Curriki

This site invites educators and professionals from all over to help create a complete collection of open source curricula for use in public and private schools. This idea can solve so many problems. The first is cost to school systems. With everyone together contributing to make fantastic curricula we can create textbooks at a fraction of the cost. Then we can distribute them in the format that meets our needs (printed or electronic). The second problem this can solve is that of heavy book bags. The size, weight, and number of books that my children have to carry each day is out of control. This will allow me to have copies of their textbooks at home so they don't have to bring them back and forth. We can offer a printed copy of the book in the classroom and an electronic copy at home. The possibilities are endless.

I took about a 60 minute tour of this site and was deeply disappointed. It appears that it is free ONLY to educators and those who fill an unspecified criteria. There is a wide range of fees for the rest of us, not disclosed until you submit all your personal information, curriki is asking for a lot. Perhaps someone could expand on this point. I also noticed a strong relationship curriki.org has with the teachers unions and boasts several board members involved with the backwards major textbook publishers. A bell went right off. This prompted me to wonder is curriki.org is just an extension of the same broken style of teaching we have been witnessing get progressively (no pun intended) worse, where kids get out of high school and are able to tell me George Washington was a slaveowner, that he chopped down a cherry tree (I am shaking my head as I write), but not that he was our first president, not that he was a general in the American Revolution, nor that he freed all his slaves upon his death (this was the only way under Virginia Law to give a slave his freedom at that time). Not to mention the hundreds of other things a 18 year old US Citizen with a high School Diploma ought to be able to tell me about George Washington. Not only is this disturbing, it offends me. The bias of the old fosters ignorance in the young. This site's content makes no attempt to hide the sad fact of academia teaching from the left rather than center or a neutral point of view. As Inspector Friday would raise his hand and say to the teacher in most US public school History & Social Studies classes, "Just the facts ma'am". I decided to dig a little deeper and was not surprised, but saddened to see what was being offered on this site is the typical left-leaning history, social studies and literature. A few of the disparate numbers related to actual human impact and world importance are as follows. This lists the total # of articles available for each subject. George Washington 26 --Martin Luther King 45 (think about that - I would be interested in any response to this post attempting to justify this) Constitutional Convention 7--Slavery 41 (What?!) Christianity 34--Judaism 69--Islam 71 Mesopotamia (cradle of civilization) 9 -- Brazil 33 George Washington Carver 4--Samuel Adams 1 Holocaust 240--Potato Famine 2--Pol Pot 0 **In the 1840's Irish Famine 1/3 of the race, several hundred thousand more on the "coffin ships" headed to the US and when Pol Pot killed 2 million fellow Cambodians. So many more died in each of these events than in the Holocaust but we get just 2 articles on the potato famine (in a country largely made up of Irish immigrants or their decendants) and none on Pol Pot's Genocide which is the most recent or the three tragedies. Interestingly I found 0 articles on Eugenics which would help the student understand these massacres and some frightening and famous US Eugenics supporters. *** Beowulf 2 -- Lord of the Flies 7 Magna Carta 14 - Emancipation Proclamation 14 Battle of Hastings 0 - Battle of Milvian Bridge - only 4 Japanese Internment Camps 14 - Charlemagne 2 Here's the kicker Slavery 41 - Christianity 34 - Rome 33 Declaration of Independence 44 -- Israel 37 Two final notes, I was blown away to see 7 resources for Pokemon including curriculum guides (not joking) and only 14 entries for Thomas Paine. I was saddened to see that what science has proven false with 100% certainty, the Discovery of America by Columbus (15 resources) is still being taught! My favorite Quote is by Martin Luther King Jr. Who said, "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter" - which is why I am writing this blog review I suppose. I think the great Reverend Doctor would be stunned to see twice as much written on him than on the Father of our Nation. Seems the teachers Unions, text manufacturers and curriki.com do want to stay silent on the things that matter though, by reinforcing everything that is wrong with America and not what made us great. The focus as I have shown above is not driven to teach children the facts, events, and literature that are important and world-changing, but to promote a social agenda. If you want your student or child to grow up misinformed, or to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the intricacies of Pokemon, curriki.org is the site for you. For me I would consider it throwing one's money away (nothing new there in Public Education) and would suggest finding better material for free on the internet. Also, use multiple sources, get different opinions, and work with the student to help them form opinions of their own.