These are my ideas for a new type of school curriculum. This is just an overview and the subjects, of course, would need to be taught in an age appropriate way, which I haven’t done here. Ideally, the student would pick from each subject what interested them.
8th grade
1. cooking
– ingredients
– methods
– health and safety
– scientific aspects
– cuisines
2. hygiene
hands
– washing with soap and water
– when to wash hands
– germs
– respiratory
– cover your cough
– using a tissue
– food
– sanitizing surfaces
– separate raw from cooked
– cook thoroughly
– keep food at safe temperatures
– washing food
– water
– clean water vs. dirty water
– kitchen
– food storage
– cleaning up
– when to refrigerate
– bathroom
– hand washing
– taking a bath
– laundry
– putting dirty clothes in the hamper
– medical
– cleaning a cut
– disinfectant
– surfaces
– body
– washing
– brushing teeth
– washing hair
– changing clothes (dirty and clean)
– nail trimming
– sleep
– don’t touch blood
– getting a haircut
– going to the doctor/dentist
3. physical health
– diet
– exercise
– sleep
– disease
4. self-defense
5. sports
6. woodwork
7. music (composing)
– chord progression
– melody
– free playing
– computer methods
– structure
8. dance (history)
– early dance
– means of social communication and bonding
– as folk celebrations
– in ceremonies and rituals
– as a method of healing
– as a method of expression
– asia
– indian classical dance
– china
– europe
– court dancing to romanticism
– ballet to contemporary dance
– last 20th and early 21st centuries
– 20th century american
9. television (criticism)
10. theater (acting)
– classical acting
– stanislavski’s system
– method acting
– meisner technique
– practical aesthetics
11. film (criticism)
12. fine arts (painting)
– different media (oil, acrylic, etc.)
– symbolic
– still life
– body painting
– figure painting
– illustration
– landscape
– portrait
– cityscape
14. applied arts (printmaking)
– woodcut
– engraving
– etching
– screenprinting
– digital
15. physics
– describing the nature, measuring and quantifying of bodies and their motion, dynamics etc.
– newton’s laws of motion
– mass, force, and weight
– momentum and conservation of energy
– gravity
– energy, work, and their relationship
– motion, position, and energy
– different forms of energy
– energy conservation, conversion, and transfer
– energy source the transfer of energy from one source to work in another
– kinetic molecular theory
– phases of matter and phase transitions
– temperature and thermometers
– energy and heat
– heat flow: conduction, convection, and radiation
– the three laws of thermodynamics
– waves and sounds
– electricity, magnetism, electromagnetism
– principles, sources, and properties of light
– basic quantities
– acceleration
– electric charge
– energy
– entropy
– force
– length
– mass
– matter
– momentum
– potential energy
– space
– temperature
– time
– velocity
16. sociology
– theoretical traditions
– classical theory
– 20th century social theory
– central theoretical problems
– subjectivity and objectivity
– structure and agency
– synchrony and diachrony
– research methodology
– sampling
– methods
– computational sociology
– scope and topics
– culture
– criminality, deviance, law and punishment
– communications and information technologies
– economic sociology
– education
– environment
– family, gender, and sexuality
– health, illness, and the body
– knowledge and science
– leisure
– peace, war, and conflict
– political sociology
– population and demography
– public sociology
– race and ethnic relations
– religion
– social change and development
– social networks
– social psychology
– stratification, poverty and inequality
– urban and rural sociology
– violence
17. history (economic)
– ancient economic thought
– economic thought in the middle ages
– mercantilism and international trade
– pre-classical
– classical
– neoclassical
– alternative schools
– world wars, revolution and great depression
– austrian
– keynesianism
– chicago school
– games, evolution and growth
– post world war II and globalization
– post 2008 financial crisis
18. languages (english)
– phonology
– consonants
– vowels
– phonotactics
– stress, rhythm and intonation
– regional variation
– grammar
– nouns and noun phrases
– verbs and verb tense
– syntax
– vocabulary
– word formation processes
– word origins
– english loanwords and calques in other languages
19. writing (fiction)
– character
– plot
– setting
– theme
– style
– narrator
– point of view
– tone
– suspension of disbelief
20. philosophy (political)
– ancient traditions
– china
– greece
– india
– medieval christianity
– saint augustine
– st. thomas aquinas
– islamic golden age
– mutazilite vs. asharite
– ibn khaldun
– medieval europe
– european rennaissance
– niccolo machiavelli
– european enlightenment
– john locke
– industrialization and the modern era
– contemporary
