Curriculum musts

After reviewing Ch. 1-4 again in HH Jacobs' book, I see these major components of curriculum coming forth;
- Critical thinking
- Preparations for future work and work situations
- more assessment tools that incorporate technology
- a Global focus
- personal and local perspectives should be considered
- The key questions: What content should be kept? What content should be cut? and What content should be created?
- perspectives on humanity should be a focus of Social Studies
- Sciences in action along with the morale dilemmas of science
- educating the person-in health and fitness
- expanding the genres in contemporary English and literature
- math should be considered another language
- the arts are key to a person's development

So I feel like looking at back at this list, that it says all that I have known to be what makes education good - that we need to focus on the whole child, not just the brain- but the wealth of the the being, the vessel, the creative mind, the inquisitive mind, and the ethical mind.  If we have known this all along, why is it still so hard to achieve? Can schools really not provide all these opportunities for students? What if we called them community centers and let in more options for students to 'meet the standards'? What might happen then? Or, what might happen if we did what we would truly deep in our hearts like to see kids do and THEN looked at the standards? I wonder - and I would bet- that many of the standards would be met without us having to look at them. Good educators know what they would like to see their students do, and with encouragement, without the pressure of the next test, students usually rise to the challenge. At least, that has been my experience! What do you think?