t h e  N  E  T 
t h e   n a t i o n a l   e d u c a t i o n   t a s k f o r c e
catching the children left behind

FOUR THINGS OUR SCHOOLS MUST DO NOW
Dennis Earl Fehr

The core school subjects of the 1950s—math, reading, science and social studies—sufficed for that decade, but they are inadequate today. With challenges coming at us from every corner of the globe―India, the European Union, China, the Middle East, the Pacific Rim―our children must know more than how to work on the farm or in the factory.
    How are we coping? With a core curriculum that has been out of date for fifty years. What should we do?
    1)  By 2020 monolingual workers, U.S. or otherwise, will be disadvantaged. The Romance languages, which have dominated foreign language study in our high schools, are (with the notable exception of Spanish) going to be less helpful in tomorrow’s de-centered global marketplace than Mandarin, Arabic, or Japanese. U.S. children need to start reading Spanish at the same time they start reading English, and a third language elective should be encouraged beginning in middle school.
     2)  We must start heeding the private sector’s complaints that our schools do not graduate innovative problem-solvers. In math every student must answer “twenty-five” when asked “What’s five times five?” Every student in English class needs to come up with the same word when asked to identify a sentence’s subject. On the other hand, if we ask twenty art students to make the best possible composition using only a square and a circle, they will produce twenty different answers from which to choose the best. 
     Do we believe the outside-the-box thinking children develop in arts classes will contribute nothing to tomorrow’s challenges? Do the imaginings of our artist-visionaries offer little to human progress? The nations whose workforces have the greatest imagination, creativity, innovation, and vision will place themselves advantageously in tomorrow's global market. How do we accomplish that? By fostering the arts. U.S. children should have arts classtheater, music, or artevery day, with no arts time used for standardized test drills.
     3)  The third addition to the core must be physical education. Our fondness for eating and TV-watching ourselves to death hardly places us at an international advantage; yet we do not require every child to have physical education every day—and this does not mean more recess. Nor does it mean “roll out the basketballs” PE. It means physical education that not only offers organized exercise (including dance), but also teaches human physiology, drug education, safe and responsible sexual behavior, sound diet, stress management, and team play. The literature linking physical fitness and intellectual performance is clear; the problem is that so few of the education field’s powerbrokers have read it.
     Of course we should retain the original core subjects, and to meet tomorrow’s needs we also must develop fair and accurate means to measure what children know. We need seven core subjects, each assessed with tools developed not by profit-driven think tanks or politicians, but by people who teach those subjects. 
     4)  We must address one other factor: Ethics. A seven-core curriculum means nothing if children do not use their knowledge ethically. If our national civility is in decline, if our elected officials disgrace our country with their moral lapses, why do we not teach ethical principles in our schools? Because it’s the parent’s job? Of course it is. But some parents fail this responsibility. Should no one then teach children the moral wisdom that has been handed to us through the ages? Fairly or not, society’s second line of defense is its teachers. How does one conduct scientific research ethically? And when has science been used to do harm? How has language been used as a wedge for dividing people? How can language help bring us closer? As we depend more on images and less on words to convey information, how can art class help children filter the good from the bad on TV, the Internet and in their favorite magazines? How can PE class teach children to work in teamsa critical component of success in a global economy? What can community outreach projects teach kids about social studies? Teaching ethics does not require the teaching of religion in schools, since all great religions agree that we should be charitable, humble, honest, and forgiving.
     We can postpone teaching these things until we have fallen behind, at which point we will be forced to teach them, with no guarantee of success. Or we can start teaching them now and maintain a secure place from which to participate in the family of nations.