Ideas for discussion – The saber-tooth curriculum

Questions:

What are the fish-grabbing, horse-clubbing and tiger-scaring of our time?

Why did New-fist design a curriculum?

Is the purpose of education today the same as it was in the Paleolithic era

described in the text?

If you were to design a new national curriculum for your country how would

you decide which subjects are more important.

What did the ability to think and the ability to do

The old-men in the village said that the new skills proposed by the radicals

wouldn’t be education, instead they would be mere training. What is the

difference? What is your take on this issue?

“The essence of true education is timelessness”, said the wise old men. What

do you think?

Group work:

Come up with five criteria that would be used to decide which subjects are

more important in a curriculum you are familiar with.

Suggest some new subjects to be included in a curriculum you are familiar with.

Support your choices.

Write or talk about a modern version of the saber-tooth curriculum. (e.g. the

industrial revolution curriculum or the information society curriculum)

Ideas for discussion – The saber-tooth curriculum by Willy C. Cardoso is licensed under

a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License