The World Needs a New Curriculum.

The current curriculum is mainly based on the four core subjects namely Math,
Language Arts, Science and Social Studies. Most of the students have to be excel in these
four subjects in order to be considered as a good and high quality students. The teachers will
always teaching the students with what are stated in the syllabus and teach by the books. As a
result many of us noticed that the failing of this curriculum and started to think of a more
effective and better curricular program. The author, Marc Prensky proposed that there are
many other skills needed to be added and offered in our education institutions such as skills
in the area of thinking, action, relationships and accomplishment. He proposed that new
curriculum based on Effective Thinking, Effective Actions, Effective Relationship and
Effective Accomplishment should be tailor-made to suit the needs of the world now. The
current main core subjects like maths, language arts, science and social studies remains are no
longer enough and complete to equip our young ones to succeed in the lives now. The
curriculum is having a lot of missing puzzles and this is felt strongly by the teachers and also
the students themselves.
According to Marc (2014), the reformation of the future curriculum not only focus on
how to teach the students more effectively but also to see what need to be changed in our
curriculum in order to suit the changing world. He mentioned that most of the contents in the
syllabus today only focused about the knowledge that we wanted to pass on to the students
but never think of the needs of the community and the market and also the applications of
these knowledge and skills in their real lives. Many of the skills and knowledge they learned
from school will never being used in their daily lives in the way they learned it so we have to
redefine education. Education is at the highest level about a particular kind of becoming, the
students becoming better, more knowledgeable and more employable. The curricular content
should be related to one who can think effectively, to act effectively, to relate effectively and
to accomplish useful things effectively. Others sub-skills that need to be enhanced are like
ethics, culture, citizenship, preparation for employment. The future world is going to be more
connected with internet, all the people will be linked up and this is implicating the education
to be more globalized education. The world is getting borderless and knowledge sharing is
becoming more common. According to Aycock, Garnham and kaleta (2002), learning to
utilise technology in a suitable way and effective way is a big challenge and that could be
improved by experience.

If the students only think of mastering the curriculum of the four core subjects namely
maths, language arts, science and social studies will help them to gain more knowledge but it
is not the total skills for all the young ones to face the world in the future. The students need a
wholly new and comprehensive curriculum which will top up the current four core subjects
with more other skills. These extra skills are the value-added to their abilities and capabilities,
the current curriculum need a big change. This reformation however faces some problems as
worries and objections do come from all walks of life. The opposition come from the parents
as the parents are not willing to put their children on the risk of the change like the mice in
the laboratory. The resistance to change showed by the education experts also became a
barrier to this change as that group of educational experts is always focuses on the reviews of
the pedagogies to improve teaching processes. Many methods of pedagogy have been
invented where some are students centred while others are teachers centred but the
curriculum they use is still perplexing around the same old curriculum of the four core
subjects namely Maths, Language Arts, Science and Social Studies. The experts also
developing the lesson delivery by using technologies during the lessons but this will only
make the teaching and learning processes more efficient and not adding the skills that the
students will master.
In order to let the students learn more useful skills, there is a need to come out with a
new curriculum that include many other skills. A problem will be arise if we just add up the
current curriculum with the new skills, the time constraint where the students already
spending too much time to master the current four core subjects. The students will not have
enough time to cope with this new curriculum as the current one is already very compressed.
On the other hand the educators are not ready to teach with these new curriculum and foresee
the difficulty to mix them with the current syllabus. Such changes will also make the others
to feel uncomfortable as it was not how they were educated back in school. Most of the
people will try to retain the value of their knowledge gained and would certainly appreciate
and treasure on what they have learnt with big effort and time spent than calling those
knowledge out of date. Intensive long-term planning, observation and evaluation of the
course are necessary for a successful implementation. Juggling between online and in person
is a gradual process of bringing in new resources and techniques to replace the current one.
This help the students to reach the learning target (Duhaney, 2004).
The world has moved on and many other human skills have now come to be
recognized as crucial for our students in the future. Action Skills, Relationship Skills and

