If I were king of the forest we would have
math in the core curriculum.
Science would be in the core curriculum.
English in the core curriculum.
Elementary science is where you get scientists.
Everybody in the space program, everybody
who's a doctor got interested in science when
he or she was seven or eight years old, before
they were ten, not when they were 16 or 18.
That's where you spend your money is science
education in elementary levels.
Now, people are opposed to core curriculum
I believe for two reasons.
One of them good and the other just not.
The first reason, my perception is they are
afraid having these core curricula, these
standards, prohibits teachers from having
time to do other stuff that they're good at.
It takes away from other things that a teacher
brings to the party.
And by that I mean what is your favorite thing
about your favorite teacher?
And it's his or her passion.
It's his or her like I'm so excited about
this I want you to get excited about this
when you're a little kid or when you're any
student at any level, even if you're a 58-year-old
guy going to the Smithsonian to take a course
in oceanography for fun.
It's the passion of the person presenting
it that gets you going.
So, by having too many standards that have
to be met too rigorously, the concern is,
and I understand this, that you'll keep students
from having any fun and getting excited about
anything.
But the other reason people seem to be, my
perception of what people don't like about
core curricula is that it forces them to learn
standard stuff when they could be teaching
their kids things that are inconsistent with
what we know about science.
I'm talking about people that want to teach
creationism instead of biology.
And that's just bad.
And the excuse or the justification is you
don't want the government telling you what
to do.
We all have to learn the alphabet everybody.
I'm sorry, if we're we're going to have a
successful society, it's not an arbitrary
arrangement of letters, you got to learn it.
Sorry.
And the same way if you're asking me everybody's
got to learn a little bit of physics, chemistry,
mathematics and you got to learn some evolution.
You've got to learn some biology.
I mean the idea is obvious right?
You have a certain minimum that everybody's
got to meet.
What?
Everybody's got to learn the alphabet.
Everybody's got to learn to read.
The U.S. Constitution is written in English
so everybody's got to learn to read English.
It would be great if you learned some tonal
languages, some romance language that would
be good, but our laws are written in English.
Everybody's got to learn to read English.
Everybody's got to learn math.
Everybody's got to learn some algebra.
Everybody's got to learn some biology including
evolution.
So what's not to love?
But I know there are people opposed to that.
