The New School Curriculum: The SodakArtist Way

What’s a thing you wish schools actually taught?

By: SodakArtist

If I had to answer this question with just one thing, my answer probably wouldn’t be what most people expect. I wish schools taught us how to think for ourselves. Not simply how to memorize information, pass a test, follow instructions, or produce the answer someone has already decided is correct. I mean truly think—to question, investigate, reason, recognize manipulation, understand ourselves, challenge ideas, and make decisions without constantly waiting for somebody else to tell us what we’re supposed to believe.

Because when you really stop and look at the traditional school system, you start noticing that education isn’t only about what’s written in a textbook. The environment itself teaches lessons. You wake up at a certain time, arrive at a certain place, sit where you’re supposed to sit, raise your hand before speaking, ask permission to leave the room, follow a schedule created by someone else, complete assignments according to someone else’s requirements, and move when the bell tells you it’s time to move. You do this day after day, year after year, until many of these behaviors become automatic.

But that’s for a different story I’m thinking about creating. So, back to the question: What’s a thing I wish schools actually taught?

I think we spend so much time preparing people to become employees that we sometimes forget to prepare them to become human beings who can think independently. I’m not against work. I’m not against structure. I’m not against discipline. Those things can be incredibly valuable. A disciplined person can accomplish extraordinary things. But there is a difference between discipline that empowers you and obedience that prevents you from questioning anything.

I want education to teach the first one.

I want students to leave school knowing how to build something, create something, investigate something, question something, negotiate something, solve something, and, perhaps most importantly, understand themselves. I want the kid who doesn’t fit the mold to understand that being different isn’t automatically being broken. I want the kid who keeps asking “Why?” to know that curiosity can become a superpower. And I want the kid who doesn’t understand the lesson the first time to know that struggling doesn’t mean they’re stupid.

Most importantly, I want every student to understand that an education isn’t supposed to end when they receive a diploma.

Nobody necessarily has to stand in front of a child and say, “You should always obey authority.” If a child repeatedly experiences rewards for following instructions and consequences for stepping outside predetermined boundaries, they can learn that lesson without anyone ever saying those exact words. Nobody necessarily has to say, “Don’t question the system.” If asking too many questions is repeatedly treated as disrespectful, disruptive, or inconvenient, eventually a person may learn that questioning isn’t worth the trouble. And nobody has to say, “Your time belongs to somebody else.” When someone else determines when you arrive, when you eat, when you sit, when you stand, when you speak, when you move, and when you’re released, you’re experiencing a structure in which control over your time belongs largely to someone else.

That doesn’t automatically make the system evil. It does, however, make the system worth examining.

A child who constantly asks “Why?” is demonstrating curiosity. That curiosity should be encouraged. Yet somewhere along the way, many people learn that there is a point where asking too many questions becomes annoying. We teach children to find the correct answer, but we don’t always teach them to question whether the question itself is the right question.

What if instead of being frustrated by the student who constantly asks “Why?”, we encouraged that student? What if we taught them how to investigate the answer? What if we taught them how to find evidence, compare sources, recognize bias, identify contradictions, and admit when they don’t know something?

That’s critical thinking.

And critical thinking isn’t automatically believing everything you’re told, but it also isn’t automatically rejecting everything you’re told. It’s having enough intellectual independence to investigate something before deciding what you believe. If someone tells me something I don’t believe, I don’t want my first response to be, “You’re lying.” I want to be able to say, “Show me.” Then I’ll investigate it. And if the evidence proves me wrong, I’ll change my mind.

Because being wrong isn’t the enemy of knowledge. Refusing to learn because your ego can’t handle being wrong is.

This is also why I think schools should teach people how persuasion works. We live in a world where we’re constantly being persuaded by advertisements, politicians, corporations, influencers, social media, friends, family, and even people we deeply trust. Fear can influence us. Repetition can influence us. Emotional language can influence us. Confirmation bias can make us search for information that agrees with what we already believe. We should understand how these things work, because knowing information isn’t nearly as useful if you don’t understand how easily information can be used to influence you.

And that’s where one of my favorite sayings comes into this:

“You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.”

