What Things Should You Teach?

Not all reasons for making educational decisions are created equally.

David Knuffke
AdminThoughts

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right and wrong by Waleed Elagamy from the Noun Project

Here is an inexhaustive list of valid reasons to teach a particular thing:

  1. Because the student wants to learn it.
  2. Because you want to teach it.
  3. Because it’s interesting.
  4. Because it’s useful.
  5. Because other people think it is interesting or useful.
  6. Because students are expected to understand it for you to consider them to have been “educated” in your subject.
  7. Because students are expected to understand it for other people to consider them to have been “educated” in your subject.

Generally speaking, the more of the above that you can check off when considering whether or not to teach a thing to students, the better. Personally, my main criteria for evaluating whether any piece of a course should or should not taught focuses on the first four items on that list, but I’m not so idealistic as to discount the validity of the other three. I’d be pretty suspicious if I couldn’t find anyone else who thinks that the thing I want to teach should be.

Can we make the opposing list? What are the valid reasons for not teaching something? I have more difficulty with this one. You probably don’t want to teach things that are wrong. You probably also don’t want to teach things that are hateful, or dangerous. But of course, you should teach about things that are wrong, or hateful. And danger is especially prone to misuse by authorities as a reason to avoid teaching things that are merely inconvenient or subversive. On some level, you probably don’t want to teach about things that your students don’t find to be interesting or useful, though a lot of the craft of teaching is involved with transforming the seemingly uninteresting or useless into its opposite for students.

All of that seems less clear, (and more qualified) than the opening list for this piece. For me, it’s a much less comfortable framing. But even if we do accept that there is a valid list of “nots” to accompany the “fors”, the most common reason that I hear for why we shouldn’t teach something is not one that I would put on it:

Because student’s don’t need to learn it.

This is a terrible reason not to teach students something. It’s also one that I’m glad I don’t hear a lot among my staff. My department is pretty good at finding reasons to teach things, rather than reasons not to. It’s uncommon for me to come across a teacher in my district who feels there are interesting things that they shouldn’t teach students because the students don’t need to know them. A little more frequently, I’ll hear the related concern voiced that “My students can’t do <X>,” but even this type of thinking is sparse among the teachers that I work with. In my administrative capacity, I am reasonably sure that every one of the teachers working with me understands that I’ll never take issue with a teacher who has decided to teach something “extra” or decides to challenge their class. Hopefully, I’m actively encouraging them to do so.

All of this is somewhat divorced from what can be a very real need to hit a variety of curricular expectations for the purpose of a standardized terminal exam. I’m not dismissing those concerns among any teachers who have them, but I am suggesting that it is folly to let a standardized curriculum dictate your educational choices to this extent. The exam should be the floor of what we teach students, not the ceiling. If a teacher feels that a quality educational experience can’t happen because of the exam that’s coming down the line, I’m pretty confident that a bit of creativity is what is needed to work a way around the issue. And I’d like to think that part of the reason I’m in my current job is because I’m good at helping teachers think creatively about these types of constraints, and available to help them do so.

At least that’s my operating logic in working with my department. If I’m wrong, I think I’m wrong for the right reasons.

Did you like this piece? Did it bother you? Maybe it kicked loose a few thoughts of your own? Drop me a line and let me know. I’m always up for a bit of a chat

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Writing about whatever I want to, whenever I want to do it. Mostly teaching, schools and culture.