'If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.'
John Dewey
Do schools need a curriculum? This is a pertinent question that needs reevaluating as we head into a new digital age of AI and robotics, where students learn more outside school from YouTube and TikTok than they do in their outdated school textbooks. Knowledge and technology are advancing at such fast rates that it is hard for schools to keep up to date. Furthermore, the UK has been spreading its (still dominant) imperious model of education around the world for centuries. As we become a more globally inclusive community, is it time to move away from the colonial past that viewed the UK culture as the ‘correct’ way of thinking?
Many cultures throughout history have existed in positive and productive ways with no formal schooling, and perhaps have lived more harmoniously with their environment and local communities. One side of the argument could be to scrap the curriculum and let students follow their interests through the ever-growing plethora of online and in-person courses. And yet, as John Dewey states, 'As societies become more complex in structure and resources, the need of formal or intentional teaching and learning increases.' (Dewey, 1916)
A Dilemma
This dilemma is portrayed poignantly in the 1980 adventure-comedy, ‘The Gods Must Be Crazy’, which describes the Kalahari bushmen as 'the most contented people in the world. They have no crime, no punishment, no violence, no laws, no police, judges, rulers or bosses. They believe that the gods put only good and useful things on the earth for them to use.' They also have no schools or curriculum, their young people learn through trial and error by watching and copying their elders – all things that are possible in a small, isolated hunter-gatherer society. However:
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