I’ve always loved that saying because I think it applies to education far more deeply than people realize. You can put a textbook in front of someone. You can give them information. You can tell them the answer. You can even test them on it until they can repeat it perfectly. But none of that guarantees they’ve actually understood what they were taught—or that they’ll know what to do with that knowledge once the test is over.

You can lead someone directly to knowledge, but you can’t force them to become curious. You can give someone an answer, but you can’t force them to understand it. You can teach someone what to believe, but you can’t make them think independently.

That’s why I believe education should focus much more on teaching people how to think rather than simply filling their heads with things they’re expected to remember.

If you teach someone what to think, you’ve given them an answer.

If you teach someone how to think, you’ve given them a tool they can use for the rest of their life.

And that tool makes them much harder to manipulate.

Because the person who knows how to think doesn’t have to blindly accept the first answer they’re given. They can investigate it. They can question it. They can compare it against other information. They can look for evidence. They can recognize when something doesn’t make sense. And perhaps most importantly, they can discover that sometimes the answer they were given isn’t the right one.

That’s what I wish schools taught more of.

Not simply, “Here is the answer.”

But, “Here’s how you find out whether the answer is actually true.”

And I don’t think that’s the only thing schools should teach. We should learn contracts before we’re expected to sign them. We should understand credit before we’re encouraged to use it. We should understand interest, debt, taxes, investments, banking, negotiation, and basic financial responsibility before adulthood throws all of it at us. We should understand how government functions, how laws are created, how to research information, and how to determine what actually applies to our lives.

We should learn how to communicate and handle conflict. We should learn how to establish boundaries and recognize manipulation. We should learn how emotions influence our decisions. We should learn how to fail without believing we’re failures, and how to succeed without believing we’re better than everyone else. We should learn how to understand ourselves.

Because what good is knowing how to calculate a percentage if you don’t understand the percentage of your life you’re giving away to something you don’t even want? What good is memorizing an entire textbook if you’re afraid to question what you’ve been taught? What good is graduating with perfect grades if you have no idea who you are, what you believe, what you’re capable of, or what you actually want from life?

Maybe education shouldn’t primarily be about creating people who are good at taking tests.

Maybe it should be about creating people who are good at asking better questions.

The world doesn’t stop trying to influence you when you graduate. In many ways, that’s when it really begins. You enter the workforce. You sign contracts. You open bank accounts. You pay bills. You make purchases. You make decisions about your relationships, your career, your money, your beliefs, and your future. Nobody is standing beside you with a multiple-choice test showing you four possible answers.

Real life doesn’t work that way.

Sometimes there isn’t one correct answer. Sometimes there are ten possibilities. Sometimes every choice has consequences. Sometimes you have to make a decision with incomplete information. And sometimes the most intelligent thing you can say is, “I don’t know yet, but I’m going to find out.”

That’s education too.

So life is the classroom.

Every mistake can teach you something. Every failure can become a lesson. Every person you meet can show you something. Every belief you question gives you an opportunity to understand yourself more deeply. And every question you have can become a doorway to knowledge.

So if you ask me what I wish schools actually taught, my answer isn’t simply taxes, finances, cooking, or job skills. Those would be nice, and they’re absolutely worth learning. But I’d want something bigger.

I’d want schools to teach independent thought.

I’d want them to teach students how to recognize when they’re being manipulated, how to investigate claims, how to understand their own minds, how to question authority without automatically becoming disrespectful, and how to disagree without becoming enemies. I’d want them to understand that following instructions isn’t the same thing as intelligence, memorization isn’t the same thing as wisdom, and conformity isn’t the same thing as success.

Because maybe the purpose of education shouldn’t be to teach children how to fit perfectly into the world they’ve been handed.

Maybe it should also teach them that they have the ability to question the world, understand it, and create something better.

A classroom should not be the place where curiosity goes to die.

It should be the place where curiosity learns how to fly.

And if I could put one lesson on the first page of every student’s first textbook, it would be this:

Don’t just learn the answers. Learn how to find them.

And whatever you do, never be afraid to ask why.

Thank you for reading another piece from SodakArtist.

Until next time, keep questioning, keep learning, and never let anyone convince you that thinking for yourself is something you should be ashamed of.