Should curriculum be standardized for all students?

¶ … Curriculum Be Standardized for All?

The question of whether or not the curriculum should be standardized for all is indeed a hot button issue and one which garners a great deal of attention and controversy. When it comes to this particular issue, both sides actually raise very compelling points about what should be done and why standardizing the curriculum (and not standardizing the curriculum) is the best idea. Fundamentally, both sides approach this issue so strongly as a result of the fact that education, both private and public education as they exist in America, are deeply flawed and barely educate our children in a manner which allows them to compete with the best and brightest talent all over the world.

What challenges or problems does the issue present?

The biggest problem that the controversy presents is the fact that both sides raising valid points about how to handle this issue: those in support of standardizing the curriculum are able to offer truly insightful points about why. Those who are against standardizing the curriculum can often present truly damning evidence which show just what exactly will be lost in such a case.

For example, those who are in favor of standardization generally push that the curriculum contain some basic level of schooling that is high in quality, general and liberal (Pablo, 2010). Many of these supporters present "three kinds of learning and three kinds of instruction that need to be put into place due to the schools that now fail to 'cultivate proficiency' and currently have a multi-track system where the learning objectives are not the same for all" (2010). Those who are not in support of standardizing the curriculum are those who argue that not all students learn in the same way, and that young people need to have a greater control of the learning decisions and of exactly what goes into their young minds (Pablo, 2010). In this sense people who are against standardizing the curriculum view schools as potentially dangerous places which can brainwash the minds of children, providing them with incomplete and shoddy educations, turning them into young fascists.

While some say those who are against standardizing education do so in an extremist manner, at its core these people bring up a really valid point about the nature of education, which is that namely, some sort of right to education should be upheld and that individual students need to be able to have some sort of say in how the decisions made regarding education is able to impact their future. The issue of standardization in many ways is an issue about whose opinion matters more, the teachers/administrators or the students, and whose opinion should be able to have more weight to it.

As one expert illuminates, there's a certain amount of naivete present in the notion that one size fits all is actually the best decision for education. "Here's how well we expect students to do. Of course, all students deserve a quality education. But declaring that everyone must reach the same level is naive at best, cynical at worst, in light of wildly unequal resources" (Kohn, 2001).

Impact on Teaching and Learning

Advantages

One of the advantages that some have alluded to as being present for teachers is the fact that there will be a sense of unity and alignment within the national curriculum. This allows for greater strength within the teaching profession as a whole. Furthermore, a standardized curriculum allows for teachers to have a more concrete sense of guidance for their work inside of the profession. There's simply left less to chance: using the discretion of each individual teacher is something which just isn't suitable. Instead, think-tanks of experts get to dictate the standards, allowing for a greater uniformity of educational levels across the nation.

Advantages

The advantages of the standardized curriculum are obvious. They point to the notion that there might be one answer for structured education which the entire nation could embrace so that students and graduates could rightly compete with the well-educated bright minds around the world. It's as if educators would like to find a secret recipe for creating a dish of competency and acquired knowledge for students. Those who support such a curriculum argue that if it's done right and done well it could offer a great deal of potential to all involved: if the philosophy is liberal and the standards reasonable and all areas covered, in theory it could offer students everywhere a solid education.

Disadvantages

The disadvantages of the standardized curriculum have proven to be abundant. Many people who don't consider a standardized curriculum to be a good idea view it as containing a certain amount of cavalier rhetoric which claims to not support any excuses. This rhetoric is so damaging because it claims to set the bar higher, but the tendency remains that it doesn't seek to level the playing field from whence many of these students came (Kohn, 2001). This is so problematic because it essentially seeks to bully both students and educators into being able to offer an improved performance. Another skewed manifestation of this is that demands for more intensive standards can often just translate to harder work: "More difficult assignments and tests, which more students will fail, are supposed to represent an improvement. In fact, many schools in low-income neighborhoods have been transformed into test-prep centers. The quality goes down as the scores go up" (Kohn, 2001). The results are clearly in the scores: this type of one-size fits all education just doesn't deliver and doesn't bring in the caliber and level of test scores that are necessary in order to conclude that the method is working. Students continue to fail with a standardized curriculum. A national standardized curriculum just isn't the answer.