My notes from Chapter 2: Curriculum History
2.1 Introduction
Curriculum taught in a given classroom, school, community, state, or nation is never fixed in any final sense. Any curriculum planned or enacted should be
viewed as the end point of a series of human decisions, and as such it is a subject to constant review and revision.
2.1 Three Focal Points for Curriculum History
1. The Nature of the Subject Matter
Subject matter is the content of the curriculum, and choices about what subject matter to include within the curriculum are also choices about what to leave out.
2. The Nature of the Society
If the curriculum is to have utilitarian value, then it must lead the student not only to knowledge of the external world for its own sake, but also to knowledge than can be applied in the world. To determine usefulness, the society in which the students exists must be taken into account.
And how society should be in the future.
3. The Nature of the Individual
Though all persons in some ways are like all others, everyone is also unique. The same curriculum cannot be equally appropriate for all individuals.
2.3 The Colonial Era and the Early United States
Settelers has two common assumptions: only a few people needed much formal education and formal education should be directed at bringing people into conformity with some prevailing ideal of what an education person should be.
The Harvard Curriculum: See figure in book, provides a good indication of what elementary and secondary education in colonial America was meant to lead up to.
Franklin's Academy: Proposed the creation of an academy that would emphasize training in practical subjects. Classics would still be taught, but not required for everyone. Franklin's academy would include PE, drawing, mechanical arts, math, history, geography, civics, horticulture, science, religion, and others.
The 19th Century
Formal education in the US was directed toward the training of the mind and was still limited to the small proportion of the population for whom such training was deemed suitable. The curriculum was a relative few, well-ordered academic subjects were repositories of the highest knowledge and led to godliness, virtue, and understanding.
Political democracy changed through out the century.
Sociological changes caused curriculum of many schools to become increasingly oriented toward practical subjects and social utility.
The Common School Movement and the Expansion of the Curriculum
Academies opened for a number of americans, particuallry the middle class, and reflected a growing belief that America should provide opportunities for a naturla aristocracy of virtue and talent to flourish. Built on and extended the growing popular demand for universal elementary schooling.
Early in the century, educational leaders began to become aware of the incongruity of pushing for the development of a system of free adn universal elementary education to be followed by secondary eduction provided privately.
The common school movement was an effort to democratize American education by making the smae kind of schooling available to all.
By the middle of the century, local public schools were teaching not only the usual staples of Latin, Greek, reading, grammar, writing, arithmetic, but also French logic, citizenship, and much more.
Morrill Act in 1862 the idea of a society-centered curriculum of practical subjects was formally extended to higher education.
Reports of the National Education Association
The latter half of the 19th century can be described as a period of debate, between defenders of the traditional academic curriculum based on the nature of subject matter and advocates of a newer, more practical curriculum based on the nature of society.
1876: A Course of Study from Primary School to University
1893: The Committee of Ten: Set the tone for education for America, Secondary
1894 The Committee of Fifteen: Set the tone for education for America, Elementary
The 20th Century
Forces shaping American curriculum were traditionionalists, who advocated subject centered curriculu, and two types of nontraditionalists: those who advocated society centered curricula and those who advocated individual centered curricula
The Cardinal Principals of Secondary Education
1. Health
2. Command of fundamental processes
3. Worthy home membership
4. Vocation
5. Citizenship
6. Worthy use of leisure
7. Ethical character
Franklin Bobbitt and Activity Analysis
Child-Centered Pedagogy
The 1927 NSSE Yearbook: "...a noble attempt eliminate confusion and to create a common approach to curriculum." Fail to gain consensus.
The Eight-Year Study: seemed to demo that individual centered curricula were at least as good a preparation for college as was the traditional subject centered and an even better preparation for life in general.
After World War II:
Sputnik and the National Response: Curriculum reform based on ver dramatized fears for national security, intense and exaggerated criticism of US school system. Serious consideration of single curriculum-desirable and feasible (or so they thought)
The Curriculum Reform Movement
A New Risk to the Nation: If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre education performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of way.." National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983)
The National Commission on Excellence in Education
Prospects for the 21st Century
No Child Left Behind
Research indicated: American schools are functioning well and steadily improving, especially for minority group students."
