Curriculum... What is it? What is its purpose?

Curriculum is the plan we implement to take a journey through learning.  There are many types of curriculum and many methods to implement them, but how do we know which one is best?  There is data, of course, but anyone can swing data to show that their curriculum works.  Ken brings an interesting point, in that we are all born creative. but with curriculum, it deprives our students of being creative.  If this is true, then what is the purpose?  We teach our students to do what is right, to get the right answers, to NOT do wrong. “If you are not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything creative.” (Robinson, 2006)

How can we chose a curriculum to create a plan for us (not creative, in itself) if we cannot even know for what exactly we need to prepare our students for.  When they graduate, there will be technology that we cannot even currently imagine.  We are currently preparing our students for a world where their future jobs may not even exist yet.  “The unpredictability is extraordinary…we don’t know what the world will be like in 5 [years]” (Robinson, 2006) so how can we plan for 15 or even 20 years from now?

If we can use our students’ natural inquisitive nature and teach through authentic lessons in which they pose their own questions and guide their own learning, is the only purpose of having a curriculum due to the standard requirements given to us?  As Dewey suggests, “abandon the notion of subject-matter as something fixed and ready-made in itself, outside the child’s experience.” (Dewey, p.109)  How can we do this when we have intense pressure on test scores at both the state and national level?

Dewey says that textbook and teachers, together, present subject matter as it is viewed by the specialist.  “Such modification and revision as it undergoes are a mere elimination of certain scientific difficulties, aid the general reduction to a lower intellectual level.” (Dewey, p.118)  Does it reduce intellect because the information is given to students and not discovered by them?  If that is the case, how to do we expect to have the resources and materials to let the students authentically learn about such things.  If students were learning about the relationship between the sun, Earth and moon, how would many of those big ideas be taught without information given by a “specialist?”  There are some things they could learn individually: moon phases, daylight, and seasons just by observing the world around us.  But how would the students understand that seasons are causes because the earth is on a tilt and that other parts of the world do not experience seasons like we do today, without a textbook or other source of information?  How would you learn about tides in the ocean and how they correlate to the moon without living near the ocean? Learning about such things that you haven’t actually discovered or experienced, how would that lower intellectual level?

There are many perspectives on the purpose of curriculum and how to implement it.  Schubert bring up some interesting points.  I find myself to have beliefs that are a hybrid of the social behaviorist and the experientialist. “Babbit pointed out that conceptions of need can be derived scientifically, by survey methods.  He said that we must re-make curriculum in every generation by asking what successful people do, and more importantly what they need to know in order to do it. “(Schubert, 1996, p.4)  I believe that if we have a curriculum to plan the journey of learning for our students it should relate to the time and the students.  Therefore, it makes sense to constantly adapt and “re-make” curriculum to meet the students needs.  But, if we are looking at successful people, who determines who “successful people” are?  We would first have to define successful.  Some people become “successful” due to scamming and illegal operations.  This would then mean that if successful people are drug dealers, we should recreate curriculum to teach the students of the ins and outs of successful dealers so we can prepare them for future employment.

As for the social behaviorist route of thinking of having standards and benchmarks done at the state and national level, so if students move they will be prepared at another school.  Although they wouldn’t need to have the same curriculum per se, there should be some standards to ensure that teachers are making sure their students are learning what is to be expected.  How would teachers be assessed if there were no common standards?  Today, technology makes access to appropriate research so easy to grasp that it is possible to tailor-make curriculum to fit any configuration of local, state, and national needs. (Schubert, 1996) 

With all of that being said, I am more confused about what the purpose of curriculum is than I was last week.  The reading prompted more questions than they answered.  If curriculum hinders creativity and intelligence, why is it is something that districts across the country seek and require?

About me...

My name is Antoinette and I am currently living in Chelsea, Michigan.  I received my bachelor’s degree from Michigan State with a concentration in Social Studies in 2008.  I became interested in literacy my second year of college when I took TE 248.  The following year, I took TE348 Reading and Learning with Children’s Literature.  By then, I had already taken too many courses in Social Studies, it did not make sense to change the route I was on to graduate. 

After my year-long internship in fourth grade, I was not able to obtain a teaching position.  I was a substitute teacher.  During that year I was able to attain a long-term substitute position as a media specialist in a 5/6 building.  I absolutely loved spending my day in the library, talking to students about books and teaching technology.  The following year I took a 4^th grade position teaching science and social studies.  During my time there, the district was undergoing curriculum changes and adopted Lucy Calkin’s Reading Workshop.  They paid for instructors from the Teacher’s College Reading Institute to come to the district for training.  I was then laid-off and spent another year subbing.  I held a long-term position in 5^th grade in the district I had worked in the following year, where I was able to continue teaching through Reading Workshop.  Last year I also held a long-term substitute position in a kindergarten classroom. 

This year I have been Co-Teaching in a 5/6 split classroom at a charter school in Ypsilanti for the first half of the school year and I will finish out the school year in the building as an instructional teacher assistant working one-on-one with students who are at-risk and did not pass the MEAP in Reading.

After being trained in Lucy Calkin’s Reading Workshop, I love the idea of using anchor charts to go along with mini-lessons.  The key with the mini-lessons is to keep them short, to the point, but give a personal connection for the students.  Also, although it may seem like a lot of writing, I really see a benefit in having students respond to the text.  You can gain a lot of knowledge about a student, how they think and how they learn based on their responses.

In addition to working full time and taking 4 graduate classes, I am currently engaged and am planning my July wedding.  In my "free time" I enjoy reading, biking, running, baking, gardening and geocaching.  If I am able to work in enough time for training, I am planning on completing my first triathlon by the end of this summer.

I am very interested in beginning to understand parts of the social perspective on curriculum in schools!