boring in part because diploma requirements crowd out personalized and
engaged learning. It is also boring
because our graduation requirements
have been produced the way our worst
laws are; they are crude compromises,
based on inadequate debate. Because of
arbitrary policies that define preparation
in terms of content instead of useful
abilities, schools focus on “coverage,”
not meaningful learning.
A Historical Perspective
Our belief in lockstep adherence to
rigid curriculum requirements appears
especially myopic and misguided if
we look through the lens of the fun-
damental question, How well does the
mittee of Ten in 1892. That group had
famously argued that a college-prep
education, including multiple years of
Latin and Greek, was appropriate for
all students—even though fewer than
10 percent of high school students went
to college. Chaired by the president of
Harvard, the Committee of Ten was
organized into subject-area groups and
staffed by professors and teachers of
those subjects. (Our current system,
with its attention to a narrow collection
of “traditional” academic subjects, still
embodies the worst consequences of the
work of this group.)
The current standards movement,
for all its good intentions, is perilously
narrowing our definition of education.
must graduate as though they were
heading for the same 20th-century
future.
This plan would enable us to finally
deal with the key weakness of high
school, summarized in that term vir-
tually all students and adults use to
describe it: bor-ing. High school is
high school curriculum prepare all
students for their adult lives? The Com-
mission on the Reorganization of Sec-
ondary Education thought that asking
this question was not only sensible but
sorely needed—in 1918! Its report, Car-
dinal Principles of Secondary Education,
The Cardinal Principles were a delib-
erate counterbalance to the policies that
had arisen from the work of the Com-
understanding of the broad mission
of schooling as enabling individuals
to better themselves and society.
They proposed the following “main
objectives of education”: ( 1) health;
( 2) command of fundamental pro-
cesses (reading, writing, arithmetical
computations, and the elements of oral
and written expression); ( 3) worthy
home membership; ( 4) vocation;