Accomplishment Skills are among the most important skills as seen missing for the curricular
currently. Many arguments against the curricular change are related to culture as they afraid
that their culture will be lost if we implement the new curriculum into the students current
one. In order to overcome this, we need further education, educate the students to appreciate
and treasure their culture but not from stopping them to be more advance and skilful in their
lives. The curriculum cannot purely based on tradition or on the past skills only but must
include the elements that will make the students more competitive and successful in the
future. This will not drop the current four core subjects completely but to change them and to
add in with the new skills.
The author proposed that the organisation of education should be based on the toplevel skills such as Effective Thinking, Effective Action, Effective Relationship and Effective
Accomplishment. The first three major subjects can then be divided into a few more subcategories while the last subject is actually a project in a real world, a hands-on work. This
project could be started up with a small scale locally and then will gain its expansion
gradually with time to nationally or even internationally. The current four core subjects are
still important and will never be deleted from the new curriculum but be customized
according to the students based on their grades, cognitive levels, strengths, interests and
passions. The new curriculum will also focus on the applications of the four core subjects
than just as the way they are taught currently. Besides reading and writing, video and voice
connections are becoming the foundations for learning where they can provide a better sense
of understanding through more dimensions.
The components of Effective Thinking are Critical Thinking, Mathematical Thinking,
Scientific Thinking, Creative Thinking, problem Solving, Inquiry Skills, Argument Skills,
Design Thinking, Systems Thinking, Judgement, Aesthetics, Habits of mind, Self-knowledge
of ones passions and strength. All these skills could be started earlier in primary school and
need not to wait until they are in college, as this is good for the students to pick up these
thinking skills earliest as possible. The students will be able to think effectively about any
problems or issue in multiple ways and this will generate their constructive and logical
thinking.
The Effective Action is about practising physically and applications of the knowledge.
The components of effective action including Positive Mind Set, Resilience, Grit,
Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Improvisation, Breaking Barriers and Project Management.

These are the components that might see appeared in our current curriculum but are not
emphasized on the way to carry out them and to walk them out. The students are learning
these skills by content instead of practical skills. The new curriculum should include the steps
and procedures to focus on how carry out what have been defined as innovation, projects,
entrepreneurship and others.
The Effective relationships will consists of Communication & Collaboration,
Relationship Building, Empathy, Ethics, Politics, Citizenship, Negotiation and Conflict
Resolution. The focus should be devoted to systematically analysing the relationships so that
the students will be more sensitive and act better in maintaining their effective relationship.
Through a good and effective relationship, the students will be actively involve themselves in
activities like group discussions, team building and team work which will promise a greater
success.
The Effective Accomplishment is including doing project work in the real world. This
project will be based on the student interests, passions of the students, the needs of the
community and the teachers. The students will gain hands-on practices and get more
experiences. They become better connected with the usage of internet nowadays. With this
widened networks, the students will be more aware of the needs of the bigger community like
nationally or even globally instead of just locally. The students should be trained
systematically and practically through lively projects and expose them to the real world out
there.
This new curriculum can only be successful if we take technology as our foundations.
Technology should come in for every new subjects that mentioned beforehand such as
Effective Thinking, Effective Action, Effective Relationship and Effective Accomplishment.
The teachers on the other hand play an important role here. They are not the sole distributors
of knowledge to the students anymore but they should be a facilitators, a more interactive,
responsive, participative and creative teachers. They should be using the technology to guide
the students to search for the knowledge to take up the new skills. Teachers from time to time
have to motivate the students, drive them forward to achieve their goals. They should respect
the students as are respected by the students all the while, empathizing with them and
encourage the passions of the students. All these work can never be done by only using the
technology or the computers, the human traits which are unreplaceable is the reasons why we
need to keep the teachers in the classroom. The teachers will be trained according to the new

subjects and not as the old current four core subjects, they will specialize in the particular
new subject from Effective Thinking, Effective Action, Effective Relationship to Effective
Accomplishment.
Whether this new curriculum can work or not is still an uncertainty as it has not
carried out yet even though many countries and schools have shown their interest to change
their curricular approach to suit to the changing market demand. There are no defined
standards to guide decisions as to how much or what part of courses can be replaced. The
decision is depends by the course content and the intentions of the educators (Vaughan 2007).
We need a thorough plan and a group of well trained teachers in order to commence on this
new curriculum. The readiness from the teachers, the students and the parents are crucial to
the success of this curriculum with the application of technology. The students should not be
evaluated solely based on their results as the final goal of education is Becoming. We want
the students to become a good, capable and flexible person, who will help making our world
a better place to stay. The students can always think of the root of the problems, think of the
solutions and think of how to carry out the solutions. Besides that they will also able to
physically and practically convert all their planning into real work, to maintain good
relationship with the nature, the surroundings and the people in order to achieve their goals in
life.

References
Aycock, A., Garnham, C., & Kaleta, R. (2002). Lessons learned from the hybrid course
project. Teaching with Technology Today, 8(6), 9-21. Retrived from http://www.
uwsa.edu/ttt/articles/garnham2.htm
Duhaney, D. C. (2004). Blended learning in education, training, and development.
Performance Improvement, 43(8), 35-38. doi: 10.1002/pfi.4140430810
Garrison, D. R., & Vaughan, N. D. (2011). Blended learning in higher education:
Framework, principles, and guidelines. San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons.
Marc, P. (2014). The World needs a New Curriculum. Educational Technology, May-June
2014.