The Curriculum & Its Ideological Conceptions

From my own experiences in school, I do not remember many hands-on and personable learning techniques. My education was likely of the Intellectual-Rationalist ideology. I remember learning by book and lecture for the most part.
Developmental needs were met within my school systems, though. When I was a young child with chronic ear infections, I did go for speech therapy with a friend of mine in Elementary school. We were taken out of class for it and all I remember of it was that it was fun and I got stickers with scents afterwards. I didn’t realize I was getting special treatment until after college when my parents told me. My total obliviousness to the inner workings of education shows just how well my Elementary school was run. Before I started High school, I took a summer preparation course there that was really just a social gathering. At the time I was extremely shy so I didn’t get much out it. I still don’t know why I was chosen to go; if my parents just thought it would be good for me or if I was an At-Risk-Student because of my mediocre grades and shyness.
Having experienced an Intellectual-Rationalist approach to education for most of my life, I now want to spread the Social-Romantic ideology with my own teaching. It’s not that I didn’t learn anything. I’m very book-smart and I do well on tests and behave in class. But I’ve found that grades and book knowledge hasn’t helped me with my jobs. I have been fired and replaced many times because of my inability to be sociable. I do have Social Anxiety Disorder and Clinical Depression. Medication can only do so much. What I really need, and wish I had received when I was still young, are social graces. Now, I’m not saying I’m rude. I’m very well mannered and polite, more than most by my observations. I just can’t for the life of me function during a conversation. I have a real difficulty talking and being sociable. Being a “people-person” is what sells. That is what an employer wants in an employee. I don’t have it, and it’s a little late in the game to be learning it.
Social-Romantic ideology teaches that the needs of the child are considered when planning a curriculum. Students are taught how to become a part of society and democracy through actual practice instead of theory. Education becomes more personable and melds more easily into the student’s life. Understanding is richer and three-dimensional. Through inquiry-based teaching, group work, field experiences, and other real-life experiences, a person is better-rounded in regards to implementing knowledge.
Focusing on test scores is not true growth. Testing has its place, but it should not be used exclusively with no regard for physical, mental, and emotional health. A student is still a human being. Students are not computers to be programmed. By focusing so much on test scores the courses on art, music, physical education, and health are deemed less important. If schools start shutting these courses out of their curriculum, as some already have, they are also shutting out imagination. It has been shown through studies that children who participate in the arts, music, sports and exercise, and eat nutritiously actually do better on tests. Schools and the government are setting our children up for failure when they cut the arts from school curriculum. Somehow, these adults have forgotten what it was like to be a child, with the need to express oneself and release stress. Somehow, these adults lost their own imagination.

Adolescent Development & Theories of Adolescence

The book states that with the exception of infancy, adolescence is the major transitional period in the life span. I agree that infancy involves major growths and is superior to adolescence in respect to transitional stress, biologically. However, one cannot remember infancy and therefore any stress experienced leaves few scars on the individual unless the individual was abused or neglected in some way. In adolescence, however, one does retain information as memories. Do memories and perceptions play any role in stress? I believe they do. Therefore, adolescence may be a more important transitional period than infancy because of the added cognition. But, let’s not forget about the elder years. As the body grows older, people begin to prepare for death, if not cognitively, at least biologically. Could impending mortality be called transition or is the actual moment of dying the transition? Does either usurp adolescence or infancy of their claim as the major transitional period of the life span?
G. Stanley Hall and his Theory of Recapitulation agree with many people’s perceptions that youth is animalistic and therefore inferior because of its ties with nature and the earth. Adults demonstrate power over nature and are therefore superior because they are human and civilized. I do not agree. I see nature and animals surviving within the context of their environment without any abuse or destruction involved. In other words, it is symbiotic. Whereas, I see humanity as a parasitic growth in many instances. This theory belittles childhood and makes its only purpose that of which to become an adult. Many other theories of development do this as well; those of the weak interaction and moderate interaction, in which nature plays more of a role in a person’s life than does nurture or that the two are separate forces working independently of each other.
I am more comfortable with a strong interaction theory, in which nature and nurture work together and affect each other over the entire life time. This mentality doesn’t separate childhood into one camp and adulthood into another with adolescence being a bridge between. Adulthood isn’t the end all. Any person or society who believes otherwise, that adults are alone important to productivity, is shutting off entire years of human life. Children and adolescents have a purpose and place in society; they are not larvae to be left alone until germination. They can create and help our society through innumerable methods; laughter, volunteer work, friendship, even anarchy.
I do not discount that adolescence is a time of major growth and stress, but I do not see it starting or ending there.