Article #4 >>>>> >Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, Volume VIII, Number 3, September 3031

 Article #4    

Revolutionizing K-12 Education Will Transform Human Intellect, Morality, and Culture

Human intellect, morality, and culture are entirely produced by the interaction between biogenetic inheritance and environment.  A person's genetic inheritance at birth, neural development over the first five years of life, and experiences thereafter determine who she or he shall be.

Since this is the case, the human predicament is even more daunting than existentialists Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Csmus conceptualized >>>>>

Women and men are positioned to forge individual and collective destinies, but via decisions rather than choices. 

Choice implies free will, which does not exist.  

Decision-making involves selection from biogenetically and environmentally detetermined possibilities likely to produce the most positively rewarding outcomes.  

Only decision-making is in accord with psychological reality.  

Hence, women and men do not freely determine their own destinies, as Sartre and Camus maintained.  Rather, their destinies are determined by the behavioral options exercised in the context of biogenetic and environmental determinants.

Via curriculum design that imparts to our precious young people a wealth of knowledge and moral values drawn from the world's great belief systems, with both curricular knowledge and ethics serving as the basis for vigorous analysis and discussion, we will create an informed and astute citizenry.  Such a citizenry will be positioned to create individual and collective lives of cultural enrichment, civic engagement, and professional satisfaction. 

In the absence of a broad and deep information base and ethical instruction, individual lives tend toward ignorance and immorality.  But upon a shared body of knowledge and ethics, generated and perpetually evaluated in discussions with their fellows, women and men are positioned to think clearly and behave so as to maximize the common and, as a result tbe individual, good.

This is the power of K-12 education revolutionized for knowledge intensity and elevated ethical content.

An Opportunity to Recreate Ourselves by Revolutionizing K-12 Education

Designing revolutionized curriculum for knowledge intensity and high ethical content entails deciding who we want be.

We should decide that we want to live our lives as culturally enriched, civically engaged, professionally satisfied citizens.

Upon that decision, we will then ensure via revolutionized curriculum design that every student, with the exception of the cognitively impaired (for whom we should also have high academic aspirations),

>>>>>  masters mathematics through calculus;

>>>>>  acquires sophisticated knowledge and analytical ability in biology, chemistry, and physics;

>>>>>  accumulates vast knowledge of history, government, economics, geography, and psychology with ability to apply principles to prevailing events;

>>>>>  reads widely in Western classic, world, and ethnic-specific fiction, poetry, and nonfiction;

>>>>>  gathers abundant knowledge of world visual art and music, with opportunity to paint, sculpt, and play a musical instrument;

>>>>>  masters English grammar and usage;

>>>>>  acquires skill in multiple technological and vocational arts;

>>>>>  advances to a high level of mastery with a world language. 

and 

>>>>>  considers, discusses, and analyzes exalted ethical standards from world religious and humanistic traditions.

Graduates who go forth upon the basis of curriculum revolutionized for knowledge intensity and ethical content will live as civically engaged citizens with multiple intellectual interests, artistic appreciation, manual skill, and professional success.  

Such citizens will experience life at a high cultural level, with an organic relationship to the natural world, imbued with respect for all human beings and creatures, and manifesting an inclination to promote the best conditions of life for all humankind.  

And thus via the cultivation of individuals of immense knowledge and high ethical standards in revolutionized K-12 curriculum do we create a realized vision of who we want to be.