We are putting too much pressure on learning more, at an earlier age that we are forgetting that kids need to be kids. Take Japan for example, they have a country full of some of the brightest students in the world. They have children that can do some of the most amazing things, however, they also have the highest suicide rate among teens in the world. I want to push my children to succeed as well, but not for the price of their happiness and possibly their life. In determining curriculum, I think that educators need to get together and incorporate what children like, statistics on learning, and essentials they need such as play, to determine the best possible curriculum. What's the hurry that we have? We force children to take on more and more responsibility for their education, do more, learn more, now, that we can't understand why some are turning to drugs, and they all just seem to be growing up too fast. We use foul language that is just simply accepted today in every movie we watch, we expose them to gore on television and video games, we don't actively monitor what they listen to, and we all just sit around scratching our heads, wondering where did we go wrong? Why don't we take just as much responsibility for raising our children, as we"re making them take in their education and raising themselves? I think by the time the child is in highschool, they should be deciding what they like, what interests them, and we should have paths they can follow to decide what career they want. We should have internships at different places, not only will they decide what they do and don't like, they will develop a good work ethic and make a little money perhaps as well.
The curriculum should be delivered to students in a variety of ways. We all have different learning styles and we recognize that about ourselves, now all we need to do is realize that kids are people with differences of their own and apply that to them.