Mary Helen Immordino-Yang

Right.

So we set the cart before the horse in the way we design our curricula right now.

We're thinking too much about what little learning nuggets get shoved in the cart.

And we forget to think about who's the horse pulling that cart.

What does that horse need?

That's, I think, the fundamental problem with the way we've designed our education system today.

It's backwards.

The building block skills follow the big, intriguing ideas and the curiosities.

And then the kids need the building block skills and they come back and say, please, teacher, I want to write a commentary about reforming the foster care system because I've lived through it and I've got some ideas.

Can you remind me what does a good topic sentence really accomplish again?

Because I need people to understand what I'm trying to say.

It's important.

The nuts and bolts and the blocking and tackling are absolutely real, and they take grit and persistence and deep effort, right?

But they follow a big idea.

There is no nut and bolt and grunt work that doesn't have some reason for knowing it.

When kids are asking, why do I need to do this?

Why do I need to know this?

That represents a failing of the design of the curriculum.

It should be very clear to everybody in that room why you need to know this before you start learning it.

They need to know it.