Questions to Shape a School’s Curriculum

Central Park East Secondary School in New York uses these overarching questions to focus attention on habits of mind in every class and every subject:

  • From whose viewpoint are we seeing or reading or hearing?
  • From what angle or perspective?
  • How do we know when we know?
  • What’s the evidence, and how reliable is it?
  • How are things, events, or people connected to each other?
  • What is the cause and what is the effect?
  • How do they fit together?
  • What’s new and what’s old?
  • Have we run across this idea before?
  • So what?
  • Why does it matter?
  • What does it all mean?