.1 shows the traditional model of discrete subjects, topics, and content. The unwavering focus in schooling has been on memorization of an increasing body of facts and the practice of skills.
The problem with this model is that the information base in our world is challenging the best of microchips. School districts try to keep up with this information explosion by looking to state standards as the parameters for what to teach. But the design of local curriculum frameworks usually resembles the traditional booklets and lists of isolated student learning objectives that were prevalent in the early 1980s because that is what we know. Although we do need skill-based objectives, the format for writing content objectives usually tickles only the lowest cognitive levels and serves as fodder for a trivial pursuit intellect.
There are several effects of this lower-level love affair with trivia. Perhaps most significantly, studying topics and facts as information to be memorized fails to engage the deeper intellect of students. When students are encouraged to think beyond the facts and connect factual knowledge to ideas of conceptual significance, they find relevance and personal meaning. When students become personally and intellectually engaged, they are more motivated to learn because their emotions are involved. They are mind-active rather than mind-passive. Could the lack of personal, intellectual engagement be a major reason that so many students exhibit apathy toward their studies?