Common sense ironically is not common sense, it changes depending on person, circumstance, place, culture, age and much more. What I might perceive as common sense can be the complete opposite to someone els. Kumashiro defined common sense in many different ways but the one that stood out to me the most was “commonsensical ideas are often what help us to make sense of and feel at ease with the things that get repeated in our everyday lives” (35). It is not something that we question, because it is what we have known for our whole lives; and questioning it means that we are questioning our whole lives. Paying attention to what common sense is can really help when it comes to understanding different peoples cultures and ways of living. For instance when Kumashiro moved to Nipali she had his own perspective of what ways of living where, however he soon figured out how different everything was, and had to learn their ways of living.
When it comes to common sense and understanding curriculum and pedagogy it is definitely far more complex. For instance common sense limits what the purposes of schooling is. As what was stated “common sense dose not tell us that this is what schools could be doing; it tells us this and only this is what schools should be doing” (Kumashiro 35). Many see it as traditional, professional, and effective so questioning it dose not seem very necessary. On the other hand what is not realized that common sense overshadows the oppression that is behind it. When it comes to schooling we are so focused on teaching mathematics, English and language literacy, history, and science, and we completely cut out important things such as religion, culture, and other economical topics because they are “controversial”. However, what many fail to realize is that children come to school environments with their own ideas when it comes to those topics, and many times those ideas comes from stereotypes and miss information. By holding back on teaching those topics we are also holding back the truth of those topics, and the misinformation that those kids hold will carry on their whole lives.
The common sense I bring with me when it comes to the curriculum is that there are a set of subjects and topics that are given to us as teachers by the school board of education for us to teach our classes at a certain time. But to me it is much more than that, as an educator it is my responsibility to insure that all my students are learning more about the world around them than what the list is saying they need to learn. Giving students the understanding of different cultures, religions, and different ways of living, is just as important; especially in the world we live in today and how diversity out environments have become. Furthermore, it is common sense to me that every person learns differently, and by identifying each individual persons way of learning within my classroom and modifying the work to such in order to help them succeed is just as important as the topic itself.