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Platonic Curriculum; Epicurean Society

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Inside Today’s Elementary Schools

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Abstract

This chapter explores the state and national elementary curriculum. These standards are designed to prepare students for college and democracy. This curriculum is therefore highly literate, numerate, and abstract. It is “Platonic” after the Greek philosopher Plato who prized these cognitive abilities in his educational blueprint, The Republic. While all students can and should learn to participate in a democracy, not all students are equally capable of engaging in the type of abstract thinking demanded by the Platonic curriculum. Given the cognitive demands of higher education, only about 25–50% of the population is capable of handling it. After 13 years of this Platonic material, the half of students who will never go to college feel defeated and are unprepared for a noncollege career path. Many of the behavioral problems in the classroom are caused by the disconnect between a highly academic curriculum and the students who have little interest in or ability to do it. Elementary school should not begin a rigorous college prep curriculum but provide basic numeracy and literacy skills needed for a healthy life in a democracy. Schools would later begin a process to ascertain the proper curriculum track students should take in middle and high school.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of West Georgia, Carrollton, GA, USA

    James J. Dillon

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  1. James J. Dillon
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Correspondence to James J. Dillon .

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Dillon, J.J. (2019). Platonic Curriculum; Epicurean Society. In: Inside Today’s Elementary Schools. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23347-1_7

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