Dominant influences shaping curriculum in America today

Curriculum

What are the dominant influences on school curriculum in America? What was the approach to curriculum development in the past? Those issues are addressed in this paper.

The Literature on Curriculum and its Influences

Philosopher and educator John Dewey wrote in 1906 that there was a wide gulf between the child of that era and the curriculum being offered. He posed a picture of the "…narrow but personal world of the child" put up against the "…impersonal but infinitely extended world of space and time" (Dewey, 1906, p. 11). In other words, Dewey was trying to make the point that curricula should attempt to allow the child to proceed "…step-by-step to master" each separate parts of a lesson rather than present "…an abstract principle of logical classification and arrangement" (11-12). The road is long when you're asking a child to view a subject in its entirety, Dewey continued (12), but it is far more "…easily traveled" when it is broken down into simple steps.

Dewey had a way of using metaphors and illustrations to make his points. On page 14 the iconic author and philosopher asserts that "Subject-matter is but spiritual food, possible nutritive material" but it "cannot digest itself" and it can't turn "bone into muscle and blood." To students in 1906 (and this is likely true today in most instances), raw facts (grammar, arithmetic, geography) can be repulsive to the student and expecting the child to "swallow and digest the unpalatable morsel" is unreasonable (38).

Meanwhile the "Reconceptualization of Curriculum Studies" by curriculum theorist William F. Pinar offers a bit of the past and of the present. Pinar explains that curriculum work "…tends to be field-based" but the writing of curriculum leans towards what the teachers need (Pinar, 2004, p. 149). And in the past those who wrote curricula were former teachers, school practitioners that tended not to care much about research into the dynamics of today's classroom and how students are changing along with society. Not until the 1930s did the development of curricula become a part of universities and colleges, Pinar explains (150).

Today the "traditional curriculum field has been declared terminally ill" or in fact it has already been laid in the ground, Pinar continues on page 151. Why is this true? The author gives two reasons: a) the leadership of the reform movement for new ideas in curricula (launched in the 1960s) was not from within the educational community and hence this "…bypass was a crippling blow" to the professional accountability; and b) the funds that would have been used to create new ideas and to solicit proposals for reform and innovation have not been available due to the economic downturn in the nation (Pinar, 151). Moreover, Pinar (152) references scholars that assert "…prescriptive curriculum theories" are "not useful" because they don't link with the actual process of changing curricula -- they are only theoretical.

In The SAGE Handbook of Curriculum and Instruction the authors insist that there is never a shortage of ideas and opinions regarding curriculum reform, it is always a matter of "how to navigate, with effect, among the diverse possibilities (Phillion, et al., 2007, p. 516). One problem standing in the way of reform is that curriculum scholars "…have lost a struggle for the American curriculum"; moreover, albeit curriculum in today's U.S. schools is in some ways shaped by politics (think "No Child Left Behind" in which teachers in many instances simply teach to the test so they keep their own ratings high -- which results in teacher and school rewards), curriculum is indeed part of the "changing landscape of the world" and should become vitally important to children growing up in this world.